Chapter Text
Just to clarify something - I post under the name The Dark Scribbler on FanFiction.net. On the AltHistory board I post under the name Cymraeg.
Ned
He hated the books. His father had made it look so easy, had made all the numbers dance, had been able to recall the most astonishing details of all the trade and administration of the North. But he was not his father and he hated the books, the ledgers, the endless administration. But it had to be done. The North wouldn’t run itself.
And besides you could tell what was happening when you looked at the ebb and flow of goods around the North. More trade going to Bear Island meant that the Mormonts were getting paranoid about the Ironborn again. More requests from the Wall for, well, everything, meant that the plight of the Night’s Watch was getting worse and he sighed and made another note to remind Robert that something had to be done to bolster the Wall before the Wildlings paid another visit. More complaints from the Dreadfort meant that Roose Bolton was getting worried about something. Yet more complaints from the Karstarks meant that they were getting ambitious again. Well, they all had their concerns. Winter was always coming.
Knuckles rapped on the door to his solar and he looked up. Luwin was standing in the doorway, clutching at his chain and looking concerned. “What is it Luwin?”
The older man walked in and closed the door behind him. “Your pardon for disturbing you my Lord, but I am getting very worried about Robb. Something is very wrong with him.”
Ned Stark put his quill down and straightened up from the books with a sigh. “I know, Cat and I were discussing it last night. Yet whenever I ask him what is amiss he just looks at me with that strained look and makes an excuse and hurries away, I know not where too.”
“I think I have an answer to that riddle, or at least a part of it. I just found him in the Weirwood, praying before the Heart Tree. He’s always been devout, but never have I seen him pray as fervently as I just now witnessed.”
Ned looked at him. “Did you hear his prayers?”
“A snatch of them. He was asking why he had been sent back and what he was to do now.”
“Sent back?” Ned frowned. “Sent back from where?”
“I know not. He must have heard me coming because he looked up, smiled a smile that was more a grimace and then left.” Luwin paused and then seemed to come to a decision. “I think that Robb is also the one who has been in the Library so much of late. I knew that someone was looking through the books a lot, but I did not know who until I overheard Robb muttering a piece of doggerel from the books about the Old Gods. And Old Nan told me that Robb has been pestering her for more of the old tales.”
This really took him aback. “The Old Gods? Why would he be seeking knowledge of the Old Gods?”
Luwin spread his hands in bafflement. “I know not my Lord. As I said, I am concerned.”
Ned stood and walked to the fire, where he warmed his slightly stiff hands. “Whatever is amiss with Robb, it started ten days ago. When he entered the Great Hall to break his fast.”
“I agree,” Luwin muttered. “But what could have happened?”
Ned thought back. He had been breaking his fast that morning with Cat and his family, along with Jon and Theon. Robb had been missing and he had been about to irritably order a servant to go and find his eldest son when all of a sudden he had arrived. He had looked as if he had dressed hurriedly and then run as fast as he could, because his chest was heaving. And his reaction on seeing Ned had been a strange one – he turned white as a sheet and then reeled. “Father.” He had said the word as if he had been stunned. And then looked around the table and staggered forwards to it. He had hugged Bran and Rickon (both of whom had wriggled and squirmed and protested), hugged Arya (who had gone bright red with fury) and Sansa (who had rolled her eyes) and then stood and stared again at Ned.
“Robb, are you quite well?” Cat had asked in some startlement.
“I am quite well Mother,” Robb had replied, still in that stunned tone of voice. “Father. It is good to see you again.”
Ned had frowned. “I was here last night,” he had said carefully. “I haven’t gone anywhere.”
Robb paused, seemingly choked up about something and then had caught sight of Jon and Theon. A great smile had split his face at the first, followed by a murderous glare at the latter. “Theon.” He said the word in a low, equally murderous, tone that made the Greyjoy boy blink in bafflement.
Robb had then paused, collected himself visibly and then sank into his usual place, before eating quickly and as if his mind was on anything but the food. And then he had left, leaving everyone staring after him worriedly.
“Your children have been asking after him a lot, my Lord. He brushes them off, but they are as worried. He avoids Theon Greyjoy as if he is diseased. And Jory Cassel has told me that he found Robb staring from the outer wall of Winterfell in the direction of the Wolf’s Wood, muttering under his breath. And…” He broke off, obviously reluctant to speak.
“Go on Luwin,” Ned prompted. “Tell me.”
“Rodrik Cassel tells me that his fighting style has changed. He swings a sword with the eyes of a man who has fought in battle, Rodrik says, the eyes of man who has killed. And I do not doubt him. His eyes are different my Lord. He has the eyes of an older man.”
Ned Stark looked at his old friend and adviser. “I had thought that no-one else had noticed that. Had hoped it. What should I do? Every time I try to confront him he makes an excuse and leaves.”
Luwin nodded thoughtfully. “I had noticed that. I suggest that you talk to him in the Wierwood. He seeks solace there. Perhaps you can talk to him there.”
Robb
He didn’t know what to do. That was irony writ large that was. He had commanded thousands of men in battle, he had routed Lannister armies like chaff on the wind and now he was reduced to sitting in the Weirwood and thinking up mad desperate plan after mad desperate plan, only to abandon each one as impossible.
How had he gotten here? How had he gone from that cold, hard floor in Walder Frey’s banqueting chamber, feeling the life drain out of him from the various quarrels in him before the blade of Roose fucking Bolton had ended it all, to all the way back to Winterfell, before his father had gone South and died in the maze of corruption that was King’s Landing. How had it happened? Why had it happened?
It had taken a day to convince himself that he wasn’t dreaming, that this wasn’t some last mad fever-delerium before his death. That Father, and Bran and Rickon and Mother weren’t dead and Sansa a prisoner, that Arya wasn’t missing and that Jon wasn’t lost to the Wall. And as for Theon…
He scrubbed his hands through his hair roughly and forced himself to think. He had worked out that the date was about two months before the news had come of the death of Jon Arryn. There was still time to change things, if that was what he was there to do. He couldn’t imagine any other reason for whatever had happened to happen. And he had wasted ten days of precious time, one of which had been spent on the wall, trying to sense Grey Wind.
The problem was that he couldn’t think of any way to warn Father. Well, any way of warning Father that wouldn’t lead to him being confined under the tender mercies of Maester Luwin for a head injury that might explain his evident insanity in claiming to have been sent back from the future. Somehow ‘You’re going to have your head cut off by the violent little shit who thinks that he’s the son of King Robert, but who instead is the son of the Queen’s incestuous relationship with her own brother’ wouldn’t go down very well.
Very well then – a hint perhaps? Something about warning Jon Arryn that he was about to be poisoned, probably by the Lannisters? But what proof could he give, other than a tale that would make him seem insane? He didn’t know what he should do. If this was a military problem then he could think it over and come up with a solution in an instant. But it was not. This was politics – and he hated politics. It was his one weakness.
He looked at the Heart Tree. Why did he keep coming here? He had tried praying, to no avail. If the Old Gods spoke to him then he did not hear them. The books were next to useless, speaking of rumour and folk tales and old sayings. He could sense something in them though, hints left by men dead centuries ago. Tales of magic. Luwin would scorn them, but what else but magic could have brought him back? Old Nan’s tales had been no better, not really. Tales that had been told and retold down over the centuries had weakened them, drained the truth out of them. But again there were hints here and there. The Children of the Forest. The Others. Tales of dread and awe. Once they must have been words to hear and learn from. Now they were little more than empty ramblings.
Robb stood and walked to the Heart Tree. He knew, somehow, that it was important. He could feel it. Someone, something, had brought him back. Something linked to the Hearts Tree and the Old Gods. Something with power. And power needed strength. Not strength of arm, but strength of will perhaps. Belief. He needed to believe. Was that it? He knelt before the tree and then placed a hand on the bark. Who are you, he thought desperately, why have you done this? How can I persuade my family that I am not mad, that I have seen the future and how terrible it is? How can I protect my family from the storm that is coming. How can I protect the North?
Nothing happened and he faltered for a moment. And then he stopped and sent out his appeal again, from the bottom of his heart, with everything he could summon. Help me. I don’t know what to do. Help me.
The bark seemed to warm and then chill and then warm again under his hand and then something seemed to chime faintly deep within him, something that made him shiver for an instant. He closed his eyes and concentrated. I feel you. Who are you? What must I do? Tell me, please! I have to save Father! I have to protect the North!
The chiming seemed to arc upwards and he felt warm for a moment. For a dizzying instant he felt like a spark blown upwards from a fire. What was happening to him? Something seemed to be calling his name from the farthest possible distance, a thin sound right on the edge of his hearing. Who are you? Tell me how I can warn Father! Tell me what to do! Why was I sent back from the moment of my death?
And then a hand fell on his shoulder. He opened his eyes hurriedly and looked into the concerned face of his father. “Warn me about what Robb? And what’s this about your death?” He sounded horrified.
He thought desperately. That chiming was still resonating somewhere within him, less strongly now but it was still there. He had to keep it, he had to find out what had happened to him. The Heart Tree was important, he knew that now. “Father,” he said thickly, trying to make his mind work properly. He felt as if he was trying to do something impossibly difficult by instinct. “I must talk with the Old Gods. Something is trying… trying to talk to me.”
His father peered at him and then hissed in surprise. “Your eyes – there is red in them.”
Robb blinked and almost lost the chiming. No. No, he had to do this. He concentrated hard again. I am a Stark of Winterfell, he thought desperately, The blood of the First Men flows in my veins. Speak to me!
Father’s grip tightened and Robb could sense his worry, his panic. “Robb…”
“I must do this! I have to know! I need to know why I was sent back!” The chiming was stronger now, almost in time with the thundering of blood in his chest, vibrating within him.
“You’re trembling… Robb, what’s happening to you?” Father sounded out of his mind with worry now.
Show him. Robb didn’t know where the voice came from or who said the words. Instead he reached out with his free hand and took his father’s hand in a grip of iron. “Help me Father.”
And then blackness fell.
Ned
Ned found Robb in exactly the place he was hoping to – the Weirwood. His son was sitting on the ground and staring at the Heart Tree, muttering something just under his breath as he did, something that Ned just couldn’t quite make out.
He paused. He didn’t want his son to bolt again, he had to reassure him, to get him to talk. But then he watched as Robb stood and walked over to the tree and knelt before it, putting his bare hand on the bark. His lips moved as he said something under his breath. Ned took a step towards him and then he stopped. Robb had closed his eyes and was speaking again, this time a little louder. Perhaps he was unaware of the fact that he was speaking his thoughts aloud, so fierce was his face and his pose. And then Ned finally heard snatches of it as Robb raised his voice a little.
“Who are you? Tell me how I can warn Father! Tell me what to do! Why was I sent back from the moment of my death?”
Who was who? Warn him of what? And sent back from where? Death? Ned felt the blood drain from his face. This was madness. He strode over to his son, hesitated for a moment and then placed a hand on Robb’s shoulder. “Warn me about what Robb? And what’s this about your death?” He asked the questions quickly and seriously.
Robb looked up at him and Ned hissed in shock. The pupils of Robb’s eyes had taken on a strange red tint, not bloodshot but as if they had started to change to a different colour. Something sparked at the back of his head, some old tale that his great-grandfather had told him when he was just a small child. Something about the Old Gods. “Your eyes – there is red in them.”
His son seemed to return slightly but then frowned again in concentration. What was he trying to do? Well – enough he needed to call him back from wherever he was trying to go to. “Robb…”
But his son interrupted him. “I must do this! I have to know! I need to know why I was sent back!” And he was starting to shake, Ned could feel it, but if it was his muscles that were shaking or his very bones he could not tell.
“You’re trembling… Robb, what’s happening to you?”
Something happened then. The face of the Heart Tree seemed to come alive for a moment. And then Robb, in a voice that Ned had never heard from him before, grabbed his free hand and said: “Help me Father.”
Darkness appeared below him and he fell. They fell. He was too surprised to say a word and he felt something in his own bones now. Where they fell to or for how long he could never say afterwards, just that they fell. And as they fell he heard snatches of words, in the voices of Robb, Cat and others.
“Call the Banners.” “Good, that means you’re not stupid.” “Why? Why, Theon?” “We will kill them all.” “The King in the North! The King in the North!” “No. Not the Rains of Castamere.”
And then it stopped. He was in darkness, Robb was gone somewhere in that darkness and yet somehow he wasn’t afraid. And then suddenly he stood by a tree and watched as his son, dressed in plate armour as if for war, hacked at a group of tree, ruining his sword as the tears poured down his face. Ned wanted to go to him but could not – he was rooted in place as if he was a tree himself. Cat was walking towards Robb, tears on her own cheeks, but when she spoke to him Ned heard nothing. Instead he heard two voices, one old reedy and querulous and the other deep and low, like rocks grinding against each other.
“Why them? What have you done? There was a prophecy!” The first voice seemed agitated.
“It was necessary. Too much has gone wrong. Too many voices are stilled. Your plan was not enough. You have forgotten much.”
This seemed to annoy the first voice. “Forgotten what? Things were in place. The boy was finally with me! I had my replacement!”
Cat was no longer speaking to Robb, instead Robb was on horseback now, with GreatJon Umber and the pick of the North next to him. Their steeds were stamping in readiness and Ned saw Robb raise a steel gloved fist as he pointed forwards. Death and violence hung in the air and Ned could sense that men were about to die at the hand of his son. Where was this? What was this?
“Your replacement was just a part of the picture. You had forgotten that. We need the voices. We do not do this lightly. But it must be done. Otherwise the song will end and we will be no more. Prophecy can be re-written. You forgot that. And He is awake.”
The charging men on horseback passed from Ned’s sight and now he saw Robb on a field of battle, surveying the aftermath. He was pale and there were shadows in his eyes, the shadows that came from having led men into battle and seeing some of them die.
The first voice seemed to be shocked. “Impossible. I would have felt him wake.”
“He woke slowly. He was ever cunning. An animal, but even an animal can be cunning. Your ancestors lost a good man when he was… changed into what he now is. The decision has been made in any case. It was necessary. Your successor will still come to you.”
Another picture. A wedding? He could see faces that he recognised. Was that Brynden Tully? And Walder Frey, the old man who kept outliving everyone else. And Robb and Cat. Wait. Ned’s eyes widened as the first crossbow quarrel was shot into his son, who jerked wildly. No. No, this could not be.
“How long must I wait?” The first voice said the words bitterly.
“Not long.”
“Not long by your time or mine?”
“Yours.”
Another quarrel hit Robb as he tried to stand. Blood was flying everywhere now as a massacre started, as men knifed other men under the grinning gaze of the old man at the high table with the eyes of a lunatic. No. His son was dying. He had to do something to stop this.
“Very well. Who will tell them?”
“We have picked out someone.”
Another bolt. Ned wanted to scream his son’s name, wanted to get to him, wanted to upturn the tables and use them to protect him. And then he caught sight of a man standing up and walking calmly towards Robb. Roose Bolton. Ned sighed. Roose was a good man. He would save Robb. If only he would move faster. Wait – he had a knife in his hand? And his eyes… his eyes were alive in a strange mad way, with a glitter and a look that Ned had never seen before. No. No, he would not.
“Jaime Lannister sends his regards.” The knife went home. And blackness fell again.
When Ned opened his eyes again he was on his knees in a Weirwood of stone. Everything was stone, the trees, the moss, the ground. Overhead the sky was overcast. And there were statues of men everywhere, dressed in a variety of armour. Some wore skins like the hill tribes. Some wore crude armour. And some wore plate, but an ancient variety. All held grounded weapons, with their faces turned down to face the earth.
Ned stood shakily and then took an equally shaky step. “Where am I?” He might as well have asked the wind, which was present.
“In a place where words mean something,” said a voice and he turned to see an old man step out from the trees. He had to be the oldest man he had ever laid eyes on, dressed in robes like a Maester and with a simple belt around his waist. As he approached Ned swallowed. His eyes were the same colour as a Weirwood tree. “You are a Stark, are you not?”
“I am,” Ned said. “I am the Lord of Winterfell, Ned Stark.”
The old man looked him up and down and sniffed caustically. “So this is what my family has become. It is of no matter. You are a child and you have forgotten everything of consequence. A stone wolf indeed.”
Ned blinked. “You are a Stark?” he looked at the old man again. Yes, there were traces of the Stark features beneath all those wrinkles.
“One of the first,” the old man said firmly. “Words have meaning here. Names even more so. Stark. What does it mean?”
“It… it is our name,” Ned said, confused.
The old man rolled his eyes in disgust. “No. You do not see. Stark. It means plain, the plainest of possible views. We always strip things down to the basics, boy. We see things as they are. Winter is always coming. That is the strength of our house. You have let them weaken that view.”
“Them?” Ned asked, bewildered.
“The fools to the South, with their fripperies and their jealousies and their foolishness. Your eyes should be in the North. Winter is coming. And a mistake was made. Your son was not warned.”
“Robb. Where is he? I was with him in the Weirwood. What happened?”
The old man growled. “Listen to me you foolish boy! You child! Winter is coming. That is why the Old Gods brought your son back. Back from his useless death in the South, back from the foolishness that killed so many good men of the North. Death marches on the Wall. Death – and worse.”
Ned stared at the old man. Who was he? Bran the Builder? Garth Greenhand? Then he swallowed. “What could be worse than death?”
The old man smiled. “At last a good question. The Others are coming, boy. They are awake again. The North must be ready, but to do so the South must be at peace. Listen to your son and his tale of woe, listen to his tale of what went wrong. Prepare. You must be ready. They did this, they brought him back.”
Ned felt the hairs on the back of neck stand on end. He was being watched by a great number of eyes. He could sense them. “Who are ‘They’?”
The old man looked over his shoulder and then smiled. “See for yourself.” And then he faded from sight, like fog on a hot day. Ned paused for a moment, looking at the stone trees around him. And then he turned. The statues were all looking at him, their eyes filled with green fire. They were old, he could tell just by looking at them, eons old. The stone beneath him splintered and then cracked and he let out a wordless cry as he fell into the darkness again.
When he woke he was by the Heart Tree again, sprawled on the grass as if he had been sleeping. Robb was still kneeling next to him, one hand on the trunk, his eyes closed in exhaustion. Ned swallowed and then finally croaked: “Robb.”
His son jerked slightly and then opened his own eyes. “Fa-Father?”
He stood, slowly, feeling as if every muscle and bone in his body had been strained. “We must talk. Now. In my solar.”
Luwin
There was always something to be dealt with in a place like Winterfell. There were ravens to be fed, messages passed on, people’s illnesses treated and a hundred and one other things. And yet that didn’t make the worry about young Robb go away at all.
He turned a corner and then stopped dead in his tracks. Ned Stark was helping Robb down the corridor, or rather half-dragging him, with one of Robbs arms draped over his father’s shoulder. Robb’s head hung low and Luwin could not tell if he was awake or not. Judging by the stumbling feet he was suspended between awake and asleep. “My Lord!” Luwin exclaimed as he scurried over and supported Robb on his other side, draping the other arm over his own shoulders and supporting the exhausted youth. “What happened?”
“Found him in the Weirwood,” Ned gasped and Luwin looked at him sharply. The man looked as if he was exhausted himself and…
“My Lord, your eyes…”
“What of them?”
“There is a redness to them. In your pupils.”
Ned sighed. “I feared that. Hopefully it will fade. Robb will have it as well.” They reached the door to Ned’s solar, which Ned opened with one hand. They brought Robb inside, deposited him in one of the chairs and then Ned sank into his own chair with a groan. “You should see to Robb.”
Luwin was already doing that even as Ned spoke the words. He noted the weariness in his face and then gently forced one eye open. Yes, there was red in his pupil as well, but it was fading even as he looked at it. As for the rest of Robb, there were odd scratches on one hand and his knees were damp from dew. “He seems fine but totally exhausted my lord.” Then he looked at Ned. “As do you. The redness in your eyes is going, as it is in Robb’s. My Lord – what happened?”
The Lord of Winterfell passed a shaking hand over his beard and then smiled wryly before standing with a groan and crossing to the table in the corner, where he poured three goblets of wine. “Get that in him,” he commanded, “And then have some yourself. You’ll need it.” He handed the goblets over and then drank from his own.
Luwin placed the container to Robb’s lips. “Robb!” he barked. “You need to drink this. Robb! Open your eyes!”
The youth groaned like a sleepy child but then obediently opened his mouth and drank. There was more than a hint of splutter as he did so, but the wine seemed to refresh him a little. Luwin looked him over again and then sipped his own wine. “Why will I need this?”
“It isn’t every day that you hear that two people have talked with the Old Gods.” Ned said the words with the utmost seriousness as a deeply shocked Luwin stared at him.
“The Old Gods?”
Ned nodded sombrely and then looked at his son. “I found him where you suggested, Luwin, in the Weirwood. He was kneeling in front of the Heart Tree, asking it for answers. Asking how he could warn me. Asking why he was sent back from the moment…” he faltered, his voice cracking for an instant, “From the moment of his death. I thought his wits were addled Luwin. But then I saw his eyes.”
“The red was stronger?”
“Like the sap of the trees around us both in the Weirwood. And then he grabbed my hand and… I had a vision Luwin. I saw flashed of Robb in different places. In one he was leading a charge of Northern heavy cavalry, in another he was walking amidst the bodies from a battle.” Ned clenched his fists for a moment. “And I saw him die Luwin. I saw my own son die.” He choked each word out as if they hurt his mouth.
Luwin calmed his whirling thoughts with another sip of wine. “Pardon me for asking this my LOrd, but where did you see him die?”
Ned leant back in his chair and closed his eyes for a long moment. “It must have been at the Twins,” he said eventually. “I saw Walder Frey there. The filthy swine broke guests rights. He had his men murder Robb and his own men. Crossbows and knives. And…” He hesitated again. “I saw who wielded the knife for the killer blow. Roose Bolton.”
Luwin felt his eyebrows fly upwards. “Lord Bolton? The Lord of the Dreadfort? Why would he kill your son?”
“I know not,” Ned grated. “I know that he is loyal to me, but the Boltons used to fight the Starks for the right to lead the North in the Age of Heroes. And old dreams die hard. I heard voices as well, saying that things had changed, that things had gone wrong, that things needed to be changed, that too many voices had been stilled. That’s an old phrase Luwin, my grandfather used to use it. When voices are stilled people have died. And then…”
“And then?” Luwin prompted gently.
“And then I think I met one of my ancestors,” Ned said with a wry smile. “Mad as that sounds. He said that I was a child, that my eyes were in the South and not on the North, he said that the North needed to be strong – and that the Others have returned.”
A silence fell. Well, this was a strange tale indeed. “My Lord,” he said carefully, “You must admit that this is an outlandish tale. If anyone else had told me of what you have seen I would dismiss it as the ravings of a madman, especially as the Others have not been seen in thousands of years. Speaking as a Maester my training tells me that what you have said cannot be true. And yet I am of the North. And I witnessed the redness in your eyes.” He stroked his chin thoughtfully. “I will send a raven to the Citadel at Oldtown, to ask if the glass candles are burning again.”
Ned looked at him carefully. “You have always said that magic is impossible now.”
“Not quite my Lord,” Luwin said with a wintery smile, “I just said that I cannot practice it as I have never seen it. And yet… something is changing. I can feel it in my bones. I have had the oddest feeling of being watched in the Weirwood. And your tale… disturbs me. If the Old Gods are taking an interest in the deeds of man again…”
Ned nodded. “Send a raven to Castle Black as well. I need to discuss this with Benjen.” He pulled a slight face. “That is if he won’t try and have me treated by you for madness. I need to find out what’s happening at the Wall. And then I need to talk to Robert to strengthen the Night’s Watch. Gods knows that it’s been neglected.”
“Father?”
They both turned to see Rob starting to stir. Luwin cast an eye over the young man. Yes, he was waking.
Robb
He remembered seeing his father at the Heart Tree. And then – the darkness and the visions. Flashes of his life – and his death. And then his father in a forest of stone trees, talking to an old man. And then darkness, with flashes of a sense that he was being dragged somewhere and told to drink something. When he woke again it was to the rumble of voices. Father. It was Father. And… Luwin? They were talking. About him. About the Old Gods. He made a monumental effort and finally opened his eyes. “Father?” That simple word seemed to take all his strength.
“Robb. Drink some of this,” Luwin said quietly as he handed over the third goblet. “How do you feel?”
“Tired, Luwin. Father – what happened?”
Father leant forwards. “The Old Gods, Robb. They spoke to me. What do you remember?”
He sipped the rich red wine slowly as he cast his mind back. “Parts of my life. The charge at the Battle of Oxcross. The day after The Crag. And…” he closed his eyes for a long moment. “The wedding at the Twins. Where…”
“Where you died, Robb. I saw it.” His father looked at him gravely. “The Old Gods have sent you back. And now I must ask – I saw you and your mother in those visions. But not myself. Where was I?”
Robb drank more wine and then scrubbed at his eyes. “You were dead Father,” he said hoarsely. “You were dead.”
Luwin and Father shared a long and horrified look. “How?” Father said quietly.
“It’s a long story,” Robb replied. He felt stronger now. “It will start soon. In about two months word will reach you that Jon Arryn is dead.”
And that shook Father, who blinked and then drank his own wine with a trembling hand. “What caused it?”
“Mother will get a letter from Aunt Lysa, claiming that it was poison.”
And now Father’s grief gave way to anger. “Poison?!? Who would poison him – and why?”
“Aunt Lysa said it was the Lannisters. Father – the King came North to name you his Hand. You agreed and went South to Kings Landing. And you never left there. There was a plot by the Lannisters, something we think that Jon Arryn must have discovered.” He looked over at the closed door and then leant forwards. “King Robert brought his children here. Including Joffrey, who is cruel and mad. And they’re all blonde, Father. Every one of them.”
Father frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“King Robert’s bastards are all black of hair. His brother Stannis sent word of this. Why should his bastards be black of hair and blue of eye, but his children blonde of hair and green of eye? Especially when every time a Baratheon has married a Lannister the Baratheon blood has won out?”
Father frowned at this, but it was Luwin who caught on first, sitting back as his eyebrows flew up to where his hairline used to be. “Oh,” he breathed. And then again: “Oh.”
Father looked at Luwin – and then made the connection in his own mind. “Oh Hell,” he muttered. “All of them are bastards? None of them are Robert’s get?”
“According to Stannis their real father is… well, the Kingslayer. Ser Jaime Lannister.”
This seemed to stun the other two men, who looked at each other and then seemed to communicate in the language of the eyebrow, as Bran had once named it, an age or more ago. “We tell no-one outside this room,” Father said eventually. “Not yet anyway. That is information worth killing for.”
“I know,” Robb said. “I think that Bran found out. There were two attempts on his life. The first was when he fell from one of the disused towers here. He lived but… he lost the use of his legs and he could not remember what happened. We realised later that he must have been pushed. The second was later, when a man with a dagger made of Valyrian steel tried to stab him in his bed. Mother and his direwolf Summer stopped him.”
Father had turned a nasty red colour now. “Someone,” he said in a voice of thunder and barely restrained violence, “Tried to kill my son? Tried to kill Bran? Jaime Lannister? That oath-breaking smirking murderer. I’ll kill him when I see him!!”
“Peace, my Lord, peace,” Luwin soothed with a raised hand. “You cannot kill a man for something he has not done yet. And Robb – what direwolf?”
He sighed and wished that Grey Wind was there with him right now. He had the oddest feeling that the direwolf wasn’t too far away now. “The day you heard that Jon Arryn was dead we witnessed your execution of a deserter from the Night’s Watch. On the way back, by the bridge, we found the body of a direwolf bitch who had whelped just after being gored by a stag in the neck. There were six pups – one for each of your children. You wanted to kill them but Jon pointed out that it was a sign from the Old Gods, the direwolf being on the banner of House Stark.” He smiled. “Mine is Grey Wind. Will be Grey Wind. This is confusing.”
“Obviously,” Father said with a small smile, having calmed down a bit. “So I went South to Kings Landing and discovered that the children of the king are all bastards. Yes, I can imagine that would be something to get anyone killed. Wasn’t I able to get word to Robert?”
“He died Father. There was a hunting accident. Apparently a boar charged him and he wasn’t able to get his spear down in time.”
“That doesn’t sound like Robert at all,” Father rumbled as he leant back in his chair.
“Well,” Robb said with a wince, “He’s not the man you knew Father. He’s changed. He’s, well, fat.”
Father stared at him. “Robert. Fat?”
Robb nodded. “He drinks too much and he eats too much and he… well, when he came here he wore half the whores out and fathered at least one bastard amongst the women servants that Mother knew of.”
His father closed his eyes and passed a weary hand over his eyes. Then he paused. “Why only half the whores?”
“The Imp, Tyrion Lannister, took care of the other half. But – King Robert died and when you tried to pass the crown to Stannis the Lannisters conspired against you. You were arrested for treachery. And even after you agreed to take the Black after publically saying that the accusations of bastardy and incest were false – that little shit Joffrey broke his word and had you executed at Baelor’s Sept. In front of Sansa, who became a hostage instead of Joffrey’s prospective bride. And I – I called the banners father. The North rode to avenge you.” He looked at the ground and then closed his eyes. “They proclaimed me King in the North and we marched to save the Riverlands. I won every battle but I still fucked it up. I’m good at war Father, but not at politics.
“To get the army over the river at The Twins I had to agree to marry one of Walder Frey’s daughters. But after one of the battles I met… I met Jeyne Westerling. And married her. That lost me the Freys. And I made the mistake of sending Theon to Pyke to persuade his father to send his Ironborn against the Lannisters. He turned his cloak and obeyed his father’s orders to attack the North instead. Theon took Winterfell. Burnt it. And killed Bran and Rickon.”
An ugly silence fell. “I am starting to realise,” Luwin sighed, “Why the Old Gods sent you back. Your tale is all of woe for the North. And no My Lord, you cannot kill Theon either. He has not yet done what did in the future that Robb is from.”
“Did you ever meet Balon Greyjoy?” Father asked. Robb shook his head. “Ah, that was your mistake then. A dark and cruel man, Balon Greyjoy. Theon is a good lad, but there are times when I think that he wants to be Stark but then remembers that he is a Greyjoy. And he glorifies the Ironborn way without understanding it. No wonder he turned his cloak. The poor lad was probably overwhelmed.” He stood and then walked over to the window where he stared at the landscape.
“It seems that I have been neglecting your education my son,” Father said eventually. “You know how to lead an army it seems and to swing a sword. The politics of leading men and treating with the scum that exist out there – well that will be your next part of your education. I am only sorry that I did not do this before.”
He turned and sat down again. “So, the manner of your death becomes clearer. Lannister plots everywhere, Walder Frey annoyed with you breaking a contract of marriage, as he saw it, and parts of the North in the hands of the Ironborn. No wonder Roose Bolton conspired against you. You were the last male Stark and at last he had a chance to place House Bolton at the head of the North.”
He found tears coming to his eyes. “Father, I have missed you so much.”
His father smiled at him. “I am sorry that I was not there to help you. You must have had so many questions.” Then he leant back in his chair and rubbed at his eyes. “Well, I am weary, so you must be too. And I have a lot to think on. In a way the timing of the Old Gods is appropriate. In a week it will be the New Year, even if Summer continues. And as we know Winter is coming.”
The New Year was coming – he had forgotten that. And then something sparked in his mind. “Father, we must send word to the Dreadfort. I think I know how to gain the lasting loyalty of Roose Bolton. If we act quickly we might be in time to save the life of his son, Domeric.”
Theon
The arrow thunked into the centre of the target and Theon looked over at old Ser Rodrik, who was pursing his lips slightly in thought. Then the old man sniffed mightily and then nodded slightly. “Good enough,” he said gruffly, which coming from him was a compliment of the highest order. “Keep practicing, lad. Time might come when you’ll need that bow in anger.” And then he swept away to talk to Master Luwin, who was waiting with the blacksmith.
“I wish I could loose an arrow like that,” piped Bran next to him. The Pup’s latest efforts were still all over the place.
Theon looked down at him with a small smile, before relenting. “You’ll get better,” he admitted. “It took me time to get that good. Takes a lot of practice.”
Bran nodded mournfully, before looking back up. “Theon, what’s wrong with Robb?”
He snorted, plucked another arrow out of the quiver and then sent it into the target. “Don’t ask me, I’m just his friend, or at least I thought I was. You’re his brother – haven’t you talked him these past ten days? Because all he seems to do is prowl around and hide in the Godswood when he thinks that no-one else is in it.”
The boy wilted. “That’s what he does to everyone – Mother, Father, Jon, Sansa, Arya, even me. It’s like he’s hiding from us. Did something happen to him?”
Theon frowned. “No. That was the day after we got some ale from, erm, never mind that part, your mother wouldn’t like you to hear that part. I don’t remember him hitting his head or anything. And then the next morning he reels in like he was still drunk and… I don’t know Bran. I wish I could help, but he just won’t talk to me.”
“He’s talked to me.” Theon and Bran both whirled around to see Lord Stark approaching on quiet feet. “He’ll talk to you soon. He’s been… thinking through something very important. Robb’s a good lad – he takes things very seriously. And it seems that I’ve been neglecting part of his education. He’ll be spending less time here in the practice yard and more time with me in my solar, learning how to run the North.”
Bran perked up a little at this and then ran off to tell the watching Arya, who was sulking next to their mother, who was talking to one of the servants. Theon watched him go and then looked back at Lord Stark, who was inspecting the results of his archery practice. “Not bad at all. Tight grouping. We need to take you hunting again lad.” And then he looked at Theon and there was something about his gaze that made him feel a bit uneasy. “You’ve been here for eight years now Theon. Do mind if I ask you a question?”
“Of course not Lord Stark.”
“What do you remember of Pyke? Of your father?”
Theon blinked at the question. “I… remember it. Pyke that is. I remember… the smell of it.” Yes, that was hard to forget. “How tall the towers were. It was strong.” He said the last words with a hint of defiance.
Lord Stark’s gaze flickered to the towers of Winterfell. “Towers always are taller to young boys than to man,” he said enigmatically. “And your father?”
This was a darker subject and Theon looked at the flagstones under his feet for a long moment as he remembered the striding man who cursed at everyone and who never had time for a small boy. “He was… always busy,” he muttered. “He was fighting a war against you and… I seldom saw him.”
Lord Stark looked at him, a long and steady gaze that seemed to peer deeply into his very soul. He’d never been the subject of one of Lord Stark’s famous gazes, not really, and he quivered with uncertainty. And then the older man stirred and smiled and laid a hand on his shoulder. “One day you will be ruler on Pyke. And when that day comes you’ll know what it’s like to made decisions that affect a great many people – and it’s hard. Any man who says it isn’t is a liar. It’s hard.
“Now, your father’s way of command is very different from mine. Ironborn traditions… are not of the North, and there was a reason for that war that your father fought. A reason why so many fought against him. You need to realise that last part. But times change and men change with them. Making that change happen is difficult. I hope that you’ll always be welcome here in Winterfell. Robb is learning to rule the North. If I can help you, if I can give you advice about what it will be like when you one day return to Pyke and step out of the shadow of your father, the way that Robb will one day have to step out of mine, then the door to my solar is always open to you.” He paused and then laid a hand on his shoulder again. “You have been like a son to me. You know that don’t you?”
Something eased within him, somewhere in his heart, a tension that he had not known was there. “Thank you Lord Stark,” he said thickly. “That means much to me.”
“Good. Now – back to your practice, or Ser Rodrik will chastise me for distracting you. Where’d Bran go?”
Theon turned and smiled. “Off to see Lady Stark.”
“Well, at least he’s not climbing the walls,” Lord Stark said with a frown. “Theon, if you see him climbing tell him, in my name, to climb back down and stay down will you?”
“I will, but I doubt it will stop him. He’s like a squirrel at times.”
“Even a squirrel can fall.” And with those worried words the Lord of Winterfell strode off. Theon watched him go with a look of total seriousness. There was a man to admire.
Domeric
He had been a league away from the Dreadfort when the messenger found him, a short man on a large horse who was quite skilled at tracking, damn his eyes.
“You are required back at the Dreadfort, young lord,” the messenger panted. “Lord Bolton wishes that you return at once.”
Domeric sighed and then turned a yearning gaze to the road that led to the Weeping Water and the brother that he had always wanted to have, especially after all the time that he had spent at the Redfort in the Vale. There he had had brothers in all but name. Here he had a brother of the blood. But Father had called him back and he would have to obey him, so he turned away from the road to the river and started riding back to the Dreadfort. He did not ask the reasons for his summons, Father would not have told the messenger and the messenger would not have dared to ask the Lord of the Dreadfort.
However, he suspected that this might be a ruse by Father, who seemed to disapprove of Domeric’s wish to visit his half-brother. Why he disapproved he did not know, but then Father could be secretive at times.
The towers of the Dreadfort appeared first on the horizon and he suppressed another sigh. He loved his home and he respected Father, but there were times when the shadow of his family’s past hung heavy on him. The banner especially. A flayed man, a symbol of the times when his family had had men flayed alive. The Starks had stopped that practice, but he sometimes wondered if his father ever thought about it. He certainly saw a great deal of importance in being respected, sometimes even feared. And the very name Dreadfort – it spoke of fear, not honour. Not that he would ever speak of such things to Father. One day he would be Lord of the Dreadfort and on that day he would build anew. Not before.
The small party clattered in through the gates, Domeric acknowledging the salute of the master-at-arms as he did so, and then he made for his stables, where he kept his horses. A boy came out to take the reins after he had dismounted, but Domeric took the time to check that the horse was sound in wind and limb – and especially in hoof. His time in the Vale had taught him that your steed could be as important as your sword and he thought fond thoughts about Lord Redfort and his lessons on horses as he tended to his mount.
He found his father in his solar, reading from a small stack of documents. He was dressed in his customary black jerkin and he looked up when he heard the sound of Domeric’s boots approaching. “There you are. You were heading towards the Weeping Water.” He did not say it as a question, but as a statement of fact.
He could not deny it. “Yes Father.”
“I told you not to contact your half-brother.”
“Yes Father. I am sorry – I was curious about him.”
Father carefully placed the document he had been reading down on the pile and sighed softly. “You should not be curious about him. One day I will tell you why. That day is not today.” He said the words in an even quieter voice than normal, as if he was trying to repress some strong feeling on something. Then he looked up. “You are summoned to Winterfell.”
Domeric blinked at his father. Of all the reasons for his recall to the Dreadfort, this one was the least likely he would have thought. The Boltons were the sworn banners of the Starks, but the two houses were not close. Too much blood had flown in the past for that, too much rivalry. “Why, Father?”
“Lord Stark would have you visit Winterfell it seems. And he desires that you bring much reading matter with you.” Father sat down and stroked his chin, the way that he did when he was thinking very, very hard.
This again threw Domeric’s wits a little. “Reading matter?”
“Books. Books on the Old Gods and the Others to be precise. A most… odd request.”
Domeric walked to a chair and, upon a wave of the fingers from his father, sat down. “I would have thought that Winterfell would have been the natural place for books on the Old Days and the Time of Heroes.”
A slight upturn of his father’s lips showed that he was amused. “Yes, but House Bolton has many old tomes as well. Many of them make little sense as they are so old, but we have always kept the records safe and dry and frequently copied them. It never hurts to keep knowledge. Even if it is little more than legends of things passed.”
“The Old Ones…” Domeric mused. “What could cause Lord Stark to require knowledge on things long dead?” he paused. “I would say long dead if they ever existed, but if they never existed what is the purpose of the Wall?”
Father looked at him with what seemed to be surprise and then no little thought. “An excellent point Domeric. All too often we forget the Wall.” He paused and then shrugged. “Well, no matter. I am having the required tomes assembled. You will leave as soon as possible. House Bolton will assist Lord Stark on this matter. And when you are at Winterfell you must ask what prompted this inspection of the past. You should take your smaller harp. They say that Sansa Stark is quite the beauty.”
He looked at his father affectionately but with a little wryness to his smile. “You would have me woo her, Father? A Bolton courting a Stark?”
Father looked back at him, his small eyes giving nothing away. “A Bolton always looks for any advantage. It is near time for you to marry anyway. You are my only trueborn son. The name of Bolton depends on you. I would have you happy, my son. At the very least see if Sansa Stark is worthy of a song.”
Domeric smiled and then stood, bowed to his father and then left. Well, he had many miles ahead of him. His brother would doubtless still be in the Weeping Water when he returned.
Ned
Cat was starting to suspect something. He knew it. She knew him far too well for him to hide it, and he wondered how she could have dealt with the news of his death, in that other world, in that future that he hoped so desperately to avoid. At some point he would have to tell her. something. He knew not what, but he had to allay her suspicions at some point.
Ned paced around his solar, like the Direwolf from his House Banner in too small a space. There was so much to try and avoid. It had taken three attempts to craft a letter to Jon Arryn that had not sounded as if he had become a fool afraid of his own shadow and finally he had taken refuge in a few half-truths and evasions, coupled with an offer that he had been considering even before Robb’s return from the moment of his death. That letter had made him feel dirty. But it had to be written.
A raven to Kings Landing had been out of the question – from the vague rumours that had reached Robb’s ears in the early days of the war it was more than possible that Pycelle was in the pay of the Lannisters, plus he had apparently told Cat in King’s Landing that Varys had eyes and ears everywhere – no, everyone had eyes and ears every everywhere in that fetid smelly cesspit of a city – and that the ravens were being watched. A letter openly telling even so powerful a man as the Hand of the King that there was a possible Lannister plot afoot to poison him would never reach him.
He hated this. He hated the machinations and double-dealing and the lack of trust. How Robert lived in that bloody city of traitors and self-serving men with no morals escaped him. But he had to try and save Jon.
And so Jory Cassel, a man that he trusted with his life, was on his way to White Harbour, escorted by a small group of men whose sole job was to get Cassel to Wyman Manderly and request the fastest possible ship down to King’s Landing. Hopefully Cassel would get to Jon in time with that all-important letter. He wished that Robb had been able to tell him his terrible secret earlier, but that was water under the bridge by now.
He paused and stared out of the window as he thought everything through yet again. If Cassel was too late to prevent Jon being poisoned then Robert would come North to offer him the position of Hand, a position that he had absolutely no intention of taking up. He knew Robert – he would press him hard to accept. And had a good reason to turn the offer down, a reason that required no mummer’s act or honourless lies. He was needed in the North because the Others had returned, a threat that he had barely the faintest idea how to deal with, other than reading every book, every fable, every legend and every song about how they could be defeated and then send as much as he could to the Wall. There could be no war. Instead the South needed to send what it could North.
And if Robert came North then they would come North too, the children who were not the blood of Robert Baratheon, as well as the Queen and the faithless shell of a Kingsguard who had now betrayed two kings. He had an idea of how to deal with them. It would break Robert’s heart, but it would have to be done. If they came North that is.
What if Cassel got there in time though and stopped Jon Arryn from dying? What had Jon’s plan been? How could he stop the war? Ned ran a hand over his eyes. He knew not. All he knew was that as long as Bran was protected then another thread from that future that could never be would be pulled. Bran would not be hurt, if his plan worked, so there would not be another attempt on his life, Cat would not go South to tell him about it and she would not encounter Tyrion Lannister and start the terrible chain of events that would see Tywin Lannister muster his forces and start to move East before anyone else had a chance to call a single banner.
If, if, if. That tiny but significant word. He and Luwin had questioned Rob b closely, asking about the smallest things. Robb had not known everything, or had sometimes heard something through a person who had heard it from somewhere else. Whispers in the wind – and he knew that such whispers could sometimes stray far from the truth.
Well. This much he knew – he had sent a raven to Castle Black requesting the immediate presence of Benjen. He had a lot to tell his brother. And then there was that other matter. It had been weighing on him over-much of late. In the future that Robb had come from he had never had the chance to tell young Jon the one thing that he had always wanted so desperately – who his mother had been. Yes, he had kept the promise, despite the hurt that it had caused Cat. It had had to be done. He turned and paced about again. This would have to be done… carefully. After much thought. And after a talk with Bran about the fact that he was now banned from climbing the walls of Winterfell.
He frowned. His son would not love him much for this. But it would have to be done. And as for Jon… well that would be a different kind of hurt.
Knuckles rapped on the door to his solar and he turned to it. “Yes?”
The door opened to reveal a messenger. “Your pardon my Lord, but the doorwardens have sent word – a party of horsemen approaches, coming from the East. They bear the banner of the Dreadfort, of House Bolton.”
Ned nodded. “They are expected. I will come down now.” As the man scurried away he felt his heart lift a little. Hopefully it was Domeric Bolton, who in the future that Robb had come from had died suddenly of an illness. If he still lived then maybe the future could be changed. If. Such a small word. But things could turn on it. He strode out of his solar.
Bran
At least Robb was back to his old self. More or less. For some reason he hated seeing him climbing on the walls and would either call him down or would hide his eyes as if the sight pained him. Which was odd. Robb had seen him climbing before and it wasn’t as if anything could happen to him, could it?
He sighed and then looked up at the skies. Far above him he could see an eagle soaring upwards. Oddly enough his dreams of flying had diminished recently. He wished that they hadn’t and that he could dream those dreams again. To soar like that eagle, to see things from the air that no-one else could.
The sound of a harp being plucked, the first notes singing sweetly in the air, caught his ear and he scrambled down the wall to the ground and then dashed around the corner. Domeric Bolton was there in the courtyard, his long black hair caught in a queue and his harp in his hand. In front of him were arrayed a number of people, mostly women, including Mother and Sansa. Not Arya though. He looked about and caught sight of an affronted figure stalking away with her eyes rolling. No, she’d probably end up watching Robb, Jon and Theon sparring.
To be honest Bran wasn’t sure what to make of Domeric Bolton and he watched the man carefully as he started singing. He was very good at the harp as well as the song. Should a knight sing though? Domeric had spent time at the Redfort, with one of the finest knights of the Vale, and that was a worthy thing to admire. However, Bran wasn’t sure about all this warbling.
He shrugged internally and then pricked up an ear. Metal clashing against metal. Yes, someone was sparring. He made sure that Mother wasn’t watching him and then sidled away before making a dash for the practice yard. There he found Robb and Jon and Theon, all stripped to the waist and all holding practice swords – ones that were weighted properly but blunt. And to his fascination Robb was instructing the other two, watched by Arya to one side and a very interested Rodrik Cassel to the other.
“Keep your weight more in balance as you strike,” Robb was telling Jon as they traded blows. “When you fight then your feet are important. If your opponent catches you off balance then-” he parried a blow, rolled his shoulders and then pushed Jon so hard that he lost his balance and fell over. “-You lose.”
Theon smirked at Jon, who was looking annoyed from his position on the ground, and then struck out at Robb, who dodged and then parried once, twice and then caught Theon a nasty slap on the ribs with the flat of his sword. “And watch your eyes! Too much movement betrays what you’re going to do next!”
“That bloody stung!” Theon groaned, before narrowing his eyes and attacking again. Robb met him blow for blow before turning inside Theon’s thrust and shoulder charging him the same way that he had Jon, who was now on his feet and ready for another go.
Not that he got very far. Jon swung up and over to his right, was parried, thrown off balance and then somehow ended up back on the ground again. “Damn it,” he cursed, “You don’t fight fair, Stark.”
Robb paused and then looked over at Rodrik, who was smiling sourly. “Is war fair Rodrik?”
The sour smile grew sourer. “Never. If it is then you’re doing something wrong. And he’s right lads. Watch your feet and don’t indicate where you’re going to attack next. You need more training.”
A hand fell on Bran’s shoulder and he jumped slightly, before looking up. Oh, it was Father. “I thought I’d find you here,” he said kindly. “Watch and learn my son. It’ll be you soon there.”
Bran thought about that and then swallowed nervously as he saw Theon and Robb joke about how many bruises they’d have in the morning. The three nodded respectfully at Father, who nodded back, but Bran thought that he saw an additional weight to the look that Father sent to Robb, some wordless message that he could not decipher. Oh not another one with the language of the eyebrow.
“I hear Domeric Bolton singing,” Father said jovially. “You do not want to hear?”
“He’s singing, Father,” said Bran as he tried not to roll his eyes. “And playing the harp. Haven’t seen him sparring yet.”
“You should see him ride a horse,” Father said seriously, which made Bran look at him quickly. “He’s a skilled rider Bran. He’s very, very, good. If you like I can ask him if he can pass on any lessons to you.”
He thought about this for a moment and then he nodded. “Thank you Father.”
Father smiled at him and then sighed. “I need to talk to you Brandon.”
Brandon. That was not a good sign at all. It meant that Father was being very serious. Even worse, Father then escorted him up to his solar, the place that was normally forbidden to anyone outside the circle of people that Father most relied upon these days.
Bran sat down in the chair that Father had indicated and then looked about nervously. Then Father sat down opposite him and gazed at him levelly. “Bran.”
“Yes Father?”
“I want you to stop climbing the walls of Winterfell. The towers too.”
He eyed Father for a long moment. “Alright.”
But Father was not satisfied with that. “I mean this, Bran. No empty promises. I want your word.”
He looked at father indignantly and then wilted slightly. “Alright.” He sounded a bit petulant in his own ears, but if he had to get this out of the way then he would.
But again Father was not satisfied, because he stood up and walked over to one side, before returning – Bran gulped – with Ice. “Bran,” Father said hoarsely, “Swear that you will not climb the walls and towers of Winterfell on Ice. The sword of your ancestors.”
He stared at it for a long moment, as tears gathered in his eyes. This was a promise that he had to keep, a promise that Father would not forget or forgive if he ever broke it. This was unfair of Father! And then he looked up and saw the sympathetic but implacable eyes of Father.
Bran reached out with a trembling hand and placed it on the hilt of Ice. After a moment Father’s hand covered it. “I swear that I will not climb the walls or towers of Winterfell,” he choked out.
Father smiled at him. “Thank you Bran.”
He nodded at the words, his vision blurred with tears – and then he ran out of the solar, sobbing with grief.
Catelyn
“Ben will be here in ten days,” Ned said as he entered the room and closed the door. He smothered a yawn with his hand. “It will be good to see him again.”
Cat smiled at him as she brushed her long red hair carefully. “It cannot be easy for him to visit often, being on the Wall.”
“Aye,” Ned replied as he stood by the fire and stared into the flames. “There is much I need to discuss with him.” He paused and then started to disrobe. When he looked up again his face was serious. “The news from the Wall worries me. More Wildling raids, more rumours of this King beyond the Wall, Mance Rayder, the weakness of the Night’s Watch… I’m worried Cat.”
She stopped and looked at him. She could see the worry in his eyes. “You are that worried about the Wall?”
Ned nodded sombrely as he slipped out of his breeches and folded everything carefully on top of the chest on his side of the bed. “Winter is coming. And this winter will be different I think. I sense it.”
There was a tone in his voice that alarmed her and she stared at him for a long moment. Ned was clenching and unclenching his hands as he stared into the fire again, which was a sign that he was brooding again, which was never a good sign. She finished brushing her hair and then disrobed as swiftly as she could. “Come to bed Ned.”
He turned and looked at her, smiling as he did. “Aye, I will.” As they slipped beneath the covers Cat remembered something. “I haven’t seen Bran climbing the walls once today. Do you think he finally listened?”
Ned sighed. “I made him promise not to again. Only this time I made him swear on Ice.”
She looked at him, startled. “That was overmuch was it not?”
“Nay,” Ned said with a grimace. “He’s naught but a boy. We’ve sought his promise not to climb again and again and he’s been tempted out of it again and again. Well, this time it must be different. He’s starting to learn what it is to fight and to be a man. He must take up a man’s responsibilities – and his word must stand for something. He’ll keep his promise this time. I think he hates me for it, but he’ll keep it.”
“Oh Ned,” she sighed as she put her arm around him and snuggled against him. “You’re his father. He loves you. He can never hate you.”
“He’s young. He’s resentful. He’ll learn.” Ned paused again. “Sansa seems very taken with young Domeric.”
Cat nodded slowly. “The lad is… not what I expected. He plays the harp very well indeed and he is soft-spoken and courteous. Not at all what I thought that the son of Roose Bolton would be like.”
“Aye, that was my thought too. He takes after his mother I think, in temperament at least. He is a fine horseman though. No – better than fine. Born in the saddle, as Jon Arryn would say.” And then he seemed to leave the room for a moment as his eyes stared at some spot on the ceiling.
“Ned. Ned?” She elbowed him gently in the ribs and he seemed to return from wherever his thoughts had taken him. “What were you thinking about?”
He smiled in a rather strained fashion. “Just hoping that an important message gets to him in King’s Landing. In the meantime, I think it is time that we reluctantly start to think about marriage alliances for Robb and Sansa. I don’t like to think about these things, as it reminds me of my father and his endless intrigues, but I think that it must be done.” His face set slightly. “Robb needs advice on who to marry I think. I’ve been neglecting his studies on treating with our friendly and not so friendly neighbours.” And now there was another note in his voice, one that she could not put her finger on.
“Marriage alliances?” Cat asked. “Don’t you think that it’s a little early to think of that?”
“No,” Ned sighed, “I don’t. What’s happening North of the Wall is worrying me. We might need help from the South. Well – Robert may be king, but his eyes are on all the threats that surround him. Dorne dislikes him, The Reach plots, the Stormlands still haven’t recovered from the war, your father is unwell in the Riverlands, the Ironborn sulk and the Vale is loyal to Jon Arryn, who is not a young man and whose heir is, from all accounts, well, smothered with too much attention by your sister, whom I am also worried about. And then there are the Lannisters. Who also plot.”
Cat stared at him in real shock. “You make it sound as if the Seven Kingdoms are on the brink of war!”
Ned stared back at her and she thought she saw, for a split second, something red in his eyes. And then it was gone as he smiled and held her close for a long moment. “Sorry Cat. Too much brooding and worrying. We do need to think about marriage alliances though. We should see how Domeric treats with Sansa. And as for Robb – well, I have been scratching my head about him.”
She settled against him again with a sigh. Perhaps he was right. “I will think about it. There are a few matches I can suggest. We have five children though – surely some at least can marry for love instead of need?”
He turned and held her in his arms. “Yes. Originally our marriage was politics, but then it turned to love.” He kissed her and she felt her heart swell. As did her favourite part of him. She responded with increasingly passionate kisses of her own. Mmm, tonight sleep would have to wait for a bit.
When she woke up again she didn’t know why for a long moment. She ached in all the right places and given the seeping warmth from between her legs Ned had delivered more than his customary ardour. She smiled sleepily. Ned had been very attentive recently. Perhaps a girl this time?
Ned moved slightly and muttered something in his sleep. He was restless. Perhaps that had woken her? She looked at him in the half-light of the fireplace, which was now little more than red-hot ashes. She was worried about him, still. Whatever had ailed Robb had also affected her husband. She still hadn’t been able to get a decent explanation out of him about the entire thing, which was aggravating. But then that was Ned sometimes. Him and his honour and his word and… his secrets. He still held them.
She sighed and closed her eyes – and then opened them again when Ned suddenly stiffened and choked out: “No!”
Cat sat up and looked at him. He was dreaming. No, not a dream – a nightmare. He was sweating and she would see his eyes moving under his eyelids. His fists were clenched – and then he started to tremble. “Not Robb,” he moaned in his sleep, “Not my son. Spare him…”
And now she stared at him in horror. What was he dreaming of? Robb in some kind of danger? Ned paused for a moment and then relaxed – only to redouble his trembling. “Ned,” she said quietly. “Ned! Wake up – you’re dreaming!”
“No,” he moaned again, “I can’t. I promised you. I promised…” He said the words as if he was in agony. “Promised… kept the secret. Didn’t tell. Protect him. Robert doesn’t know.” He said the last words with great intensity.
Cat frowned at him and then started to reach out to shake him awake. Whatever this nightmare was it was distressing him, because his face was drawn as if in pain. She was burning with curiosity about it, but she did not want him to suffer. Her hand never got there. Suddenly he was awake and upright in bed, shouting a single name: “LYANNA!!!”
Chapter Text
Ned
It was the first time he had the dream in years, the dream about the Tower of Joy. And before that he had relived the moment of Robb’s death. That was something he’d had nightmares about before. But added to the memory of the moment that Lyanna had died in his arms…
Well, now he had a problem. He was sitting in bed, shaking like a leaf and with a seriously worried wife next to him. Cat had heard him cry out Lyanna’s name. Had seen his sweaty, horrified face in the wake of the dream. And what else had she heard?
“Ned, what’s wrong? What did you dream about?”
He opened his mouth to tell her that it was nothing, but then he caught of her face. It was set in concerned but also implacable lines. He knew her too well to hope that she would give way in her need to find out what was wrong. Well. Perhaps it was time she found out.
“Cat, what I have to tell you is the truth. I will swear any oath you like on that. You will think it is madness, but Luwin and Robb will tell you otherwise. Robb, because this is his story. Luwin because he found me half-carrying Robb back from the Godswood, where I found him praying.”
“Half-carrying?” Cat asked in alarm.
“Cat – the Old Gods spoke to us both, there in the Godswood. They… showed me flashes of a future. A future that Robb remembers, right up until the moment of his death. The Old Gods said that things had gone wrong, that warnings had not been listened to, that… that The Others have returned. And because of that Robb was sent back to us, sent back in time. That morning when he burst in and looked so strange to us all – that was the day that he returned.”
She stared at him, her eyes intently studying his face as uncertainty roiled her own. “Sent… back?”
“Sent back with warnings. Warnings about my death. About the capture of Winterfell. About the death of Robert and the war that breaks out because of that.”
“Your death?” Her hands went to her mouth. “Ned, this is madness!”
“I said that you would see it as such. But I swear that it is all true.” And then he quietly explained everything that Robb had told him about that terrible future that he come from, going from the murder of Jon Arryn to the final moments at the wedding at The Twins. By the time he finished she was pale and trembling, her hands pressed to her stomach as she obviously tried to control her breathing and not panic.
“Walder Frey?” She almost spat the words. “Given…. Given how much grief he has given the Tullys over the years, over the most trivial of reasons, I should not be surprised that he would be willing to plot against our son.” She wiped the tears from her cheeks and then her eyes. “I have much to think on, Ned. Much to think on.”
“Cat, this future will not happen. We have already started to change it. Domeric Bolton, according to Robb, was supposed to be dead by now, slain by a stomach ailment. And yet he lives. We have changed things.”
This startled her and she looked at him for a long moment, before smiling slightly. “That is good. You are right – Sansa is greatly taken by him.”
He nodded absently, his mind on the other decision that he had to make. “There is something else, Cat. I dreamt about my sister, Lyanna. There is something that you deserve to know about that. A secret that I have kept, which I should have shared with you. The truth about what happened the last time I saw Lyanna.”
She looked at him and then took a deep breath of air. “Very well Ned.”
He sat next to her, his mind reaching back through the years. “Seven of us were there. Howland Reed, Willam Dustin, Ethan Glover, Martyn Cassel, Theo Wull, and Mark Ryswell. And we were facing the last of the Mad King’s guards. Arthur Dayne, Ser Oswell Whent, and Gerold Hightower, the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. We’d tracked them down, we knew that they were in the area and that they were obeying Rhaegar’s orders, that they were linked to Lyanna’s disappearance. We found them at the Tower of Joy, a strange name for a broken old watch tower in the Northern hills of Dorne. We found them and we called on them to yield, that their king was dead, their prince was dead and that the Realm had a new king.”
He shook his head as the memories crowded through his head, thick and fast. The smell of the hot earth. The bright sun that had made him squint. The dirt on those damn white cloaks of theirs. And the look in their eyes, that mixture of desperation, grief and worse yet dull acceptance. They knew that they were going to die – and yet they still fought.
“Those three died hard. They were good, Cat, they were very, very good.” The grunt of men parrying blows, the hisses and cries of pain as steel found flesh, the iron smell of blood, the way that the red drops spattered into the dust that lay thick over the old flagstones in the yard outside the entrance. “They struck down five of us before Howland and I killed the last of them. Ser Arthur Dayne. His sword Dawn gave me this-” Ned indicated at a pale scar at the top of his shoulder. “If I hadn’t dodged back at the last moment I would have lost my arm and then probably my life. But Howland got him in the leg and as he staggered I got him in the neck with Ice.”
He ran his hand over his chin. And now the memories that hurt and which would always hurt people around him. “Howland stayed to tend to the wounded – I hoped that Martyn would not die, but he bled to death. And I entered the Tower. The upper floors were too weak to stand on but I found Lyanna in a bed on the second floor. She was dying of fever. She thought that I was a shade from her dreams. First she thought that I was Father and then she thought that I was Brandon. When she realised that I was real she wept. Apologised. She was so thin, Cat, burning with fever. And they’d left her there, those three noble fools from the Kingsguard. Fools who’d soiled their cloaks. Soiled their honour.”
Ned took a deep breath of air. “They hadn’t thought to employ a midwife, otherwise she might have not gotten the birthing fever.”
His Lady wife stared at him, her eyes very wide. “Midwife? She had been pregnant?”
He nodded, suddenly so very tired. “Aye. He was sleeping in a cradle to one side. Not much of a cradle. More like a box lined with old sheets. She gestured at him. ‘My beautiful boy’ she called him. And then she seemed to come alive. She clawed at my arm, she begged me to give my word to protect him, to get him to the North, to Winterfell, where he’d be safe. She begged me to promise to keep her son safe.” He paused, his voice thick with grief. “I did. I swore an oath on the Godswood here in Winterfell that I’d keep him safe. And then she smiled and she fell back on the bed – quite dead. I cried over her, I prayed to the Old Gods to see her spirit safely back here and then I kissed her forehead and I picked up her son – and I have protected him ever since.”
A silence fell, a deep and heavy one. It was finally broken by Cat. “Jon is the son of Lyanna?”
“Yes.”
“He is your nephew, not your son?”
“Yes, he is my nephew.”
She flushed with anger. “Then why my lord have you dishonoured me all these long years by pretending to have a bastard son? Why did you let me hate him so much for fear that he would one day usurp Robb? And why would you hide his-” She stopped suddenly and he waited for her to work through the chain of thought. “By the Seven – his father… his father must then have been Rhaegar Targaryen!” She hissed the words as if they hurt her mouth.
“Yes,” he said gently. “And given how Robert had greeted the bodies of the murdered Targaryen children with a smile, you can see why I did not want to tell anyone about Jon’s lineage. He may be the son of Lyanna, but he is also the son of Rhaegar, and that last fact might doom him. Might still doom him. The only other person who knows is Howland Reed, who saw the whole thing from the doorway after Martyn Cassel died. And now you.”
He looked her straight in the eye. “I’m sorry for not telling you. At the start of our marriage I knew you not. I did not know of your strength, nor did I know that our love would strengthen to the point that I could trust you with anything. I held to a promise that I made to my sister that blinded me when it came to trusting anyone – and for that, Cat, I am so sorry. Please forgive me.”
Cat sat there on the bed, her eyes on his face but searching for something within it. Finally she smiled slightly. “I wish that you had told me long ago Ned. So much of my… dislike for young Jon might have been avoided.” She looked at the bed. “I did not know. I thought that Jon might be a threat to Robb and above all I hated the woman I thought had stolen your heart before we were reunited after the War.”
She looked back up at him and then smiled bitterly. “He looks so much like you, Ned. There is nothing of the Targaryens in his looks.”
“That was a blessing,” he replied. “It helped to hide him. And there is nothing of his grandfather in him. His father was odd but brilliant. Aerys on the other hand was a monster. There is nothing of that within him.” He sighed. “I must tell him. It will break his heart, but I must tell him. And then – we must decide what to do with him. He has mentioned joining the Night’s Watch, and Robb said that that was he eventually decided to do in that dark future. He also said that in the last days of his life Robb heard that the Night’s Watch was making desperate appeals for help – which I think confirms that The Others have returned.”
“No Ned,” Cat said quietly. She had drawn her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, resting her chin on her knees in the way that she did when she was thinking very deeply. “Lyanna’s son must not go to the Wall. If there is one thing that your tale of woe from this future tells me, it is that we need more Starks here, to protect Winterfell.” She closed her eyes for a long moment before opening them again. “You must make him a Stark.”
Jory
King’s Landing stank, he thought as his ship nosed into Blackwater Bay. It stank of people crammed into too small a space, it stank of sewers that hadn’t been planned well and above all it stank of corruption. He winced slightly as a particularly foul whiff of air went past his nose and then put it from his mind. He’d smelt worse. Pyke came to mind. That had been a bad one.
The small cutter that the ship had launched after it had anchored approached the nearest jetty and he could see that very little attention was being paid to him. Well, that was as it should be. Lord Stark had stressed how important it was to be quiet and quick for this trip. It was too important to waste time.
He’d been lucky – it had been a fast trip South and he’d spent much of the trip watching the land go past. He’d always liked travelling by sea, even if he was always green on the first day or so. As the cutter came to a more or less gentle halt next to the jetty he reached for a rough wooden ladder and quickly climbed it, before looking around to orientate himself with where he was. Far above he could see the Red Keep.
An hour later he was sweaty, a little more used to the stink, but above all ready to cleave the head of the self-important idiot standing in front of him from his shoulders. “The Lord Hand does not see anyone who turns up at the gates to the Red Keep and says that he has a ‘message’. He is a very busy man. Give it to me and I will look into the matter.”
Jory fixed the man with a look. “I am come from Winterfell with a message from Lord Stark, the Lord Paramount of the North, to Lord Arryn, the Hand of the King. Lord Stark charged me himself with this task. This message is for the Hand of the King alone. Not…” he looked the man up and down. “A doorwarden.”
The man seemed to swell up like a toad. “Either hand over your message or leave at once before I have guards eject you!”
Jory set his jaw and then pulled out a silver pendant with a Direwolf emblazed on it. “This,” he said through gritted teeth, “Is the symbol of my authority. I am from Lord Stark. Stand aside and do not interfere with a messenger from the Lord Paramount of the North.”
The doorwarden looked at the pendant as if it meant nothing, but the older of the two guards (who had been watching the whole thing with a look of sardonic amusement) came to attention and slammed the butt of his spear on the flagstone beneath his feet, joined a moment later by the younger one. “Pass, messenger from the Lord Paramount of the North!” the first guard barked, with a surreptitious wink.
This seemed to floor the doorwarden, who then looked outraged when Jory shouldered past him. “How dare you! Guards – arrest that man!”
The guards stared at him. “Don’t be a fool man. He bears Lord Stark’s mark. I’ve seen it before. Want to get sent to the Black Cells by the King when he hears that you turned away a messenger from Lord Stark?” The doorwarden deflated completely and Jory passed on, with a smile and a nod at the veteran guard.
The smell was lessened up here, perhaps because the wind blew it away, he could not say. But perhaps he was already getting used to it. He asked directions quietly and soon found his way to the Tower of the Hand, where a sharp-eyed man dressed in the livery of House Arryn was guarding the door. “I am Jory Cassel of Winterfell, here with a letter from Lord Stark, the Lord Paramount of the North to Lord Arryn, the Hand of the King.” The words made him seem almost pompous, but they had to be said to gain admittance. This guard at least did not quibble, but instead nodded slightly and told to Jory to wait a moment before slipping inside the Tower, his place being taken at once by an equally sharp-eyed replacement. Lord Arryn, it seemed, was not a man who employed idiots.
Hearing the sound of boots he turned his head slightly. A blond man with a snowy white cape and a look of sardonic amusement was crossing the courtyard. Ser Jaime Lannister. The Kingsguard flickered a glance at him, dismissed him in an instant – and then paused.
“I know you, don’t I? I never forget a face,” Ser Jaime drawled as he turned to look at him. “You were at Pyke.”
“I was, Ser.” Jory said with a nod. “I was with you at the breach. We both watched Thoros of Myr go through with that flaming sword of his.”
The Kingsguard shot him a genuine smile, like a flash of light from out of the murk. “That I will remember until the day I die. That sword terrified the Ironborn scum. Damn near terrified me as well.” He shook his head at the memory. “That was a good war,” he said quietly. “A war that meant something. Your name?”
“Jory Cassel, Ser. Of Winterfell.”
Ser Jaime quirked an eyebrow at him. “You’re a long way from home.”
“Here to see the Hand of the King to deliver a message from Lord Stark.”
“Ah,” Ser Jaime said ironically, “We all have our duties. Be well Jory Cassel of Winterfell.” And then he sauntered off with a nod, the sardonic look swiftly reappearing on his face.
Jory watched him go with a slight frown. That was a man who was dangerous. The saunter disguised a man who seemed to always be on balance and ready to draw his sword.
“Cassel?” He turned to see the first man at the doorway. “The Hand will see you now.”
Lord Arryn, he could see at once, was a tired old man with more silver in his hair than grey anymore. There was something in his eyes, a strain perhaps at being Hand of the King for many years, since King Robert had taken the throne. But his back was still straight and he still moved briskly as he stood and greet him. “So you have a message from my good-brother Lord Stark?”
“I do my Lord,” Jory replied as he extracted the bloody thing from his jerkin. It was wrapped in a stitched leather wallet and he hadn’t let it out of his sight during the entire journey South. “Lord Stark also gave me a verbal message. He said that every word within is meant truly. And that I am to wait in King’s Landing until you have a reply for him.”
Lord Arryn frowned a little, inspected the wallet carefully with a raised eyebrow and then pulled out a small knife and opened it, before tugging out the letter. “Ned,” he muttered, “is being cautious.” And then he broke the seal and read it over. When he had finished it he re-read it and then placed it on his desk, before turning and walking to the window, which he stared out of for a good few minutes, obviously thinking deeply.
Just as Jory was starting to wonder if he had forgotten that he was there Lord Arryn turned back, smiled slightly and then looked at the door. “Quill!” A short man dressed in Arryn colours entered quickly. “This is Jory Cassel of Winterfell. He is to be housed in the Red Keep tonight – good quarters and good food. He’ll be on his way in the morning.” He turned back to Jory. “Jory Cassel, I will have a letter of my own for Lord Stark here first thing tomorrow, just before dawn. Lord Stark needs help for the Wall and I intend to help him. Thank you – you are dismissed.”
Jory nodded respectfully and then followed the man named Quill. He had the oddest feeling that Lord Arryn’s mind was on something else completely.
Jon Arryn
He went back to the window after Ned’s man had gone, staring with unseeing eyes at the Red Keep and the city and bay beyond it. Ned never ceased to surprise him. How had he known? Or rather, what did he know exactly? His warning had been as clear as day to Jon, but then it had been couched in the cautious language of Ned Stark when he had spoken to him with wagging ears present. ‘I have heard of great interest in the Westerlands of late concerning matters involving the payment of debts. Sadly I have also heard of accounts of poor seasoning from there and would advise you to be careful with regard to your meals.’
In other words Ned was saying that his life was in peril, possibly from the Lannisters. Which was interesting, because if what he feared was true, his life really would be in peril from the Lannisters.
He sighed and went back to the desk, where he picked up the letter from Ned, read it one last time to sear the words into his memory and then held it over a lit candle in one corner of the room, which kept lit for that very reason. Once the letter was well alight he dropped it into the grate and watched it burn as he thought very hard and very fast.
If Ned had somehow stumbled onto news of Lannister chicanery then he had less time than he had thought. He had hoped that he could deal with this horrible mess in less than a month, via some careful negotiating, subtle hinting and threats of outright force. Tywin Lannister would be furious, but would also be intensely angry with the Queen for placing herself in such an embarrassing position. The implications for House Lannister would be interesting, but that was not what he was concerned about.
No, he was worried about House Baratheon, which was suddenly balanced on a knife-edge, caught between disaster and destruction. To outsiders the Royal Family was strong, with two healthy sons and daughter. He knew the truth however – that those children were pure Lannister, without a drop of Baratheon blood in them. Which meant that if Robert died tomorrow and the truth came out, his heir would be Stannis – who had only a sickly girl cursed with greyscale for children. The next heir was Renly, who needed to stop whatever he was doing with Loras Tyrell and settle down and get married as soon as possible. House Baratheon might desperately need Renly to get a lot of children. It was that or legitimise one of Robert’s bastards, which would be dangerous enough as it was.
For a moment he wondered what it would have been like if it had been Ned on the Iron Throne and not Robert. He loved the man like a son, but Robert had not been a good king so far. He was a great war king, but in peacetime… he mentally shrugged and dismissed that thought. What was done was done. Robert was King and he would have to be protected from this hideous secret. He had little doubt what Robert’s first reaction would be – blind fury and a wish to bludgeon Cersei to death with his Warhammer, followed by the Kingslayer.
Tywin’s reaction would be war at once, a war that the Seven Kingdoms did not need, even though such a war would lead to eager Dornish participation, bringing them out of their prolonged silence and isolation.
The stakes could not therefore have been higher. Which brought him on to the other issue raised by Ned in his letter, which he pondered as he picked up a poker and used it to reduce the remains of the letter into a mound of ash. Good, there were no fragments. The Red Keep was a maze of passageways and blocked-off doorways and windows. He was pretty sure that Varys did not have any of his little birds in the Tower of the Hand, but he was not certain. So, important – and even non-important – letters were not read out loud, important documents were locked away and gossip was strongly discouraged. Not that that was a problem. His Valemen were loyal to him and Quill kept a close eye on them. There had been attempts to bribe Quill of course, but he had promptly reported them. The place was full of spies. Varys had his, Baelish had his own, even the Queen had some. They tended to be about as subtle as Robert’s Warhammer, but they were there. Oh and then there were his own spies, who watched for watchers.
He replaced the poker and then stared at the ashes. House Baratheon wasn’t the only great house that stood on a knife-edge. House Arryn was right there with it. He had one heir himself. No more, because the line would end with them if he wasn’t. Lysa had had too many miscarriages down the long years and now everything rested on a boy. A sickly boy who was cossetted by his mother to the point where he was now seriously worried about them both. His son would have to learn to walk on his own at some point. The question was, would Lysa allow it? Would Lysa even allow Robert to ride his first horse? He doubted it. One day that boy would be Defender of the Vale, leading its knights out to do battle.
So Neds’ offer to foster young Robert in the North was a welcome one. It would put his son in a place of safety with the one man that he trusted above all others apart from the King. It would also give him a chance to get to know his cousins and build up some valuable friends for the future. The concept of ‘friends’ was not something that Lysa seemed to approve of, and that was yet another reason send his son North. He pondered the matter a bit longer and then turned to the door. “Quill!”
The door opened after a moment. “My Lord?”
Jon beckoned him closer. “I have a task for you,” he said quietly. “A very discreet one – my wife is not to be told about this.”
Quill’s eyebrow flickered upwards slightly as he approached, a sign that he was surprised. “I am yours to command my Lord.”
“I am sending my son out of the city, to be fostered in the North. It’s time he knew his cousins. You are to tell no-one of this. You are to pack his things and then wake him in the pre-dawn hours, before taking him down to the docks with me. I will go there now to make arrangements. I needed to talk to Lord Stannis anyway.”
If any of this surprised Quill in any way he gave no sign of this. Instead he nodded seriously. “I will make the preparations tonight my Lord. Who will accompany him?”
“Two guards – men that you trust. Who amongst my wife’s assistants can be trusted with obeying my orders on this?”
The man thought for a long moment. “As for the guards, let me think on this my Lord. Perhaps Willets and Rikson. As for your wife’s assistants, Annah, my Lord. She has a good head on her shoulders. In fact the Lady Lysa has often scolded her for being too practical with regard to young Lord Robert.”
“Good – then wake her first, have her wake my son and then leave as quietly and as quickly as possible.”
Quill nodded and he could see that the man was bursting with suppressed questions. “Quill, my wife cossets the boy overmuch – I want to see how he does away from her for a time. And… I have been warned of a possible plot on my life.” He whispered those last words, which made Quill jerk slightly, his eyes widening. “I know not who, or how, or why, but Lord Stark warned me and it is to him that I am sending my son. Lord Stark is to be trusted on this matter should… anything happen.”
“I pray that it does not,” Quill muttered grimly. “It shall be as you command my Lord.”
“Good. Now-” He walked over to his table and wrote a rapid letter, one that had been in his mind for some days now. “Please also send a raven to Runestone with this.”
He found Stannis Baratheon in his office by the docks. It was not the splendid office that his predecessors had inhabited in the Red Keep, equipped with hot and cold running sycophants, but rather an old warehouse by the docks, guarded by grim-faced men in the livery of Dragonstone. It was there that Stannis could personally oversee to the ships of the Royal Fleet that were in Blackwater Bay, as well as to quickly respond to any threats to the Bay or warnings from Dragonstone.
Lord Baratheon was standing by his desk with a plan of some rigging rolled out, quietly talking to a heavy-set man with a greying beard and close-cropped brown hair, who was missing the first joints of the fingers on his left hand. Ah, Ser Davos Seaworth. Excellent. As Jon approached they both looked up from the plan. “My Lord Hand,” Stannis said curtly, with a nod. “How can I help you?”
“Your pardon my Lords, I will deal with this matter,” Ser Davos said quietly in a voice that came straight from Flea Bottom.
As he started to turn Jon raised a hand. “No, Ser Davos, I would have your council for a moment. Lord Baratheon I need some advice from you.”
Stannis eyed him carefully. “On what matter?”
“On the matter of who the two of you might recommend for an urgent mission for me. I need to get a message to White Harbour. A message that will not be… intercepted by the wrong people and which must therefore go by ship.” He sighed. “Along with a very important passenger. My son.”
Stannis frowned slightly. “I thought that we were discussing the fostering of your son at Dragonstone. Why does he need to go to White Harbour?”
“I will explain in but a moment. However – I need a ship captained by a skilled seaman who knows when not to talk about his cargo. One whom you trust absolutely. I place myself in your hands on this.”
There was the briefest sound of teeth grinding and then Stannis gestured at Ser Davos. “Then this is your man here. Ser Davos is absolutely trustworthy – I would place my life in his hands and I would not be wrong to do so.”
The former smuggler flushed slightly. “You do me much honour my Lord.”
“I simply state the truth,” Stannis replied. “Young Lord Robert will be in good hands.”
“When do you wish me to sail my Lord Hand?” Ser Davos asked.
“First thing in the morning. Can it be done?”
A frown crossed the face of the man that some called the Onion Knight. He was a good man, Jon knew, loyal and more than competent. Would that he had half a hundred of the man – the Red Keep would be all the better for it. “Then I will need to provision Black Betha at once my Lord. Luckily we have already watered her, as well as scrubbed her bottom. Low tide is… three hours before dawn, so we’ll need to warp her out of the bay, given the wind as she blows now, and then anchor. I can send a cutter for your son’s party to the second pier here. Will there be many?”
“My son, a nurse, perhaps two guards and one Jory Cassel, sent from Winterfell by Lord Stark. Plus my son’s clothing and medicines.”
Ser Davos thought for a moment and then nodded decisively. “That will be fine my Lord Hand. Once they are all on the ship we can be under way at once. Now – if that is all I must leave and arrange matters to our satisfaction.”
“Thank you Ser Davos,” Jon replied. “And my thanks to you.”
“You are most welcome my Lord Hand. My Lord – should I return here afterwards, or to Dragonstone?”
Stannis stroked his chin for a moment. “Dragonstone I think. There is much to be organised there.”
“Thank you my Lord,” Ser Davos replied, nodded at them both and then left.
“A good man,” Jon said with a smile. “And a loyal one you say?”
“There are none better,” Stannis replied with what might almost have been a smile. And then he jerked his head at the nearest window. “Perhaps we should talk on yonder empty pier.”
They did just that, striding out onto a pier that was in need of repair to make it safe for heavy cargo to be landed there. “I thought that we were reaching an understanding that your son was to be fostered at Dragonstone?” Stannis said through gritted teeth.
“I thought so too and I beg your pardon – certain matters have happened that you should be aware of. For one thing, I received a letter today from Ned Stark. It was couched in careful wording, but it warned me that my life is in danger, possibly from the Lannisters.”
Stannis looked at him sharply and then returned his gaze to the sea that lay beyond Blackwater Bay. “How could Ned Stark know anything about what we have been discussing?”
“I know not. But obviously I am taking it seriously. Whatever Ned knows, he thinks that I am in danger and that the Lannisters are involved. Whether or not he suspects the same thing that we do is… unknown. But he also offered to foster my son, and the more I think about it, the more I am inclined to agree with him. I mean no disrespect to you. But if things miscarry then my son will be safer in the North than at Dragonstone, because it is more remote. And we need the North. My son will also need to meet his cousins there anyway.”
A pause fell, followed by Stannis setting his jaw slightly and then nodding equally slightly. “Perhaps you are right about that. And… the safety of your son is paramount. Very well. Now, as to that other matter – the fleet is assembling at Dragonstone, with just enough ships here as to seem to be normal. I dislike this mummery and cant, but it must be done. What of the Goldcloaks?”
“They are led by a corrupt and venal idiot. I should have replaced Janos Slynt years ago with someone – anyone! – else a year or more ago. Sadly I did not. He is in the pay of someone that I have not yet worked out. So, we need to either bribe him into doing his duty, or replace him, or bring men in that we can trust absolutely.”
Stannis looked at him. “You know that this cannot end smoothly.”
He set his own chin. “I do.”
Jory
The quarters that he was taken to in the Red Keep were not large, but the bed was comfortable, there was access to a place where he could bathe (that was a mercy – the ship had allowed him just the option of having a bucket of seawater dunked over him every other day, something that had not been offered when they entered Blackwater Bay and the floating effluent that the tide was taking out) and above all he could relax and not worry about that damn letter anymore. And the food was good and the wine was even better. He preferred ale, but wine was the only option that night for some reason.
Men and women came and went from the rooms around him, mostly from the Lord Hand’s establishment, but occasionally from other places and he found a spot overlooking the main courtyard, paid for a small flagon of wine and indulged himself in his favourite practice of people watching. At one point he saw Lord Arryn from a distance, in conversation with a small sickly boy and a woman who had red hair the colour of Lady Stark and who had to be the Lady Arryn. But if Lady Stark was sleek, wry and friendly – and ruled with a rod of iron – Lady Arryn seemed to be overweight, fretful and to his mind over-possessive of her son.
Then there were the others. At one point a fat, totally bald, pale man in exotic robes pattered across the courtyard, his hands in his sleeves and his face blank of all emotion. Jory distrusted him on sight for some reason that he could not pin down. An hour later the man returned, this time in conversation with a slim short man with grey hair at his temples, a small goatee and a look that combined cunning with smugness. The two seemed to be trading barbs as they walked, like two man playing a game that only they knew the rules to, and he narrowed his eyes as he watched them pass through a doorway out of sight. Something was scratching at his senses, warning him that there was danger here.
And then there was the shock. At one point, just as he was mulling when to retire and sleep until the morning, there was a stir in one doorway and a pair of men dressed in armour with white cloaks stepped through, followed by a tall fat man with long black hair and a beard that had the odd streak of grey in it. Jory blinked at the sight of the man. That was… King Robert? He remembered him from Pyke, where he had been perhaps a little heavyset but not fat, not like that. The King had stomped heavily across the courtyard, looking like a man preoccupied with many cares and then vanished through another doorway. Jory blinked and then sighed. Lord Stark would want to hear about that. He’d asked Jory to gather his impressions of what King’s Landing was like these days. Yes, he would most likely want to hear everything about that.
Sleep had come easily but he still woke before dawn, alarmed by that mysterious internal notion that now was the right time to get up. As he pulled his jerkin on there was a soft knock on the door and he walked over and opened it. Quill was standing there dressed in dark clothing. “You are ready to leave?”
“I am,” Jory replied, as he picked up his small bag of possessions. “Lead on.”
Quill led him down the passage in total silence, their passage lit only by the light of a single lantern, then down a short flight of stairs, up a passage that seemed to be steeper than it looked and then up another flight of stairs. When they came out into the open air he saw a small group of people ahead of them. One was Lord Arryn, who was looking fondly at the face of a small sleepy child who was in the arms of a woman about Jory’s age. Wait. That was young Lord Robert.
Lord Arryn noticed his arrival and then strode over to him. “Jory Cassel,” he said quietly, “I have a task for you. Here is a letter for Lord Stark. You must deliver it to him with all despatch.” He handed it over, it being stitched into what seemed to be the same leather wallet as the one that he had brought South, or near enough.
“I shall deliver it, my Lord Hand,” Jory replied quietly. “This I swear.”
“Good. I have another request. This-” he gestured at the woman and the child, who had now fallen asleep, “Is my son, Robert Arryn. He is to be fostered at Winterfell, as Lord Stark requested. I would like you to take him there. He is to be attended by Annah, acting as his nursemaid, and these two men as his guards – Willets and Rikson. Both are loyal to House Arryn. Once they are at Winterfell Annah is to stay with my son and the guards are to be sent back here to me. Here is a small purse of Dragons so that you can keep my son and your party fed and watered along the way, as well as horsed.” The Hand passed over a small but heavy clanking pouch. “Now – ride down to the docks. There will be a boat waiting for you – Quill will escort you to the correct jetty, where the boat will be waiting. And – give Ned Stark my thanks.”
Jory looked into the face of the Hand of the King and then knelt formally. “I will bring your son to Winterfell my Lord Hand. This, too, I swear.”
The older man placed a hand on his shoulder. “Thank you. Now – go.”
They mounted quickly and then passed down through the courtyards and the open gates, where blinking guards looked at them in some surprise, before passing down the winding road to the docks. As they rode the light strengthened and the guards who had been holding lighted torches threw them away, the burning brands sending showers of red and gold sparks across the flagstones for an instant before they guttered and disappeared.
Quill led them in the growing dawn light to a jetty, where five guards in Arryn colours awaited them, next to a man who nodded at Quill. “Ser Davos,” Lord Arryn’s man replied. “I bring the party from the Hand of the King and place them in your care. Safe journey.”
“I will do my best, I can do no more,” the other man said and Jory recalled that this must be the Knight of Onions. Whatever his title he quickly got the trunks and other baggage that they had brought into the boat, similar to the one that had rowed him into the docks the previous day, followed by the party.
As Ser Davos’s men rowed them out with quick clean strokes Jory looked back at King’s Landing, before gazing up at the Red Keep. Far above him a white-haired speck was watching their departure and he knew without doubt that it was Lord Arryn. Concern roiled for a moment within him. He had a great duty ahead of him. Very well. He looked ahead. The ship was close now. North again. Away from this stench.
Fillion
“This is the greatest waste of time since…” Maester Baldwin threw his hands in the air, almost grasping the air for inspiration as the puffed up the stairs to the Tower of the Mysteries. “Since….”
“Since that last project of yours, involving the birds in the giant cage on the scales that refused to work properly?” Fillion asked with a wry smile. This got him a glare from Baldwin.
“That would have worked. No, this is the greatest waste of time since…”
“That other project of yours to see if you could use giant mirrors to set fire to Ironborn ships?”
Another glare. “That would have worked as well if that test ship hadn’t moved with the wind a bit.” They continued up the stairs. “This is still a waste of time though.”
“Oh, I agree. However, when Arch-Maester Tudyk tells you to do something, what choice do you have?”
They continued upwards as the larger, more heavily bearded man mulled this point. “None,” he confessed eventually. “None whatsoever. That said, I still say that this is a fool’s errand. Luwin’s wits have been addled by all that ice up in Winterfell.”
They reached the top of the stairs and then looked at the short corridor ahead of them as they got their breath back. “I hate this place,” Baldwin said eventually. “It reminds me of all the hours I put in to prove that something doesn’t work. I hate that as well.”
The nearest door opened and a cautious head with dishevelled hair peered out carefully. “Oh,” said Maester Maher as he looked out. “What are you two doing up here?”
Fillion peered at Maher carefully. There was a note in his voice that he had never heard before. It was more than the usual querulousness about someone intruding his part of the Citadel, it was… fear? Something like that anyway.
“We’re here on a mission from Arch-Maester Tudyk,” Baldwin said with a snort. “A massive waste of time given the premise behind it, but we’re doing it anyway.”
Maher blinked at them both. “What is a waste of time? What mission?”
“Luwin sent a raven from Winterfell,” Fillion muttered as he advanced down the corridor towards the room that contained the glass candles. “Wants us to check on those wretched things. He had a theory, or heard a legend, or something like that. Waste of time, addled wits, and so on. Now if you’ll excuse us we have a short ceremony to complete, followed by the inevitable failure to light a glass candle and then a retreat down all those stairs back to more worthwhile pursuits. Plus dinner, wine and normal life.”
“You can’t!” Maher half-shouted as he darted in front of them with a speed that made Fillion and Baldwin both stop and blink. “I mean… those things should only ever be approached by a Maester as a part of his studies!”
Yes, there was definitely something in his voice, thought Fillion as he eyed the dishevelled man. Well, he’d always been untidy, but now that he came to inspect the man’s appearance he looked gaunter than before, pale and with lines of care on his face. “Arch-Maester Tudyk, the Arch-Maester of Magic, amongst other things, gave us leave to do this,” he said with a frown. “We have full permission. Now stand aside.”
Maher wavered, clasping his hands together and Fillion exchanged a worried gaze with Baldwin, who was frowning thunderously. “Maher,” the latter said with a growl. “What are you so worried about?”
The man looked at them worriedly. “Nothing,” he said in what had to be the worst attempt at lying that Fillion had ever seen in his life.
He stared at him and then made the connection. “By the Seven above us, you haven’t broken one of them, have you? I know of your fascination with them, your prodding and poking at them… Maher, if you’ve smashed one by mistake the Arch-Maesters will have your hide. Or worse still your chain.”
This flummoxed Maher, who blinked at tham both. “What? Broken one? NO! Never!” Fillion peered at him and then relaxed a little. Well, in this case he seemed to be telling the truth. Whatever was the matter the candles were intact.
“Well then, get out of our way,” Fillion muttered and opened the door. The chamber inside was a simple one. When an Acolyte was training, one of his tasks was a vigil within the room where he would try (and inevitably fail) to light any one of the three black candles. There they stood on the podium in the middle of the room, a testament to the fact that magic was gone from this world. “Right,” he muttered as he recalled the words to the old ritual that was said to light them. “Let’s get this over with.”
“You know,” said Maher in a strained voice, “I really don’t think that-”
“What the hell is wrong with you, man?” Baldwin roared. “You’ve done nothing but whinge and whine since you saw us up here. You know, we are all Maesters here, don’t you? You might study lost arts that aren’t worth the paper they’re written on, less still the stinking hides that you have stored up here, but this is not your private workshop!”
Fillion tuned the men behind him out mentally and concentrated on the ritual. There were three versions of it. The longest took the length of a candle, the middle one took half a candle and the shortest but a few minutes. As Maher started to yap something about the need for proper procedures Fillion clapped his hands loudly, shocking them into silence and then muttered the words quickly.
As he said the last syllable he stretched out a hand and gestured at the nearest glass candle. Nothing happened. No light, no spark, nothing. He smiled. Yes, a waste of time. Baldwin muttered what he was thinking behind him but then, as he was turning away, he saw it. A faint shimmer of light within the heart of the candle he had pointed at. He stared at it, deeply shocked. Hearing receding footsteps he turned. Baldwin was walking towards the door, with one hand clamped around Maher’s right shoulder in what looked like one of his friendly-yet-forceful grips of iron. “Maesters! Look!”
The two turned and then stared. Baldwin reacted first. “This is impossible,” he gasped. “Impossible. What trick is this? Where are the ordinary candles? Where are the mirrors?” He raged around the room, looking into all the corners and nooks and crannies. “This is not possible!”
Fillion waved a hand to quieten him down. Yes, there was light there. Not very bright light, but there was still light. His ritual had been said quickly and quietly and by no means with intent, and if he recalled correctly from his studies all three could be factors in magic. “I’m afraid my friend that this is possible. The candle is alight.” He bowed his head in thought and then with more intensity than the last time commenced the ritual again, this time looking at the glass candle next to the previous one. This time when he gestured at it the candle lit with more light than before. It was hardly a bright and shining light, but it was enough to be seen.
And then a light went on his own mind. He turned to Maher, who was wringing his hands in worry. “You knew that they would light, didn’t you?”
The man flinched from his gaze. “No! Well… no, I hoped that they would not. They are supposed to be dead! Magic is supposed to be gone. I read about it, I might have wished that it was otherwise and…” The man looked as if he was about to burst into tears.
Baldwin stamped over to him and glared at the wretched cringing little man. “How long have you known?” Each hissed word made Maher cringe.
“I… I was in here ten days ago, with the Fourth Fragment of the Book of Malys,” he stammered. “I thought that there was a way of pronouncing one of the words, based on a book I discovered on dialects of Old Valyrian and when I read out the words… the candles all woke. All three! Not very brightly, but… I thought that what I had done was dangerous! I’ve been trying to research it all, to find out what I did wrong, to make them go to sleep…”
Fillion looked at Baldwin, who subsided with a snort of disgust and then turned to look at the candles again. “Well,” said the larger man, “At least this was not a waste of time. I’ll go and get the Arch-Maester. Perhaps the snows of Winterfell have not yet addled Luwin’s mind.”
Mikon
Dragonstone lay far to the South-West and the ship was now beating up in the face of a nasty wind from the South-East that was threatening to push them a bit too far West. But Seaworth seemed to know what he was doing and the course he had set looked good.
Mikon sat with his back against the base of the foremast under the main deck and concentrated on carving a little wooden bird out of the piece of driftwood he’d snagged on the way in to the ship.
This was a rush job. He hated rush jobs. He hated the stress, he hated the uncertainty and above all he hated the back that he had no-one to guard his back. Especially as he was on a ship at sea. That cut down on ways to escape should things go wrong. He cursed the day that he’d started to work for that sly little bastard. Yes, he paid well, but there was something wrong with the man. He had the eyes of a snake at times, almost lifeless and unsettling.
Well, at least he could make a decent fist of being a seaman. He’d been on and off boats for years, in King’s Landing and other places. He’d never served on Seaworth’s ship before though and he thanked his lucky stars for that. Last thing he wanted was to have someone frown at him and wonder where he’d seen him before, especially as he’d been used on a number of little errands that usually resulted in someone being discovered with a knife in his side or in one entertaining case being found head-down in a privy. The thefts were almost as bad and the careful planting of objects could be a nightmare. Some people could be too damn observant.
He carved a flake of wood away from the wings and peered at it carefully as he assessed his options. His orders had been hurried but clear. Try and make sure that the ship docked somewhere near the Fingers and then try and cause enough chaos to get the child away from the guards. Heh. Easier said than done. This would not be easy. One of his favourite ruses was to use fire – plenty of smoke, plenty of confusion, plenty of ways to escape. Only an imbecile would try and use fire at sea though. Ships could be tinderboxes. A fire on board could lead to total chaos and then a fiery death, or even a wet death.
So he needed something else. Something serious but not too immediately dangerous. Something to force Seaworth to get to the nearest port. Damage, or perhaps an emergency that required a Maester? Hmmm, that had possibilities. He had to make sure that no-one suspected him and that would not be easy in such a cramped space, but he was sure that he could come up with something.
Benjen
It had taken longer than he had initially thought to get to Winterfell in response to Ned’s summons, and the man responsible for that delay was riding beside him now, their horses side by side, his wrinkled face with his sightless eyes set in a look of weary determination. Maester Aemon was making his first trip South of the Wall for many, many decades and his old age and blindness had made it a long and difficult trip.
The old man had insisted on joining him the moment that he had heard of Benjen’s summons to Winterfell with every piece of information that Castle Black had about The Others. “The books are old,” he had told Benjen and the Old Bear, “Luwin will need help deciphering them. And I have read them so many times myself that I am the only one that can do this. I may no longer be able to see but my memory is still an excellent one and I remember every page and every line. Besides, I have sworn to keep these books safe. With no offence meant to you First Ranger, they are more my territory than yours.”
He had exchanged a look with the Old Bear, who had shrugged and then allowed it. But he had the nagging feeling that there was something more than that about this trip for Maester Aemon. Something seemed to be driving him. He put up with the endless indignities of life on the road and somehow Benjen had been able to find them shelter of some sort every night on the long journey down. Partly that had been down to the extreme old age of the Maester of the Night’s Watch – many looked at him and felt awe at how such an old man was yet still alive.
The rising had been the hard part and he had had to get Aemon used to the art of riding a horse again. Much had been difficult for him and he must have been in extreme pain on many a night after a long day of riding. Benjen had had to find a rhythm to their riding together, to gazing at the road ahead and guiding them around the potholes before they reached them. The others in the party, the men with the packhorses and the three chests of books, had helped him and as they went further South they had found themselves moving a little faster every day. It had been the hardest thing that he had ever done, which was ironic, but they had done it.
The increasingly good road had helped. Benjen had noted the first work parties just North of the Long Lake – men with rough tools and bags of rocks chipped from the nearest outcrop, filling in the potholes, clearing the trees that crowded the sides of the King’s Road in places. Not many work parties, but they were enough to make a difference, and the wood was being used in some of the villages that existed here and there along the road, to shore up walls and make them thicker in places. Winter was coming.
Maester Aemon had noted those parties, had heard the sound of the work and asked Benjen soft, careful questions, before falling silent and thinking hard. Ned was up to something, he could tell that at once, but he did not know what.
And now the towers of his childhood home were visible on the horizon and he sighed slightly. “Maester Aemon – Winterfell is in sight.”
The old Maester smiled slightly. “Good. Thank you for your patience with this old man, First Ranger.”
He smiled back, even though he knew that the other man could not see it. “The honour has been all mine, Maester Aemon. You have been here before?”
“Many years ago. Many, many, years ago. I remember your grandfather, Edwyle Stark.” And then he sighed and fell silent for a moment. “And of course your father.”
Brandon nodded and then continued riding South West in silence. He knew every inch of the ground here and he knew of the old track that left the King’s Road well short of the old spur that led up to Winterfell from the South.
“What was that?” Master Aemon had jerked his head to the right and seemed to be looking at the woods on the horizon that lay to the West of Winterfell.
Benjen looked in the same direction. He saw nothing. “What was what?”
“I heard the sound of a wolf, howling. A long way away and muffled, as if in trees.”
He listened hard, but heard nothing, before looking back at the others, who greeted his gaze with shrugs. “I’m sorry Maester Aemon, I heard nothing.”
“Hmmph,” the old man replied before frowning. “There was something familiar about it. I have heard that sound before. Where though?” They kept riding down the track and had travelled about a mile before the old Maester looked up again sharply. “I hear it again. And I remember what it is. That is the sound of a direwolf.”
Benjen stared at the man and then at the woods again. Impossible. No direwolf had been seen South of the Wall since… “You are certain?”
“I am.”
“We must ride on.”
“Aye, we must. Signs and portents, First Ranger. Signs and portents.” And then the old man shivered and fell silent all the way until the guards at the North Gate of Winterfell demanded their names and business. But even though he was home, Benjen felt a chill.
Theon
He had to be the oldest man that there had ever been, Theon thought as he remembered the little party that had come through the North Gate not long before, and he shivered again at the memory of those sightless old eyes. The Master of Castle Black, along with Lord Stark’s brother, First Ranger Benjen Stark. It meant something, he knew that. A man as old as the Maester did not come all this way South for nothing. He had seen Lord Stark walk out to greet his brother with joy and then greet the old man with great shock. Something else had crossed his face then, something he had not seen before on the face of Lord Stark. And then he had ushered them all into the main keep and life in Winterfell had returned to normal – or as normal as things were at the moment.
He was now sitting at the top of the great steps that led to the main hall, to one side of the doors and with a mug of ale in one hand and a hunk of bread and cheese that he had charmed off Aliza, the older woman with the curves in all the right places and a bosom that could suffocate a man, and as he ate and drank he pondered.
Robb still worried him. Yes, he was almost his old self, but there was something there still, a distance between him and Theon. Between Robb and everyone actually. He was focussed on something, he was driven by something. When he was not training with Theon and Jon (who was as worried about Robb as he was, in his quiet way) he was studying with his father, studying about the various Houses of the North, as well as other places. Luwin was constantly providing him with books about this and that, about house sigils and who was tied by bonds of blood or loyalty to who.
He’d asked Robb about this and he’d got a tired smile and a quip about Father having set him more studies, but there was an intensity about him that had been missing before. It was as if he was waiting for something and trying to prepare for a task that he desperately wanted to avoid. Oh and he’d also caught Robb standing on the parapets again, staring at the woods and muttering something about echoes and heartbeats.
The studies about houses and sigils made him pause for a moment. He’d started his own research himself, not on the North but on the Iron Islands. If Robb was learning about how to rule the North then it was past time that he started relearning what he knew about Pyke and the other islands, about the Ironborn that he would one day rule after Father died. So far what he had learnt had left him… well, he wasn’t sure how to describe his feelings.
He’d always been proud of being Ironborn, proud of his blood, his family, his people and their history. That had been beaten into him as a child, sometimes by his father, who he remembered as a grim-faced man with long hair and strained look, especially as the war went badly. But… that history was based on reaving, salt wives and thralls. The Iron Price was the measure by which a man was weighed. This was something he vaguely remembered, but reading about it had been… well a shock. He looked about Winterfell for a moment and imagined for an instant what a reaving party might do to this place, only to shake his head in shock and puzzlement. What had brought that up?
Seeing movement to one side he turned his head and saw a raven watching him intently to one side. Normally ravens tilted their heads when they looked at men. This one did not. It cawed at him softly and then looked at something ahead of him. He turned his head again and watched as a drooping Bran walked up to the butts again with his bow and quiver. The lad had been depressed ever since Lord Stark had apparently made him swear an oath on Ice itself never to climb the walls of Winterfell again. It was a harsh thing to make the lad promise, but there had to be a reason.
Bran grounded his quiver rather ineptly and then inspected his bow. Theon winced. The lad needed a lot of training.
Boots scuffed to one side and then a quiet voice said: “Your pardon – I did not know that you were there.” He looked up and did his best not to scowl. Domeric fucking Bolton. The harp-playing song-singing horseriding prick who was the object of Sansa’s increasing attention.
He stilled his face. “Just taking my ease. And watching young Bran there.”
Bolton nodded, his eyes taking in the scene. Bran fitted one arrow to the bow and then visibly sighed and pulled the bow back. Theon winced slightly. His grip was all wrong, his balance was all wrong and where was Rodrik Cassel? “Young Bran is enthusiastic, but unskilled,” Bolton said, echoing his own thoughts. “Mayhaps he needs some tips?”
“Mayhaps he does,” Theon grunted as he finished off his meal and then drank the last of the ale. “Sadly Robb’s at his studies.”
“Lord Robb is most attentive to his father’s commands.” Bolton sighed slightly. “At least he has brothers - and sisters too. I do not. Well, apart from a half-brother who I have never met. My father says that I must avoid him.”
This darkened Theon’s mood a little. “I had brothers. King Robert had them killed. And I have a sister, who I know not.”
Bolton looked at him. “I have read of your brothers, and my father told me about them. Their acts… well, they were not knights. Not knightly.”
Theon bristled and then forced himself to relax. “They followed my father and the old ways.”
“Ah, the old ways.” Bolton smiled bitterly. “I know that curse too.”
Theon looked up at him, startled. “Curse?”
Bolton looked back at him and then pulled his cloak to one side to display the sigil of House Bolton. “Do you see that, Theon Greyjoy? The flayed man?” The cloak fell back to conceal it again. “My father sees no wrong in that banner, whilst I do. My ancestors flayed men alive. Made a habit of it. A skill. Can you imagine that?” He closed his eyes, his face twisted with revulsion for a moment. When they opened again he looked weary for a moment. “The old ways sometimes need to change and become the new ways. Tradition must give way to… better things if those traditions were twisted and bitter.”
Theon looked away and back down to Bran, who had just loosed an arrow into the ground in front of him and was looking baffled as to how such a thing could have happened. “You ask much then.”
“I would have House Bolton remembered for more than its past,” Bolton muttered. “And I envy you here.”
“Envy me?” He barked the words loud enough to make Bran turn and look at them both for a moment, before shrugging and turning back to his bow and quiver.
“I do. You have brothers here. Not of your blood, but of your heart. You were brought up here.” Bolton paused and then bowed to him slightly. “Your pardon again. I must go.” And then he turned and left.
Theon watched him go and then looked back at Bran. The little idiot would hurt someone at this rate. So after a long moment he stood and pattered down the stairs towards Bran. “You’re doing it all wrong,” he said as he approached. “Here – let me show you.”
Chapter Text
Ned
By the time that guest quarters had been found for Maester Aemon and he had supervised the unloading of the books and their safe delivery to a very respectful Luwin, before taking the time for a brief change of robes as well as a nap and some refreshment, Ned had finally been able to overcome his astonishment at the arrival of the old man. He had been considering seeking the counsel of the last of the old dynasty in Westeros, but had been planning to visit Castle Black. To have Aemon visit him instead was a very great shock.
And now he eased the old Maester into a chair in his solar and poured a goblet of wine for him, before guiding it into those old age-spotted hands.
“My thanks, Lord Stark,” the Maester said with a wry smile. “Your hospitality has been most generous.”
“Your presence is a great honour,” Ned replied as Benjen slipped in wearing clean cloths and with his hair slicked down. “Come in and take a seat Ben.”
“Thank you Ned,” his brother sighed as he poured himself some wine. “Luwin is as a small child on his naming day with all the books we have brought from Castle Black. He is reading, exclaiming and copying, along with his assistants. Now, I am sorry to be blunt, but what caused this summoning?”
“Yes, I too am most curious as to this sudden interest in The Others Lord Stark. As far as I was aware they have been gone from this world for many centuries.”
Ned paused and looked at them both, before rubbing a hand over his beard and then finally leaning forwards. But before he could open his mouth he was forestalled. “Lord Stark,” Aemon said with a sigh. “Your silence is telling. In fact your silence tells me more than your words will, given that you seem to be mulling over what to tell us. And that fills me with much foreboding.”
He looked at the old man and then sighed. Candour was the only choice open to him now. “I have requested as much information as possible on The Others because we have had… grave intelligence. But before I explain I must ask you a question – how stands the Night’s Watch at present?”
Aemon’s lips pursed and he looked in the direction of Benjen. “Tell him.”
“Ned, one of the reasons The Lord Commander allowed me to come South to Winterfell in answer to your summons is that the Night’s Watch is at the lowest ebb it has been in many, many years. Perhaps its lowest point ever. We are down to three castles on the Wall. Our new recruits barely keep pace with our losses. And what we are sent, as you know, are the dregs - the scum of the gaols and most desperate men in Westeros. We need help.” Benjen said the last words tiredly.
“He speaks the truth, Lord Stark. A decade ago I had three clerks who had their letters and numbers. Today I have one who still requires teaching and supervision. One of the reasons I came South is that I could not entrust the books that I have brought to his untender mercies. We need more men, we need better men and we need men who can write their own name and then read it – and that name must not be ‘X’.”
“And the Wildlings press us greatly, as I have written to you about,” Benjen said quietly. “We have a missing patrol at the moment and when we return to the wall I will scout out to try and find something of what happened.”
“The Wildlings press you in greater and greater numbers do they not? This Mance Rayder leads them and gives them a purpose. So tell me – why do they press South?”
Benjen frowned at him. “Because they suspect how weak we are.”
“That I do not doubt – Rayder is a former brother of yours is he not? But there is another reason. Rayder must know that if he presses too hard I will call the Banners and his Wildlings will be slaughtered. So he must be desperate. So - what is driving the Wildlings South?”
His brother sat up in his chair. “Driving the… Ned you cannot be serious!”
“I am deadly serious Ben. We have had intelligence that The Others have returned. From where I know not – I just know that they are back. And that is why the Wildlings flee before them. That explains their desperation.” He looked at Maester Aemon, who was sitting in his chair, his hands up his sleeves and his face a mystery as his sightless eyes flickered from side to side, as if he was watching something – or recalling something.
“And what,” the old Black Brother finally said, “Is the source of this intelligence?”
Ned took a deep breath. “The Old Gods. And before you call Luwin and ask him if I have hit my head on something, I have to say that he and my son Robb both know that the Old Gods have touched us. Robb first. They… they brought him back from a future that must not be, a future in which I went South to become Hand of the King and then died in an intrigue of the Lannisters, after which Westeros descended into war. And the North was ruined and the Wall was… neglected.”
The two men stared at him, or at least Benjen stared at him in horror and Aemon looked in his direction with that look of terrible intensity. Oddly enough Aemon was the first to speak. “Robb… first? Who was second?”
“I was. I found Robb in the Godswood, praying to the Old Gods for guidance before the Hearts Tree. When I confronted him he placed a hand on the tree and then he grabbed my arm and…” And then he told them everything, his vision, the full story of what Robb had seen in that terrible future. When he stopped speaking he found that his mouth was dry and he poured himself some wine and drank.
Benjen was in a state of shock, whether from the news that Ned had died in that future, or that he himself had vanished, or that Winterfell had been burned to the ground or, indeed a combination of everything.
Maester Aemon on the other hand had a look of determination that he had seen on few men before. “Then my fears are justified,” he said eventually. “Lord Stark, you of all people have little reason to love my family in the wake of what my mad nephew did to your lord father and your brother. But I beg of you that you listen to my counsel on this matter. You are right, death does indeed march on the Wall. I have not the foresight of my ancestor Daenys the Dreamer, but I do have a distant echo of what she had buried in my blood. And of late I have had dark dreams of a tide of ice coming from the far North, beyond the Wall. I had dismissed this as forebodings from the Wildling attacks, mere fancy on my part – but I do recall the last time I felt such a feeling of dread. T’was the day your father and brother died, as I found out later. And when your raven came telling us to send what information we had on The Others to Winterfell… I decided to come South and to urge you to send what strength you can to aid us on the Wall.”
“When the time comes I will call the Banners,” Ned said firmly. “I must first ensure that the South sees no war so that they can send their own strength to the Wall as well.”
Aemon nodded approvingly. “And I noted by the sounds of repairs to the road and the logging of trees that you have already started to make sure that such a march will be swift and then timber will be on hand to make shelters with – and to repair the castles that are unoccupied on the wall?”
The old man’s blindness had not dulled his wits. “You are quite right on all of those things Maester Aemon.”
“Then you have begun well,” Aemon said approvingly. “And I salute you for it. But much will yet remain to be done. There is the issue of finding better men for the Night’s Watch. We must have proof that The Others have returned, if we are to see men more freely volunteer for the Night’s Watch.”
“I had thought of that. Mention is made in the records here of things called ‘wights’,” Ned replied. “Dead men raised again by The Others, but raised only to kill the living. They must be burnt, as even their severed limbs alone try to kill.” He looked at his brother. “Ben. That is also why I have called you. It will be difficult and it will be dangerous. We need the hand of a wight.”
His brother, who had been staring at the far wall of the solar with a look of shock, seemed to shake himself as he returned from wherever his wits had strayed to. “You don’t want much, do you?” He said the words with a strained smile. “Might as well as me to catch that direwolf that Maester Aemon heard in the woods as we approached Winterfell.”
Ned stared at him. The direwolf was in the woods. Time had almost caught up with them. Every moment would soon be essential. “Ben I need you to get back to the Wall as soon as possible. We need that hand. And Maester Aemon – I need to speak with you on a matter of the utmost secrecy.”
Roose
The new iron mine was a success, Roose thought as he looked over the books that his steward had brought him. That was good, although he still needed to check on the building work on the settlement that would house the workmen once winter arrived. Skilled miners were a valuable commodity in the North.
Knuckles rapped on the door to his solar and he looked up. “Enter.”
The door opened to admit the Maester, old Quirrel, who strode in and then handed over a letter. “By raven from Winterfell my Lord.”
He took it with a nod and then dismissed the man. As the door closed he opened the letter and then smiled slightly. It was from Domeric. The boy was well, sent his respects, said that he was being well-treated by Lord Stark and his household and wished leave to stay at Winterfell another month. Excellent – he would not have asked for that time if his visit was not going well. A marriage of Stark and Bolton would cement the ties between the two Great Houses of the North. He was about to put the letter down when he saw the hasty postscript that had been added to it.
“I have late news – Benjen Stark has come to Winterfell with Maester Aemon of Castle Black, a most venerable man who had yet more books on The Others with him.”
He stood there for a moment, his mind working furiously. Maester Aemon of Castle Black? Impossible – the man had to be more than 90 years old! Moreover… yes, he was the Targeryan wasn’t he? The last of that name in Westeros, buried in his duties on the Wall, forgotten about by almost everyone.
This was… intriguing, and he walked over to his chair by the fireplace, where he sat quickly and thought things through. Now, why would the Maester of Castle Black, a man whose family had cut the head and main branch off House Stark go to Winterfell? Just to deliver books? He doubted that.
And then he paused and leant back, blinking rapidly in thought. No. No, that was impossible. But there could be no other explanation for it. He knew Ned Stark and respected him greatly for it. He was not the impulsive idiot that his brother had been and frankly he was twice the man that his father been in terms of giving careful thought to matters. No, for his mind Ned Stark was an excellent warrior because he judged matters on the battlefield until the time was just right and then attacked. He was not a man who did things on a whim.
So why the need for all this information on The Others? Some might see it as push so collect and save as much information as possible before winter arrived. But the arrival of one of the oldest and most knowledgeable men in Westeros to Winterfell, straight from the Wall… that placed a different slant on things. Why was Aemon there? Why was such an old man, no such a blind old man, in Winterfell? To discuss legends? No, something must have driven him there. Then perhaps…
A chill went through him for a moment. The legends, the stories of The Others, all spoke of terrible things, of dead men that walked, of creatures that could kill with a touch, wielding swords that shattered steel as if it was made from glass. Oh, he knew the legends. They were the stuff of old wives’ tales, along with never harm a Heart Tree, never let a black cat cross your path and never curse a raven. Why? Who knows? Tales and legends and the stuff spun out of rumour to explain facts that man had no answer for.
This was folly. He was worrying over a legend and a trip South by an old man who might have merely been visiting Winterfell to actually escort some old books and papers. He glared at the letter. This was folly, his worrying about something like this.
But. The word burrowed about in the back of his mind. Would Ned Stark normally bother with such ‘folly’? Why had he called to every holdfast in the North for information about a legend about things that were dead and buried. And then he remembered his talk with Domeric, the day that the call for documents about The Others had come in. Why did the Wall exist? Why had the Night’s Watch stuck to their vows for so long? Did they just defend against the Wildlings, or was there something else there, some old, old, foundation of fact?
His eyes flicked for a moment to the tapestry to one side. No, that would just be a waste of time. Surely it would. He stood and returned to the account books. But the figures seemed to dance in front of his eyes and he kept adding things up wrongly and as he cursed quietly and scratched through one number and then wrote the right one out next to it. He looked at the tapestry again and then laid his quill down and sighed. Well, if this was a day for legends and folly, then perhaps he should add to it.
Roose stood and locked the door to his solar, before walking over to the tapestry. Behind it was a door, old and battered by time. He pulled out a key from a pocket in his jerkin and paused for a moment and then inserted it and turned. The lock was old and stiff and he made a note to add a little oil to it, but the key turned and the door creaked open. He paused for a moment and then he reached out to one side, grabbed an unlit torch from the wall, lit it carefully from the small fire in the grate and then walked through the doorway.
The passageway was short but it changed from smooth stones to rough ones in a few yards and he had to watch his step. He remembered the first time that his father had brought him along this passageway and the uneasy feeling that it had given him – as if he was stepping back in time. At the end lay the other door, even older. Another key, another mental note to bring oil and then he was in the room.
It was pitch black in here, lit only by the wavering light of the torch. He looked at the alcoves in the walls and wondered, yet again, what the objects were and why his ancestors had brought them to this place and left them there in such reverence. So much had been lost, so much forgotten. There was the hilt and lower half of an old sword. The skull of a bear with green copper wire wrapped around its snout. A human skull, missing the jaw. A knife made of what looked like some kind of dark glass. An old wooden statue of something that had been worn by the passage of so many fingers and so many years that it was impossible to even start to guess what it had once been. A rough crystal in the shape of a hand. And then…. the little box. It was made from the wood of a Weirwood tree, bound together with wooden pegs.
He picked it up and then opened it carefully, taking out the little stones within, each no larger than his thumbnail, before kneeling on the rough flagstones and concentrating briefly. North was, yes, there. The white stone went down to mark North. The black stone marked South, the red one East and the green one west. The rest he arranged so that they all formed a circle. Then he said the words, the words passed down to his father by his ancestor and then on to him, the words that he would have to pass on one day to Domeric. When he said the last word he looked down at the stones. Nothing. He exhaled slowly. Yes, this had all been a folly. A waste of his- he froze in place and stared. The white stone had flickered in colour for a moment – and then brightened. Not by much but just enough to show more than whiteness. He reached down with a trembling hand and brushed the slight layer of dust off it and the light grew a little brighter.
“If the stones are lit, then danger, the danger from The Others, is in that direction, so beware,” he said quietly, speaking the words of his father. “Be watchful.” And then he froze. He suddenly had the strongest feeling that someone, somewhere was watching him, he knew not how as he knelt in that small dark room at the heart of the Dreadfort. And for the first time in many a long year he felt not just scared but terrified. He closed his eyes, sent out a prayer to the Old Gods and then quickly returned the stones to the box and then put it back in its place. As he did he stooped. For a second he could have sworn that he had seen a faint red light in the eye sockets of the human skull.
He strode out hurriedly, locking the first door and then the second door behind him and then, having made sure that the tapestry was in place, he poured himself a goblet of wine and drank it quickly. When he looked down at his free hand he could see that his fingers were trembling. Ned Stark was right to ask about The Others. They had returned.
After a long moment he willed his fingers to stop their movement and then walked to his desk, where he wrote a terse letter to Domeric. “Stay as long as you like. Find out why Lord Stark needs information on The Others. If your other matter bears fruit let me know. You may be called straight back to the Dreadfort however. Be well. Your lord father.”
Roose looked at it briefly, nodded, sanded it, and then rang the bell for his steward. A moment later someone knocked at the door and he stared at it, startled. It was too soon for the man to have obeyed his summons. He strode to the door and unlocked it, to see Quirrel. “My Lord,” the old man panted, “A message from House Warrick my Lord. They have most grave news from the Weeping Water.”
Something crawled up his back for an instant. He had a sudden feeling that something was terribly wrong.
Ramsay
He’d kill them all. He’d escape, he’d recover from the two arrows in him and what felt like a broken ankle and then he’d come back and he’d kill them all, very, very slowly, flaying them alive with the smallest possible knife. Perhaps he’d find some way of killing his pampered half-brother, so that he would be the heir to House Bolton and therefore untouchable when he returned, but he would return and he would kill them all.
He wiped the blood out of his eyes and then frantically crawled through the undergrowth, trying to ignore the agony from his ankle. Thorns scored his hands and burrs filled his hair. There seemed to be blood everywhere, in his eyes, in his mouth and in his boots. He scowled and then giggled to himself. Yes, blood. That was important. He could see something up ahead and he parted the bushes carefully. That was the old path. He knew where he was now. Somewhere on the other side lay the slope up to that outcrop and that spring. He needed water.
Grabbing a tree trunk he hauled himself to his feet and then quickly hopped across the path on his good leg, before collapsing into the undergrowth on the other side and listening carefully. No shouts, no calls. Perhaps he had outsmarted them and sent them the other way. And then he started his shuffling crawl again, trying not to cry out every time his ankle hit something.
They shouldn’t have been here. These were his woods! His! He snarled the word again and again as he crawled, lost in a rage. Those self-righteous pricks in their own livery and their servants and their arrogant belief that he was committing any kind of crime by hunting in his own woods! He had been about to corner his prey, who had led him a very pretty chase, the little slut. He loved the hunts now, they were the best idea he had ever had. Reek’s advice had been valuable. He had a habit of coming up with good advice every time that Ramsay got angry, which was often these days. He had heard that his brother wanted to meet him, and when that day came he’d kill him and take his place.
And then they had arrived. The two young Warricks and their sister. With their men. They’d taken one look at the naked slut and then at Ramsay and Reek and then it had all been up. Reek had gotten an arrow through one eye, so he’d been useless and it had been up to Ramsay to defend himself. He’d gotten one of the Warrick huntsmen with an arrow in the shoulder and then he’d run. Because then the arrows had come, and the pain and the screaming and the wild flight through the trees, until the fall down the small outcrop that had hurt his ankle. Kill his brother. Yes, kill that bastard.
He felt dizzy for a moment and a sickening feeling ripped through him and he stopped crawling to shake his head. He needed water. He needed that spring. He needed food. Rest. A chance to bind his foot and keep going. South perhaps? Kill Domeric.
The slope steepened suddenly and he slid down it, leaves and branches going with him, his hands going out to try and slow his slide. His broken ankle hit something and he yelped with pain and then gritted his teeth and rode it out. When he came to a halt he looked up. He was in a small dell. And there was the spring. He grinned wildly – and then he stopped moving and looked around. He was being watched, he could feel it. And then he saw the watcher and relaxed. A raven, on a rocky outcrop. Just a raven a stupid bird.
He crawled forwards slowly, his eyes on the spring – and then he looked back at the raven again. It was just sitting there and staring at him. Fixedly. That was not a normal stare for a bird. And then he heard the soft sound of dry leaves being trodden on. He looked over and then pulled his knife out and rolled onto his back, before pushing at the ground with his free hand and good foot until his back was to the outcrop. Who was there? The raven stared down at him. It was starting to annoy him.
Branches shifted and he looked over just in time to see a wolf stride into the dell and then sit down on its haunches. It too just stared at him. Ramsay licked his lips. This was not good. But he had his knife and he was at bay. Nothing could beat him. Nothing. And then raven cawed three times. The wolf got up off its haunches and stood. And then… it seemed to double in size, swelling to become a great direwolf, or what he presumed was a direwolf. He blinked hard and then shook his head in denial. When he looked back it was just an ordinary wolf again.
He swallowed convulsively. Something… something was very wrong here. Had he hit his head? Was the wolf real? And then it snarled at him and he gripped his knife firmly and prepared to defend himself. But as he did he felt a weight on his shoulder and he looked up as the raven alighted onto his shoulder – just in time to see its beak jab down into his eyeball, faster than any raven should be able to move.
Pain annihilated the world and he screamed in agony, flailing at the filthy creature and then falling to the ground, his hands around his eye and his knife in his lap. And then somehow through his screams he heard the growl and the thud of paws and then he felt the even more hideous pain in his neck.
In the last moment before the pain and the flood of blood into his lungs snuffed everything out he thought he heard an old and very creaky voice say: “A life brought back and a life ended.” And then nothing.
Aemon
The Maester of Winterfell knew his business, oh yes, Aemon thought as he sat in the study and listened to the crackling of the fire to his left. There was much to go through, much to collate and describe and pore over, but Luwin had made a good start on the documents that had been assembled so far.
It was night apparently but he had not yet retired to his bed. He had far too much to think on. His great-grand-nephew was in the keep. He was still stunned by that knowledge. He had thought the last of his direct kin to be across the Narrow Sea in Essos, in penurious exile, but instead he had a great-grand-nephew that he had not even known about.
He thought about the father of the child and repressed a snarl. Young fool. Aerys had been mad but Rhaegar… to have been obsessed by prophecy to the point of a different kind of madness, one that had led to the war that historians now called Robert’s Rebellion… More than a fool. And now his son was here in Winterfell.
Lord Eddard Stark was… a remarkable man. Many in the Night’s Watch who had heard of him spoke his name with praise. A man of honour. A good warrior and a cunning general. All traits that he admired. But there was something else. The man had deliberately made everyone think that Jon was his bastard son, a lie to protect him.
Because he knew that Lord Stark had spoken the truth when he said that had King Robert known of the boy’s existence he would have had him killed at once, as the son of the rapist Rhaegar Targaryen. As ‘dragonspawn’.
The boy would have to be protected. And he would eventually have to be told of his true heritage, as part Stark and part Targaryen. He nodded to himself. From what he had heard of him so far, and from what he had gleaned from quietly listening to him, Jon was a quiet, sensible young man who thought before he spoke. No wonder many thought of him as the son of Eddard Stark. He may have had the Stark looks – or so he was told – but he reminded him of his younger brother Aegon a little, gone these many years but still remembered so fondly by him.
He smiled slightly and then stilled that smile. Well now. The boy would have to learn a little of his real father as well as his family and in such a way that he would not panic at the very thought of being of the same blood as the ‘Mad King’. And that would take a little tact. Fortunately Lord Stark could point to him as being a reassuring presence, to remind him that not all Targaryen blood was tainted with madness.
He sighed and ran a suddenly weary hand over his face. This was yet another burden, to add to the many that he already bore. But it was one that he could not shrink from. The boy was family. And Ned Stark was right – he had to be protected. He was part Targaryen and part Stark. Especially because the Others were coming. As was winter. And if the Starks were right about that, what else could they be right about?
Mikon
He’d been weighing up what to do for some time now. He had to get the ship into the nearest port in The Fingers and he was running out of time with every mile that the ship ploughed its way northwards. He’d thought up and discarded a dozen plans. Was an emergency needed. Yes. What kind of emergency? Stab the Northman and make it seem an accident? Bludgeon him perhaps? No, he was too wary and observant. Stab the nurse? No, she was too close to the boy and he wanted to make sure that the brat didn’t scream at the sight of him. Poison the nurse? Same problem.
So instead he went for the most obvious solution – make Seaworth think that they had to get to a port at once. The first thing he’d done that night was to creep below and replace the chain for the pump – even a relatively new ship worked enough in open seas to let in a little water, forcing the crew to man the pump once or twice a day – with one that was old and worn and which would break easily. That was the first part. The second part of the plan was about to be carried out by him right now – sneaking into the bow and carefully arranging for the windlass for the starboard anchor to fail, making the ship lose the anchor itself. With a busted pump and only one anchor left, and with Seaworth being a good sailor, they’d have to find port quickly.
He was quite pleased with himself as he crept up to the windlass and inspected it. It was a cloudy night at the middle of the watch, so there was little if any chance of him being seen. He’d opened a small hatch to one side, which he’d slide into the moment that the windlass failed and the anchor-chain went roaring out of the side of the ship. It would be noisy to say the least.
Pulling out his knife he paused as he looked at the bloody thing. Now, how to do this? Perhaps… and then he felt a thin sharp blade being placed on the side of his neck. He froze.
“I’ve been sailing these many years,” a voice said from behind him in low tones that came straight from Flea Bottom. Fuck. Seaworth. “And I have sailed with a great many men. Some were scoundrels and some were good men. And I soon learnt to pick out the scoundrels by their eyes. The moment I saw you, I knew that I were looking at a scoundrel.”
Mikon was about to jerk away from the knife and use his own on the man when he saw the other shadows walking towards him. “Drop the knife. Or I’ll slice your throat clean open.” Steel glittered in the light of the moon, which chose that moment to break through the clouds and he sighed and then slowly threw the knife away.
“Now then,” Seaworth said as the others arrived and pulled his hands behind his back, “Let us talk of what you were trying to do – and in whose name you were doing it. And unless you want to swim from hereon, I would advise you to tell us all.”
Jory
He came awake the moment that someone knocked at the door to his small cabin, his hand reaching for the knife under the thin pillow in his bunk. He’d been on edge for the past day, he knew not why. Then he focussed his eyes. No danger nearby. “Come in,” he croaked.
The door creaked open and Ser Davos peered in. “Ah, good, you’re awake. May I come in?”
“Of course Ser Davos.” He sat up and blinked at him. Then he caught the look on the face of the other man. “What’s wrong?”
The older man grabbed a stool and jammed it against the wall behind him, before sitting. “We took on a few men at king’s Landing. After we set sail I realised that one of them was a bad ‘un. Something was wrong with him. And I was right. Tonight we found him creeping towards one of the anchors after disabling the chain pump. He gave up at once when my lads and I captured him.”
Jory frowned. “Have you questioned him?”
Ser Davos smirked slightly. “Oh yes. Man has a very active imagination, which helps when you can hold up a knife and then hint at things.” He held up his foreshortened hand and wiggled his fingers, before sobering. “His plan was to have the ship seek aid at the Fingers, where he was going to set fire to something, knife you and then escape with the little lordling.”
Jory stared at the other man in shock. “Who is this blackguard?”
“Name’s Mikon. He does a King’s Landing accent quite well, but there’s Vale in there and a bit of Riverlands as well. He comes over as a rogue and more than a blackguard, and I think that there’s a lot of blood on that knife of his. As for the question of who sent him, there we sail out into murky waters. Dangerous waters.”
There was a tone in his voice that made Jory deeply uneasy. He asked the question anyway: “Who sent him?”
Ser Davos scowled. “Lord Petyr Baelish. The Master of Coin on the Small Council. And a man that Lord Stannis trusts about as much as a rusty anchor chain.” The last sentence seemed to surprise him a little, as if he had said too much and he shook his head for a moment. “I’ll be taking this Mikon back to King’s Landing, or perhaps back to Dragonstone. Lord Stannis needs to know about this. In the meantime I’ve posted guards on your quarters as well as that of young Lord Robert. And when we get to White Harbour we should talk at once to Lord Wyman Manderly. I think that you might need a stronger escort on your road to Winterfell.”
He thought this through and then nodded. “Thank you Ser Davos, I agree with everything you have said. I gave my word to Lord Arryn that I would get his son to Winterfell and I will welcome any help that can be given.”
Ser Davos nodded and then stood. “I will let you know what-”
And then he was interrupted as the door banged open and a furious Annah barged in. “Ser Davos! There you are! Your guard is all elbows and knees, like a young colt! He came barging in to my quarters, asked a lot of questions about if I’d talked to a man called Mikon and then he knocked the jar with young Lord Robert’s medicine over. We’ve lost half of it – we’ll need more if we are to get to Winterfell!” After a moment she seemed to notice Jory and blushed slightly. “Your pardon Jory Cassel.”
Jory smiled awkwardly whilst Ser Davos sighed. “I am sorry for that Annah. I know of an apothecary in White Harbour who should be able to replenish your stock of medicine. Do you know what it is?”
“No,” she said thoughtfully, “Lady Arryn had it made up by someone in The Vale. But surely an apothecary will be able to work out what it is?”
“I am certain that the man I know in White Harbour will be able to ascertain it,” Ser Davos said confidently. “Now if you will pardon me I have go back on deck.” And he stamped out, a thoughtful look on his face.
Jory looked at Annah for a moment. She was plain but there was something about her that attracted him for some reason that he did not understand. She looked back at him and then she seemed to recall where she was, before curtseying slightly and then leaving.
As she left he sighed and then stood up to get dressed. He had no doubt that he had a lot to plan once they got to White Harbour. And plenty to worry about before they even got there.
Theon
He heard the sound of the rowers first as he awoke. Slow and steady. Then he felt the lurch. A boat. He was on a boat? He had to wake up. He needed to open his eyes. But doing so seemed to take an age, as each eyelid was heavy, so very heavy. When he finally opened his eyes he then almost wished that he had not.
He was slumped at the end of a longboat with a furled sail. In front of him cloaked and hooded figures were at the rowlocks, fifty or so of them, two to each oar and all rowing slowly but in perfect unison. Theon peered at them, but could see nothing under their hoods, the shadows being too deep. He looked around. There was a shore in the distance, but not one that he recognised. There were trees. Ahead the sun was setting, deepening the shadows and… there was an island ahead. But the more he looked at it the deeper his foreboding became. There was something wrong with that black shape, but he could not say why.
He shook his head slowly and then frowned. His limbs felt heavier than lead, his head seemed to be stuffed with wool. And then he saw that he was wearing armour. There was a kracken on his chest. He almost smiled for a moment – and then he frowned. There was something wrong with it. The limbs were too thin, the body too twisted. It looked like a mockery of a kracken.
And then he noticed the smell. A sickly stench of rot and death. He looked about wildly. Where was it coming from? The sea was too calm, there was no wind. What was giving off that stench? He looked ahead at the island again. It was closer and it still felt so terribly wrong.
Something creaked behind him and he turned. There was another figure at the tiller, hooded and cloaked like the others. As he watched the figure gazed at the course it was keeping the longboat on and then looked down at him. And it terrified him.
It took him two tries but eventually he unstuck his tongue from the roof of his very dry mouth and then looked ahead. The island was closer now – black and desolate, bereft of life. “Steer away from there,” he croaked. “Death lies on that island.” And the moment that the words left his mouth he knew that it was true.
But the rowers kept to their slow steady work and the figure on the tiller remained steady on the course. The smell of death was stronger now and he looked at the other coastline. Weirwood trees. He could see them clearly. “Steer for the coast. Away from that island!”
The rowers paused slightly before resuming their work. Theon turned back to the tiller. “Obey my orders! Steer away from the island!”
The hooded man looked at him. “Why?” The word was asked in a voice that sounded like rotted leather crumbling. There was something oddly familiar about it.
“Death is on that island! Turn the tiller! Make for the trees!”
The figure turned back to the view ahead. “No.”
Trembling in every limb Theon stood on shaking legs. “I am Theon Greyjoy, the son of Balon Greyjoy! You must obey me!”
The rowers finally paused – but to laugh. It was a noise that sounded like a cross between gurgling and wheezing and he looked at them in horror at the sound. The stench of death was growing and he had a sudden nasty feeling that some of it was coming from them. He turned back to the figure behind him and then noticed that one of its hands was visible. It was black with rot. And then as he watched that hand reached up and pulled its hood off. The face that emerged was a dead as the hand, black in places green in others. There was a terrible wound along one temple. Rodrik. It was Rodrik.
“But you’re dead.”
Theon whispered the words but the terrible figure in front of him simply smiled through a mouth of cracked and broken teeth. “What is dead may never die. And you cannot give me orders, little brother.”
“Nor me.” The new voice came from behind him and Theon stumbled around to see Maron sitting on the nearest bench. He too was a living corpse.
“I am dreaming,” Theon breathed as he looked around. And then the men at the benches resumed their rowing, the long oars going back and forwards as they cut through the still water.
“Are you sure?” Rodrik hissed at him. He seemed almost amused.
“I am!” Theon shouted. “You are dead and this is a dream!”
The black hand on the tiller swept around and hit him on the side of the face, broken nails scoring bloody lines. He reeled away, clutching at the wound. “Are you sure, little brother?”
He steeled himself and then turned back. Dream or not, there was danger here. He felt it deep within his heart. “Turn away from the island.”
“Why?”
“There is death there.”
A shrug. “Death is but a doorway. It holds no terrors for me.”
“I am not dead though. And I choose the other shore.”
Rodrik stared at him with what appeared to be total contempt. “The other shore? You speak like a Greenlander, all soft and wet. You are supposed to be Ironborn, like we are.”
Theon bristled. “I am Ironborn. And I chose that other shore.”
Another shrug. “Why?”
“I want to live.” Theon looked at the island again. It was still black and desolate, but he could see now that there was something on the nearest shore, something he could not see clearly yet. “And there is death on that island.”
“You are Ironborn, boy,” Maron shouted at him as he rowed. “Call yourself a Greyjoy? Father will never take you as an heir.”
“Turn to the shore!” Theon bellowed the words. Whatever was on the shore was closer and clearer now. Something on a mound? And then the boat lurched slightly. He looked at the water and then flinched. Corpses. They were rowing through corpses. Some naked, others dressed. Some in their smallclothes and some in armour. And all of their eyes were open and seemed to be looking at him.
“No,” said Rodrik, with deepening contempt. “I will not. This is the Old Way, boy. This is the way of the Drowned God.”
“This is nothing but death,” Theon croaked at he looked at the water again. “Just death.”
“Everything has a price,” shouted Maron. “And death is the best price of all.”
Something creaked and Theon looked about wildly. Was the longboat safe? And then he saw that Rodrik was staring at him oddly. “Why are you so intent on reaching that shore?” His dead brother asked the question in a low, vicious voice. “Why? There are Weirwood trees there.”
“Because the shore is safe!” Theon shouted desperately. He looked back at the island again. Yes, there was something on the mound. A throne? And a slumped figure on it?
“Safe? Why safe? Why the Weirwood? Are you that much of a Greenlander now?”
“Turn this boat to the shore!”
“I will not!” Rodrik roared at him, as his skin rippled and flaked. There was something under it, something foul and the smell increased to the point where Theon wanted to turn his head and void his guts, but he dared not. Rodrik glared at him – and then stared at the mast. “You!” he screamed the word out loud and Theon looked at him in bafflement. “No! What have you done?”
The mast rippled for a moment and then Theon gasped as it changed colour, turning as white as the trunk of a Weirwood tree. What had to be done, said a voice that was not a voice. Leave the boy alone.
“Weakling!” Rodrik screamed, but who Theon did not know.
Come to the Heart Tree, Theon Greyjoy, the voice breathed in his ear, and Theon turned and instinctively darted for the mast. He heard Rodrik scream again in rage, gabbling something about stopping the boy, and as he ran he saw rotted hands reaching for him. He kicked out and punched any that came near him, sending bits of bones and sinew and dead skin flying, before placing a hand in the mast. The wood rippled again and then a face appeared in it, the face of the Heart Tree at Winterfell. The eyes opened, displaying red orbs that seemed to bore into his very soul and then the mouth smiled at him. Welcome, Theon Greyjoy. We knew your ancestors.
Theon came awake in his bed at Winterfell, screaming. And when he felt the pain on his face and ran a hand on it he saw blood.
Jon Snow
There was something in the air when he broke his fast in the morning. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was a faint air of tension over Father, who tore his bread apart with a slight scowl on his face. Jon watched him carefully but then eventually shrugged internally and moved on to his own bread and honey, whilst he mulled over whether or not to have extra piece of black pudding. Rodrik Cassel would be talking to him about strategy today and he knew that his brain would need extra food.
And then Theon Greyjoy came in and everyone stared. He looked terrible, hollow-eyed and tired, as if he hadn’t had any sleep. And then there were the thin bloody lines down the right hand side of his face. Jon really stared at that. Had someone attacked him? Was that what had Father on edge? No – surely Father would have been far angrier if that had happened, and if Theon had attacked someone then he would have looked more hangdog. Instead he looked exhausted and faintly bewildered, as if he had been thinking very hard about something.
Father leant forwards. “Theon? What happened?”
The Greyjoy started slightly and then looked up from his perusal of his own piece of black pudding, like a man contemplating a dangerous risk. “What? Oh, my face. I don’t know Lord Stark. I woke up from… this terrible dream and my face was bloody.”
The various Starks along the table looked at each other, shrugged and then went back to eating. “Must have been quite some dream,” Robb joshed lightly, and then stopped when he saw the look on Theon’s face. “What did you dream of?”
“My brothers,” Theon said distractedly as he pushed at the black pudding with a knife and then frowned at it. “Only they were dead. I was in a boat filled with dead men rowing. I’ve never had a dream like that before. It was… terrible. There was danger ahead. Great danger. And the sea… was full of corpses.”
Jon looked up at that – and then stopped eating when he saw the look on the faces of Father and Robb, who had both gone very still in that uniquely Stark manner that came over them when absorbing news. Bad news at that. “Go on,” Robb said thickly. “What else?”
“I tried to give orders to change direction to the other shore, the safer shore, but Rodrik didn’t listen. He slashed my face.” He smiled mirthlessly. “Some dream – I must have clawed at my own face as I slept.” Then he paused. “The mast,” he said eventually. “It turned into a Hearts Tree. And the eyes opened. There was this… voice. It saved me from Rodrik and the others.” He shook his head like a dog shaking off water and then speared his piece of black pudding. “Your pardon. I’m rambling. Just a dream.”
Father and Robb had gone completely white now and Lady Catelyn had also turned pale. Sansa and Bran were frowning and even Arya had noticed that something seemed to be wrong. Rickon on the other hand was busy making his porridge wobble now that all the grown-ups were distracted.
Theon took a bite out of his black pudding and then realised that Father and Robb were staring at him. “What? It was just a dream.”
Father stood up, brushing the crumbs from his beard. “Theon, come to my solar at once. Robb, you too. Cat – can you join us there.”
“Of course Ned,” Lady Catelyn said distractedly, before noticing what Rickon was doing. “Sweetling, eat it, don’t play with it. You’ll make a mess.”
Rather bewildered Theon stood and joined Father and Robb as they strode out of the room. Jon watched them go with a frown. Something was very wrong.
Robb
After Theon finished telling of his dream, a silence filled Father’s solar. He welcomed that silence as it gave him a chance to reorder his scattered thoughts. By the look on his face Father was doing the same thing, whilst Mother was looking at Theon as if she had never seen him before. As for Theon he still looked bewildered.
After a moment Father stood up and then walked over to Theon and closely examined the thin bloody lines on his face. When he straightened up again his face was set. “Theon, I’d like you to see Maester Luwin today to have him look at that.”
“Lord Stark, I’m fine, I must have flailed in my sleep and-”
“I insist. That wound… it is not right Theon. Something jagged did that, and your nails are not torn.” Robb looked at Theon’s hand and then nodded to himself. Father was right. And Father now sat back and looked intently at Theon. After a while he sighed slightly.
“Theon, I’m guessing that you’ve never had a dream like that before, have you?”
The Heir to Pyke shook his head, looking increasingly troubled.
And then Father stood and poured some wine into a cup before giving it to Theon. “Drink this.”
Theon sniffed it appreciatively and then looked up with a frown. “It’s rather early Lord Stark and-”
“You’ve been touched by the Old Gods, young man. The Old Gods themselves. And that wound you bear – I think that was a parting gift from the Drowned God.”
There was a long moment of silence and then Theon drained the cup with a trembling hand before he could spill any. And then he coughed violently, perhaps from having breathed in at the wrong moment. When he stopped he looked back at Father in deep shock. “The… the Old Gods?”
“Aye,” Father said quietly. “Your ancestors worshipped them a long time ago, in the time of the First Men, before they crossed the sea to Pyke and the Iron Islands. Where the Drowned God came from is… well, that’s a tale I care not to know much about.”
There was another pause whilst Theon’s face ran through a range of emotions, starting with horror and ending with confusion. “Yes, but… the Old Gods… I thought that…”
“Theon,” Robb said gently, “I have been touched by them too. And Father. That’s a tale for another day – but you are not alone in this. Whatever this is.”
Theon Greyjoy looked at him in some shock. And then he frowned. “That was what was wrong with you that morning, wasn’t it?”
“Aye,” Robb said gently. “But as I said, that is a tale for another day. Because what I have seen is… darker than this day.”
This bought him a doubtful look from Theon, and a roll of the eyes. “Darker that a longboat full of dead men?” Theon asked with a slight smirk.
“Darker than that,” Robb said flatly and the smirk vanished from Theon’s face.
“A tale for later,” Mother said with a quaver in her voice. “Much later.”
Theon seemed to absorb this and then stood. “Then by your leave Lord Stark I must go and think on this.” he paused. “May I go to the Godswood?”
“You may,” Father sighed. “And if you have any further dreams, please let us know Theon. Especially of Heart Trees or the Old Gods. Much… much rides on this. More than you might think.”
Theon drew himself up and nodded formally to them all, before walking out, closing the door behind him.
“Well,” Father said eventually, “That was something of a shock was it not?”
“It was,” Robb replied thoughtfully. “In… my memories Theon never gave any signs of any such dream, nor was he marked like that. This is… well, new.”
“But is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Mother asked thoughtfully.
“Good!” Father said forcefully. “We are changing what happened. And in the case of Theon… well, the Old Gods have touched him. Changed him perhaps. We must see what happens with him. I do not yet trust him, but if the Old Gods have touched him… mmm, I must think on this.”
There was a knock on the door of the solar and Father looked over at it. “Enter.”
The door opened to reveal Maester Luwin, who was escorting the ancient Maester Aemon. “Ah,” Father said quietly. “Maesters. Thank you for coming. Robb, could you please find Jon and ask him to come here? We have… something to discuss with him.”
Chapter Text
Jon Snow
He liked sitting the Godswood in front of the Hearts Tree. It was… quiet. Peaceful. Still. He could pray in the morning and then return to think about life in general.
So he’d been rather surprised to discover Theon Greyjoy sitting in front of the Hearts Tree that morning. Very surprised indeed. The squid was just staring at the tree with a look that combined astonishment, confusion and deep uncertainty. They traded looks for a moment, before Greyjoy nodded slightly at him and then stood and wandered away.
Jon watched him go with a slight frown. Something was wrong with that squid, he didn’t know what it was but he was sure that Father and Robb knew what it was. He considered the matter from as many angles as possible for a moment and then he shrugged and bent his head in prayer.
When he lifted his head again he saw Robb standing quietly to one side. “Father needs to see you at once,” he said quietly. “In his Solar.”
Jon nodded silently and then walked off. He’d had a feeling that something was wrong for these past few days. Something had been hanging in the air, something had been unsaid by Father whenever they had met, he knew it.
When he got to Father’s Solar he was surprised though. Lady Catelyn was standing at the window and turned to give him a strained smile. And Maester Aemon was sitting by the side of Father’s desk, which was laden with books and papers about the Old Gods and The Others. As for Father himself, he was standing by the fireplace, his face sombre and his hands behind his back. There was a strained expression on his face, something that made Jon pause, before closing the door behind him.
All of a sudden he felt the tension in the air, thick and heavy. He just didn’t know why it was there. Was Father going to drop a hint about him joining the Night’s Watch? No – that would not have been like Father at all. Besides it would have been him hinting at it to Father rather than the other way around.
“Sit down please Jon,” Father said quietly. “I need to talk to you.”
Jon nodded and then sat, but then had to wait as Father frowned at the floor, the wall behind him, the door, Lady Catelyn, the floor again and finally at him. “Father,” Jon said quietly, “Have I done something wrong?”
A small snort escaped Father’s lips, whilst Maester Aemon smiled slightly and Lady Catelyn shook her head with a sigh. “No, Jon,” Father sighed eventually. “This is not about anything that you have done. This is about who you are.”
Jon looked at Father, confused. “Who I am? I’m sorry Father, what do you mean?”
Father looked at him somberly. “Jon, I am sorry. This is something that I have put off for far too long. But I was afraid. I was burdened with a secret and an oath I swore not long after you were born. The oath your mother made me swear.”
His… mother? Jon’s head swam for a moment. Father was talking about his mother? The mother that he had always wondered about, always worried about. Always feared that… she might be dead. Dread pooled at the bottom of his stomach, nauseating him for a long moment.
Father sighed and then stared him in the eye. “You have to understand something Jon. It has always been my intention to keep you safe. That was why I have never spoken of your mother before. Because – her identity had be a secret if you were to be kept safe.
“Jon – you are a Stark. No-one should ever doubt that. But – and I am sorry for this blow, as it must be a bitter one, but as I said I had to keep you safe – I am not your father.”
Jon stared at Father in shock as the ground seemed to fall to pieces beneath him and plunge him into an ocean of cold water that he never even suspected was there before. “I don’t…” he paused to try and clear his suddenly dry throat. “I don’t understand,” he finally croaked. “Please Father – I don’t understand. How can I be Stark if I am not your son?”
Father sighed yet again and then pulled his chair over and clasped Jon’s hand. “Because you are a Stark. You are my nephew Jon. I would be very proud to call you my son, but you are in fact my nephew.”
He looked at Father in confusion for a long moment, his brain racing. “Your… nephew? But… why would you want to keep me secret and safe…” Horror suddenly stole over him and he stared at Lady Catelyn. “I cannot be the son of Uncle Brandon can I?”
But Father shook his head. “No,” he said sadly. “You are not the son of Brandon.” He took a deep breath. “You are the son of my sister. Lyanna.”
An image flashed though his face, the image of Aunt Lyanna’s statue in the catacombs. He’d always been fascinated by that statue, by that face. The face of the woman whose abduction by Prince Rhaegar had started the War of Robert’s Rebellion. Had led to the downfall of the Targaryens. “You mean that… my mother has always been in the catacombs?” He croaked the question that was laden with shock and he saw Lady Catelyn look at him with shock of her own in her eyes – and then sudden tears.
Father leant forwards. “Yes, and I am so sorry Jon. But her last request to me – her dying request to me – was that I should keep you safe. That meant pretending that you were my son. There was no other way that I could honour your mother’s final request.” He released his hands then slumped back in his seat. “She was dying. Birth fever. At a place called the Tower of Joy, on the border between the Stormlands and Dorne. She was guarded by three members of the Kings Guard. There were seven of us. Seven fought against three. Only two survived. Myself and Howland Reed. I found you and your mother in one of the rooms in the tower. The fools hadn’t found a midwife for your mother. She might be alive if they had.”
Silence filled the room for a moment before Jon finally thought things through. “Wait – my Aunt Lyanna is – was – my mother, then who was my father?”
Lord Eddard Stark looked around the room and then looked back at Jon – who had finally made that final connection. “My father is…. Rhaegar Targaryen?” He blurted the words in utter horror. “The son of the Mad King?”
“Yes,” Father said sombrely. “He was. And… he was not his father. You have to understand that. His reasons were his own and we’ll never know why he did what he did, but he was not mad.”
“But you’re saying that I’m part Targaryen,” Jon mumbled in horror. “That my grandfather was… the Mad King!”
“Listen to me Jon Snow,” Maester Aemon said as he leant forwards slightly and held out a pointed finger in emphasis. “It is said that when a Targaryen is born the Gods flip a coin to decide if they be sane or not. That is a lie, but there is just enough truth attached to the edges of it to make it sound true. Yes, Aerys was mad. Driven mad by his burden, by his past, by his own throne. But not all Targaryens were – are – mad.” He sat back. “And old as I am, I should know.”
Jon stared at the old man. Yes, he knew the he was the Maester of Castle Black and that his name was Aemon, but there was something about the way that he had spoken that had gotten the hairs on the back of his neck on edge. “Who are you?”
A mirthless smile played about the lips of the old man for a moment. “My father was Maekar, the First of his Name. My brother Aegon reigned after him, when I had refused the throne, and he was eventually followed by his grandson Aerys, whom they called the Mad King.”
Jon swallowed. “You are Aemon Targaryen,” he said wonderingly. “You refused the Iron Throne and took the Black.”
“I did what I thought was right, just as your uncle has done the same to keep you safe. There are many men who would have killed you for your blood Jon Snow. Never forget that. And never forget that although you are half Stark you are also half Targaryen, and therefore my great-great-grandnephew. And that I have memories of my father and brother being good and just rulers.”
The old man smiled wearily. “I have listened carefully to you over these days that I have been here Jon Snow. And I have heard many good things about you. You remind me of my brother, Aegon. A quiet boy who wanted to help people. Do not fear your blood, Jon Snow. And do not blame Lord Stark for not telling you of your true origins.” The smile deepened. “As I said – he saved your life. And if he had not then I would not be sitting here and greeting one of my own blood.”
Jon sat there, his thoughts whirling about like a seed pod caught in a stream. “I… Father…. I mean Uncle… I have much to think about and…” He paused. “I think that I must start by continuing to call you Father, must I not?”
“It would be safer,” the Lord of Winterfell said with a sigh. And then he set his chin. “My wife has also given me some advice about you. I will write to the King and ask him to make you a Stark. It is what Lyanna would have wanted. It will protect you again, but it will also bind you closer to Winterfell – as if that was ever necessary.”
And this was something that shocked even more than the fact that he now knew that he was the grandson of the Mad King. To be a Stark in name instead of a Snow… and to owe it to Lady Catelyn, who he knew had never liked him… He opened his mouth, closed it again and then felt such a look of total confusion come over his face that actually sparked a laugh out of Lady Stark.
“You pardon Jon, but you reminded me of the look on my brother’s face the first time my sister hit him with a fish.” She sobered. “Jon, as a legalised bastard you would come after Rickon in the succession, or any other sons that Ned and I might have. You must realise that.”
“I would be happy just to be a Stark,” he said in a choked voice. “That would be all I would ever need. Not to be a… that word.” Tears blurred his vision and he wiped them angrily away. “Your pardon. Hay fever perhaps.”
“Mayhaps it is,” Father said with a cough and then a hasty smile. “Now – there is much I can tell you about your mother. And even some about your father.”
Jory
The day and a half that it took the Black Betha to get to White Harbour were bloody interminable, to use a word that he had once heard Old Luwin once use. The wind was brisk but there was only so much speed Ser Davos could get out of the ship. Jory spent the time watching the crew go about their business and worrying about his charge.
Fortunately he had Ser Davos himself to keep him company. The older man was quiet and calm and had a habit of speaking nothing but sense, leavened with a bit of good humour every now and then, as if he could sense just how tense Jory felt. Lord Baelish’s man Mikon seemed to be the only villain on the ship – which was not to say that the crew were made up of good men.
“Oh, some would slit your throat for the right price,” Ser Davos had told him the previous morning. “But they’re loyal to me. See, they know me. Sailed with me. Gods help them, they trust me. And for the most part they’re good lads. They’ll get us to White Harbour safe, believe me.”
And they had. Jory could see the white walls now in the distance as the ship cracked briskly along, with one of Ser Davos’s sons at the tiller as his father kept an eye on the sails. Little Robert Arryn was next to him, solemnly pointing out things like black-headed gulls and the odd strangely-shaped whitecap that reminded the boy of something funny.
That was the other thing. The boy had, well, not started the trip well. He had clung to Annah, the one person that he really knew on the ship and had spent a lot of time wailing for his mother and complaining about the smells. He’d also had one of his shaking fits, which Annah had dealt with matter-of-factly. And then Ser Davos had somehow worked his spell on the little boy. He’d been quiet and matter of fact – not gruff, just quietly informative. He’d told the little lordling what the new birds were, how the ship sailed, what at least some of the smells were (others had been glossed over), what some of the knots were called and above all some of the safer sea shanties. And young Robert Arryn had been coaxed a little out of his shell.
He looked to one side. Annah was watching Ser Davos and his stern little guest with a fond smile on her face and her arms crossed under that bosom of hers. He looked away. He had more important things than that to worry about. White Harbour awaited.
The moment that the ship tied up at the main wharf Ser Davos sent word to Lord Wyman Manderly about the identity of his passengers and within the hour an honour guard led by Ser Wendel Manderly, second son of Lord Manderly, was at the wharf, ready to escort them all to the New Castle. Ser Davos joined them for the ride up, which was fast and nervous on Jory’s part. He did not trust as easily as he had before and he knew it. Which was both a good thing and a bad thing. He needed to be alert and yet not a paranoid fool.
Lord Manderly was in the main hall and was still as huge as ever and as jolly – but Jory had always had a shrewd suspicion that there was something more to the man than just a fat jolly loyal man. And that suspicion was proved that day. Lord Manderly had welcomed the little lordling with just the right amount of deference mixed with joviality, quickly putting the tired little boy at his ease.
Whilst one of Lord Wyman’s grandchildren (the one with greenish hair for some reason) played with young Robert in the corner of the hall, Jory, Ser Davos and Annah all clustered around Lord Manderly. “Lord Stark sent word of your coming and I shall send ravens to Winterfell and King’s Landing to tell of your safe arrival,” he told them quietly. “But I was most alarmed to hear of the man on your ship Ser Davos. And you said that you had word on who this man worked for?”
Ser Davos coughed gently. “Lord Petyr Baelish,” he told the Lord of White Harbour quietly.
Lord Manderly absorbed this piece of information with a slightly raised eyebrow. “Interesting,” he said softly. “And most worrying.” He seemed to mull things over for a moment and then he nodded. “My son Ser Wendel will escort you to Winterfell with two dozen of my most trusted men. I doubt that Littlefinger has too many men here in the North but I am not going to take any chances. Not with the only heir of Lord Arryn in my hall.”
“Thank you my Lord,” Jory said, feeling a little of the worry leach away. “That would be right noble of you.”
“It would indeed Lord Manderly,” Ser Davos rumbled. “I must return to King’s Landing and report this all to Lord Stannis.”
“Please give him my regards,” Lord Manderly replied, still visibly thinking. “And tell him that I will do my duty to Lord Arryn by the escort to Winterfell. What will you do with Littlefinger’s man?”
“My sons Dale and Allard are watching over him. I trust my crew, but every port has factors and merchants and, erm-”
“Spies, Ser Davos. Spies and ne-er-do-wells. I admit that freely. Every port has them. And the Fingers are not too far away. I would be surprised if Littlefinger does not have anyone in this city in his pocket. And we shall not take that chance.”
“Your pardon my Lord,” Annah piped up, “But before we leave White Harbour we must visit an apothecary. Young Lord Robert’s medicine for his falling sickness was knocked over the voyage and half of it was lost.”
“I know of an apothecary here in White Harbour my Lord,” Ser Davos stated quietly. “I must sail on the next tide after we finish provisioning, so mayhaps we should do that at once.”
“Aye,” Lord Manderly said and then waved a hand at them. “Off with you then. Jory Cassel, please stay and guard the Young Eagle.”
Jory had little intention of letting young Robert Arryn out of his sight any time soon, but still nodded and said all the right words. He had given Lord Arryn his word that he would see his son safely to Winterfell and he would damn well keep that word. So he watched Ser Davos and Annah as they hurried out and then turned his attention back to the hall, where the little lordling was now listening sleepily to a gentle tale of boats on the sea, as told by Lord Manderly himself. He smiled as the boy slowly subsided onto his side and was then gently wrapped up in a blanket by the girl with the green hair, before Willets carefully took him to his room. Jory followed and then nodded at the man as he left, leaving him to guard the door.
He minded not the wait. He had stood guard before and he welcomed the time to think. The escort to Winterfell would be a good thing, but it would add to the complexities of the trip. Inns would have to be taken over, shelter found. The North was a hard land and any man who took travelling over it lightly was a fool. A dead fool. And so he stood and guarded and measured the distances and times that lay ahead of them with his mind.
It was just an hour or so later that he heard hurried steps to one side and he turned his head to see Willets again, with one of Lord Manderly’s men. “Lord Manderly requests your immediate presence in the hall,” the latter panted. “It is most urgent.”
Jory frowned, nodded at Willets, who assumed his place and then followed the man to the hall, where he found Ser Davos and Annah once again next to Lord Manderly. The Lord of White Harbour waved him over the moment that he noticed him. As he approached the trio he could feel the tension surrounding them. Ser Davos looked worried, Lord Manderly was scowling and Annah – well, she was straight of back, white of face and furious of countenance.
“Jory Cassel,” Lord Manderly barked as he approached, his chins wobbling, “Your counsel is needed.”
He frowned. “On what matter?”
“On… the matter of the medicine of young Robert Arryn,” Ser Davos said in a low voice. “When we reached the apothecary he said that he could discern what medicine it was with but a few sniffs. When he did so he frowned and then he sneezed and then, well, he blew his nose and accused us of some dissemblance. That the medicine was anything but.”
Jory felt his eyebrows fly up. “It is not medicine?”
“Nay,” Ser Davos said, still as quietly as before, “It is not. It is a combination of chalk and some metallic powder the name of which escapes me. The apothecary said that too much of it acts as a poison. And that over time it can provoke fits of fainting or shaking.”
Jory stared at the group in horror. His first reaction was to think that Baelish’s man Mikon had been able to replace the medicine with poison. And then his second reaction was to blink hard and then stare at Annah. “Over time it can provoke fits of fainting or shaking? Where did you get it from?”
“Lady Arryn.” Annah said the words in a cold fury. “Lady Arryn gave me the medicine. She said that it had been ‘recommended’ for her son. ‘Recommended’! I would like to meet the rogue who recommended that! Meet and geld the man!”
Jory rubbed his forehead in bewilderment. “This makes little if any sense,” he said with a groan. “Unless… someone wants Lord Arryn’s son to be dependent on that poison?”
The others looked at him and he knew that he had the right of it. “So we must stop giving him the medicine?”
“No,” said Annah with a sigh. “Apparently it is best that we diminish the dosage step by step. By the time that we reach Winterfell he should be free of it.”
“I will return to King’s Landing as soon as possible,” Ser Davos said between gritted teeth. “Lord Arryn must know of this.”
“And I will increase your escort to fifty men,” Lord Manderly said tersely. “Get that boy safe to Winterfell Jory Cassel. Get him safely there.”
Ned
His table in his solar was a mess by now. So many books and scraps of parchment, so many notes and scribbled bookmarks. So much rubbish, legends and fantasies, with facts scattered through them , or so he thought.
Luwin and Aemon also thought so however and Ned frowned thoughtfully as he looked at the great map of the North that hung on one wall. Some of the oldest references in the records referred to places that had subtly different names. And some of them referred to places that he had no idea about.
He looked at the table again and then back at the map. One of the oldest records was a fragment of a fragment of a copy of a transcription of a carving and it referred to a great siege. The Others had besieged a crag somewhere in the Western part of the North and the hints were maddening.
There was reference to ‘Ye Starke’ leading the men, to the ferocity of the fighting, to the fact that the men had to win there, and then the fact that the battle ended in the Others being utterly routed in one of the first big victories against them. Where was this place? It was just described as ‘Ye Glittering Crag’. But there was nothing in the North that had a name like that, or anything even close to it.
The nearest that he could think of was the place called ‘Stark’s Rock’, but that was nothing more than a slightly craggy hill about a day’s ride to the West. It did not look like a place where a battle could even happen, still less a siege. And why would the Others besiege a hill anyway? Luwin was still looking into it.
He sighed – and then he looked up as he heard footsteps at the doorway. Cat smiled at him as she came in, but it was not a smile that was truly happy. “Are you alright Cat?”
“Oh, I am fine,” she sighed as she sat down and then looked at the mound of papers and books on the desk. “I have just been… reflecting on things.”
He smiled slightly. “Oh,” he replied lightly, “We have had much to reflect on.”
“So I can see. Ned, this is a mess.” She drew her chair up to the table. “How can you ever find anything when it all looks like this?”
“I get by. I remember what the book looks like, or the colour of the parchment.” A sigh of his own escaped his lips. “Cat, so much has been lost. All we have are… fragments. Bits and pieces.” He leant over, picked up an old book and carefully opened it to one page. “I mean, according to this one of the first Starks in Winterfell was known as the Lawgiver and had something called ‘ye Fiste of Winter’. The writer must have known what that was, but I’ve never heard of it.”
“Nor have I,” Cat muttered as she looked at one of the open books. Then she paled slightly. “Tales of these… wights… are terrible. And yet you will have to fight them?”
“I will,” Ned replied grimly. “And win. I will have to Cat. The Others cannot be allowed South of the Wall. Nor can the Wildlings. But the issue of how to deal the Wildlings has been vexing me. They would make an excellent addition to the garrison of the Wall, but they have fought the Night’s Watch for so long that they cannot be allies. And besides – what would they ask of me? To settle in the Gift? Or the New Gift? The Lords in the North would set up a wail of horror that would strike ravens dead in the sky.”
Ned shook his head tiredly. “We have so much to do and so little time. So very little time. If Robb had returned a year ago then it would still not be enough time. I could have sent more help to the Wall. The Old Bear has already written to say that even just the small number of extra men and construction materials that I have sent to him has been enough to think about reopening Oakenshield. But they need more.
“We need the resources of the South. We need Lannister gold and wheat from the Reach. We need the knights of the vale and the infantry of the Stormlands and Dorne. Men, horses, steel, food, supplies of all sorts. Ships as well.”
Cat looked at him and then nodded slowly. And then she smiled slightly. “It sounds like you need King Robert and his Warhammer.”
“I know,” Ned said and then smiled suddenly. “I know exactly what he’d say about all this research though! Something like: ‘Ned just tell me what needs killing!’ And then he’d go and kill it.” He thought back to The Trident and Robert’s uncontrollable fury on seeing Rhaegar. “But how do we even kill one of the Others?”
“The books don’t say?”
“As I said, nothing but fragments and legends. How long has it been since they were last seen? How long has it been since one of them was killed?” He shrugged, feeling a bitter sense of despair wash over him.
Cat looked at him worriedly and then frowned slightly at the books and papers on the desk. “Ned, is any of this from the Mountain Clans?”
“Some of it. Nothing has arrived yet from the more Northerly clans.”
She nodded, still frowning slightly. “What of other Houses that are descended from the First Men? Ones in the South I mean?”
Startled he looked at her. “I never thought about the South. Bronze Yohn might have records in Runestone – that’s one of the oldest fortresses of the First Men. I’ll have Luwin send a raven at once.”
But as he turned to the door he was forestalled by the sudden arrival of Maester Luwin himself. “My Lord, I beg pardon for my intrusion. There is a party of horsemen approaching the gates. They bear the banners of the Last Hearth. The banners of Lord Umber – and he leads them himself.”
Ned frowned. The GreatJon? Here?
Theon
Once Robb and Jon were gone he went back to the Heart Tree. It fascinated him. And it also terrified him. The very thought that the Old Gods were… watching him, had touched him in some way was… well…
Theon shook his head in confusion. He was Ironborn. He was a Greyjoy of Pyke. He worshipped the Drowned God, even though doing so in Winterfell was difficult. But the Old Gods… Why had they touched him? “Welcome, Theon Greyjoy. We knew your ancestors.” Those words were now seared across his heart. He’d always known that he had First Men amongst his ancestors but he’d never really thought about which gods they had worshipped. The thought that they had worshipped the Old Gods was… a troubling one.
But that dream… he felt the marks on his face gingerly. And they really terrified him. He didn’t think that he had scratched himself in his sleep. Maester Luwin had peered at the lines with a puzzled expression and then picked something out of one of them. A fragment of fingernail he said.
Theon looked at his hands. His nails were short but intact. No, something else had left that mark. Something… dark. Something that he couldn’t understand.
He stared at the Heart Tree. The face on the mast in his dream had been just like this one and he reached out with a hesitant hand to trace the face. He didn’t know what to expect as his fingers touched the bark, but nothing happened. It was just a tree. There were no gods here. But he felt himself shiver for a moment, feeling cold for an instant. He looked at the face again and for a moment, just the faintest fleeting moment, he thought that he could see a flash of red from the mouth.
Theon backed away from the tree, shaking with fear. A gust of wind blew through the Godswood for a moment and as the hairs on the back of his neck stood up on end he took a step back. The wind almost sounded like a voice for a moment, a voice saying words that he couldn’t quite make out.
He was still trembling when he left the Godswood. He had the oddest feeling that he had been warned, that something had touched him for some reason that he did not understand. And he felt something else. Troubled. He was Ironborn. He belonged to the Drowned God. Didn’t he?
Ned
The party from Last Hearth consisted of twenty men and a waggon, all lead by a tall man on a large horse who was giving orders to his men in a loud booming voice. GreatJon Umber was a man who was larger than life in almost every way.
When he laid eyes on Ned he paused and then bowed formally. “Lord Stark.”
“Lord Umber,” Ned replied, feeling a little puzzled. This was oddly formal for the GreatJon.
But then the big man grinned. “That enough of the formal bit?”
Ned nodded and then GreatJon roared with laughter and enveloped him a bear hug. “Ned! Good to see you again!”
He laughed and slapped the big man on the back as he released him. “Good to see you GreatJon. What brings you to Winterfell though?”
The GreatJon let out an explosive sigh and then jerked a thumb at the waggon. “You asked for records on the Others. I’ve brought everything I could from the Last Hearth.” The normal jovial smile that was on his face was gone. “Ned I need to talk to you. It’s important.”
Ned looked at the huge man. Yes, this was important. When the Umbers were serious then something was deadly important. “Very well, let’s go to my solar. I’ll get Luwin to attend to the records you’ve brought. Aemon as well.”
“Maester Aemon?” the GreatJon replied, his bushy eyebrows flying upwards. “From the Wall?”
“Aye. He brought records from Castle Black.”
The GreatJon absorbed this and then frowned, before taking a saddlebag off the rear of his own horse carefully, as if it contained something precious. “We definitely need to talk then Ned.” He paused. “And do you have any ale?”
Ale was indeed available for the GreatJon and once he had quaffed his first mug of it he sat in Ned’s solar and peered at the desk in some bemusement whilst cradling his second one in his hands. The saddlebags were at his side. “That’s a lot of research Ned. Sorry that I’m adding to it.”
“Don’t be sorry. Now – what’s so urgent.”
The GreatJon sighed and then looked down at the floor of the solar for a long moment. When he looked up his voice was very quiet by his standards. “Ned, why are you asking about the Others?”
That was a good question and Ned sank into his own chair. “GreatJon, there is a long story attached to that question.”
“You think that they have returned, don’t you?”
Startled, Ned looked at his old friend, who stared levelly back at him. “I’m not a fool, Ned,” GreatJon rumbled with a slight smile that quickly vanished. “Wildling raids are worse than I’ve ever known them. And the Night’s Watch is weaker than it’s ever been. The Gift is all but abandoned and my men fend off raids by parties of wildlings almost every month. The prisoners say that death marches on the Wall. And the word from Eastwatch-by-the-Sea is that even the Skagosi are getting raided – and if even they’re getting visits from the Wildlings then they must be either mad or desperate. Something is pushing them South. Something terrible.”
Ned stared at the GreatJon for a long moment. No, he was no fool. But there was something else about the man. There was a look in his eyes that took him aback, something dark and haunted. “Yes,” he said eventually. “They have returned. And the tale of how I know is… a dark one.”
The GreatJon held up a hand. “You are the Stark in Winterfell,” he rumbled. “Of all the men in the North you are the one that would know if they had returned.” There was something in his voice that troubled Ned. A note of ironclad certainty. He was used to being trusted, but the GreatJon seemed to think that the Starks would have known at once about the return of the Others.
He was about to open his mouth and ask about that when the huge man straightened almost formally in his chair. “I need to do this properly, or my ancestors will kick my arse from here to the Wall when I die. Right. Lord Stark, I, Lord Umber of the Last Hearth, do hereby inform you that the Hearthstone has changed colour and that my watch over it has therefore ended.”
He looked at Ned. Ned looked back at him, baffled. “What?”
GreatJon looked troubled. “Did I say it wrong Ned?”
“Say what wrong?”
“About the Hearthstone!”
“GreatJon I have not the faintest bloody idea what you’re talking about. What’s the Hearthstone?”
Ned had seen a great many expressions on the face of GreatJon Umber before. Amusement. Shock. Blind rage. Puzzlement. But never had he ever seen such a look of utter shock from his old friend. “What?” The Lord of the Last Hearth asked the word in a very small and horrified voice. “You don’t know what… the Hearthstone is?”
“No,” Ned said through clenched teeth. “I do not. Damn it GreatJon, what is it?”
“I don’t understand. You’re the Stark in Winterfell! Your father would have told you! On the day you came of age!”
A horrible feeling came over Ned. “GreatJon,” he pointed out gently, “I came of age in the Vale, at the Eyrie. I was Ward to Jon Arryn. When I returned to Winterfell my father was dead.” A memory tickled the back of his mind. “Brandon. Brandon must have known. Lyanna wrote to me that our brother had been troubled the day after he came of age, that he had been here, in what was then Father’s solar, for most of the day.”
The GreatJon groaned and then threw most of the remaining ale straight down his throat. “Fuck me,” he said bitterly. “I never thought of that. I never bloody thought of that. My father told me on the day I came of age. I thought that your father had done too. Damn Aerys fucking Targaryen. Damn him to the lowest level of the darkest hell that exists.”
There was a depressed pause, before the Lord of the Last Hearth passed a hand over his face and then smoothed his beard. “Right then. Bugger it, I never thought I’d have to tell you all this, I thought that you’d have known about it, although what I know is bloody little. Right. Ned, there are three oaths that every Umber of the Last Hearth must swear on the day he comes of age. The first is loyalty to the Stark in Winterfell. The second is to protect the crag that the Last Hearth is built on, even at the cost of our own lives. And the third is to guard the Hearthstone. To watch over it, no matter what happens.” He shuddered and then looked around for the jug of ale that Ned had gotten for him.
“Bloody thing gives me the creeping horrors every time I look at it,” he muttered as he reached over and poured himself another mug. “All I know is that just before the Last Hearth was build one of your ancestors gave it to one of my ancestors and told him to protect it. To watch over it. To check on the bloody thing once a year, which is a duty that I’m bloody glad to be rid of. It’s not ours Ned, it’s yours.”
“What is this Hearthstone?” Ned asked thoughtfully, his mind whirling with questions about all the things that his close-mouthed father had never been able to tell him about.
The GreatJon peered owlishly at him and then reached down into the saddlebags, from which he pulled out a small bag, which in turn contained a small box made of… stone? It had a lid and it also had runes on the outside and the GreatJon was holding it as gingerly as if it was made of glass. Or as if it was a viper from Dorne.
“Every year I’ve opened this box and looked inside,” the GreatJon rumbled. “It’s always been black as coal. Blacker than…” he paused, visibly hunting for words. “Blacker than night. It was like there was a hole in the box. And then your raven arrived asking for information about the Others, and the news of the latest Wildling raid came in and… I thought about the Hearthstone. I don’t know what it is Ned, that’s been lost. I don’t know what it does, I don’t even know what it’s made from. All I know – all that was passed on from my forefathers – was that if it ever changed colour then we had to bring it to the Stark in Winterfell. As I have now done.”
Ned nodded slowly. “That’s all you know?”
“That’s all I bloody know Ned. My forefathers might have known more, but over the years that might have been stripped away by time and death.” He held put the box. “Please take it Ned. Every member of my family has always hated the fucking thing. We’ve always kept it at the lowest level of the Last Hearth, in the old tunnels. It belongs to the Starks, not to us. I have no idea why your ancestors told mine to look over it. Perhaps because we were loyal. Last loyal hearth before the wall, that’s what your ancestors named our hold. And that’s the name we took for it.”
Ned sighed and then reluctantly took it. The box was cold to the touch and there something about it that made the hairs on the back of his arm stand up. He opened the box carefully and then peered into it. Inside he could see a small round stone, the size of the last joint of his thumb. It looked worn and old, very old. There might have been a rune carved onto the top of it. And it was a murky green colour, not black at all.
“What am I supposed to do with this?”
The GreatJon shifted uneasily. “When I saw that it had changed colour I… touched it. We’ve supposed to do that every year as well. Last time it gave me a hell of a bloody headache. My father told me that all he ever saw after touching it was black spots. But after it changed colour… Ned, I saw the Wall. And something else.” He swallowed. “The dead, Ned. Marching on the Wall. Almost pissed me breeches, seeing something like that.”
Ned looked at him sharply. “You had a vision of the Wall?”
“Aye,” the other man mumbled, taking another gulp of ale. Then he looked at Ned curiously. “You don’t seem that surprised by that, Ned.”
“I’ve had one myself. From the Old Gods.”
The GreatJon stared at him, this time in awe. “The Old Gods? Really Ned?”
“Aye, and I know what you mean about wanting to piss your breeches.” He peered back into the box and then took a deep breath and picked it up. It felt surprisingly warm in his hand and he weighed it in the palm of his hand. Nothing felt different at all.
“Anything?” The GreatJon asked with a hint of nervousness, almost hiding behind his mug of ale.
“Nothing,” Ned replied. And then he blinked. Something felt different somehow. He shook his head slightly.
Doom
Ned looked around the room. “What was that?”
“What was what?”
Doom
“That. That noise. Like someone in the crypts is beating on a drum.”
“Ned, I feel and hear nothing like that.”
Doom Doom
His palm quivered and Ned looked down at the Hearthstone in astonishment. It seemed to be, well, beating, like a heart. And the colour was lighter. “You don’t see that?”
“See wha – Ned. Your eyes, Ned.” The GreatJon was staring at him, looking at him with awe. “They’re green. And your pupils… are red.”
Doom Doom Doom
Ned’s throat was suddenly drier than the deserts of Dorne. The Hearthstone was beating more and more, he could feel the blood thundering in his veins, a mist seemed to be descending over his vision. He opened his mouth again but then he suddenly froze. The shade of his father seemed to be standing to one side of the GreatJon all of a sudden, staring at him intently. He was mouthing something, but he couldn’t make it out. And then Brandon appeared next to him and then his grandfather, and then ghostly shade after ghostly shade, crowding the room with what must be Stark after Stark.
Doom Doom Doom Doom
And then the wall at the back of the solar seemed to crumble and he seemed to swoop through it, like a raven on the fleetest of wings. North he flew, his mind stunned as he looked down at the lands of the North as they passed far beneath him. How was this possible? What was this? A vision. And what a vision.
The Wall appeared before him and he winced at the sight. He could see the abandoned castles, he could see the neglect in the Gift, he could see the small numbers of Night’s Watch, he could almost smell the despair.
And then the Wall was behind him and the land beyond it was stretching out in front of him. He could see the Wildlings beneath him, see the giants as they rumbled and stamped over the countryside, see the mammoths. He could feel despair there as well, and hate and desperation.
Doom Doom Doom Doom Doom
Something seemed to crystallise in the air around him and suddenly he felt cold. Not the cold of the hands or the face, but the cold of the heart that indicated more than despair - absolute hate. Absolute darkness. He seemed to be heading downwards, towards a low mountain ahead of him. He could see lines in the snow ahead of it, what looked like walls that had long ago crumbled into ruin. Age hung over it, age and death. There were things patrolling around it, things that he could not see clearly and he was somehow glad of that. Closer and closer to the mountain and then suddenly he was flying straight at the ground. He wanted to fling his arms up to stop but instead he slid through the snow and ice, the earth and stone. Down he went, bewildered, and then out into a great hall, where he finally slowed.
That hall was dark, lit only by shards of light coming from somewhere far above him. It was covered in ice and snow, a barren hall with only a dais towards one end, where a figure sat in a throne made from ice and bone. There were… things in the dark areas of the hall, things that might once have been human, but which were now not and as he looked at them they seemed to feel his gaze and mewl and wail and throw twisted arms out in an effort to hide their faces, as if they were ashamed at what they had become.
Ned drifted closer to the throne. Behind it there was a great dead tree, a mockery of a Heart Tree, with black bark and bare rotted branches, with a face carved into it that seemed to glow with a terrible blue light. And the figure on the throne… well it was human-shaped. Had been human once. Now its skin was blue and white and was dressed in old armour that seemed to almost shine dully. Its eyes were closed and a crown of horns seemed to be on its bald head and then Ned realised with a jolt of horror that the horns were growing out of its skin. He gazed at it, horrified. The face… the face almost had Stark features. The cheekbones especially. And then the figure opened its eyes.
Azure orbs they were. Bluer than the sky at midsummer. And colder than the heart of a glacier. The eyes went to him at once and he stared back, too afraid to move even if he had been able to. Bone and sinew creaked and then the figure on the throne stood and gazed at him. And then it smiled for a long moment and said something in a tongue that man had long forgotten. All he could sense was hate and cold and evil. The figure stopped talking and then smiled again – and then its hand shot out and its fingers clenched.
The air around Ned seemed to creak, but he sensed that the odd crystallising sensation he had felt earlier was protecting him, because the creaking stopped after a moment. The figure on the throne, the King of the Others, if a king he was, frowned at his hand and then clenched it again.
Once again the air creaked and groaned, but once again it seemed to meet resistance. The Other stared at him with bafflement – and then rage. It threw back its head and screamed, revealing white and fanged teeth, screamed a scream of rage and fury.
The ice in the hall shook with the sound, shards cracking and falling and some of the things in the shadows wailed and put their hands over their ears. The mockery of the Heart tree bent like it was caught in a storm, branches snapping off. The ground shook and the throne trembled and still Ned was unscathed.
And then the King of the Others ceased his scream and just looked at him, his finger coming up to point at him. The azure eyes narrowed and he peered at him as if he was committing his face to memory. And then the figure started to chant something, in a tongue that was even more alien, dark and twisted – and filled with power. Ned could feel it building – and then suddenly he was falling backwards, pulled by a wind that seemed to surround him, tumbling like a leaf caught in the wind.
On and on he flew, seeing snatches of things out of the corner of his eyes. The Wall. Castle Black. The Last Hearth. Winterfell. He was home. He wanted to be home.
He blinked and as his eyes opened again he was back in his solar, with the GreatJon still in front of him. Ned felt as weary as he ever had before and he was panting as if he had run a mile unshod. Every part of him seemed to hurt, even his hair for some reason.
“Ned!” the GreatJon was shouting at him, “Are you alright? Speak to me Ned!”
With a shaking hand he placed the Hearthstone back in the box. “They are coming for us,” he muttered through a mouth as dry as ashes. “The King of the Others is awake. They are coming.” And then he fell backwards in his chair and fainted dead away.
Chapter Text
Robb
There was so much to learn, Robb thought almost despairingly as he looked at the list of noble houses of the North. Yes, he already knew the names. But it was the complex web of details that was driving him raving mad, the links between major houses and minor houses, not to mention the histories of those houses. He knew about the revolts of the Boltons in far more detail now, but he had not known about the tensions that existed in some of the lands around them.
The knowledge had depressed him more than a bit. He knew now that he should never have trusted Roose Bolton, that the Roose Bolton’s main allegiance was to Roose Bolton first and then (perhaps) to Father, based on what they had been through in the War of Robert’s Rebellion. He, Robb, had not the same amount of loyalty owed to him.
He thought about all the dead men that he had led South of Moat Cailin, in that future that must never happen, the dead that had died for nothing. He had been The King in the North but he had not even been able to hold his own lands. Well – that would change. He had the North to protect now and he would do so to the last drop of blood in his veins.
He closed the book and massaged the bridge of his nose. He had a slight headache from his studies and he sighed and stood up from the bench in the courtyard where he had been studying. A cawing noise from one of the walls to one side caught his eye and he looked up in time to spot a flash of black. Just a crow. And then he saw the tower and he scowled. There it was. There was the tower where Bran had fallen. What had he seen there? He could guess. Oh, how knightly of that bastard Lannister, how brave, a man against a boy. He remembered the false sympathy on that bastard’s face and the honeyed words of the Queen, with their underlying drip of poison. And then after that the scars on the palms of his mother.
No. It would not happen again. He would swear any oath on that. He turned from the tower and strode across the courtyard, detailing all the things that he and Father would have to do. He wanted to look into the supplies for the Wall that afternoon. That and work out a way of sending more men. A hundred men sent now would be worth twice that number in a year and the more after that the better. He knew how hard it would be though. Winter was coming, men needed to fed, watered, paid, housed, mounted.
The sound of laughter broke him out of his grim reverie, laughter and then song. Oddly enough his heart lightened. Roose Bolton could not be trusted but Domeric Bolton was another matter. He was either the greatest dissembler ever, or he was a genuinely kind and courtly young man, skilled with a harp, skilled with a song and always ready with a smile.
He had already given young Bran a number of lessons on riding and he could tell that his younger brother already admired the heir to the Dreadfort. As did Sansa, who he could see with Domeric as he sang to her. Septa Mordane was sitting to one side, attending to her embroidery with a slight smile, and when she saw Robb she nodded respectfully to him and then quietly stole away.
Sansa and Domeric both saw him at the same time, the first with a smile and a frown and the second with a courteous nod as he continued his song. Robb smiled at them both and then politely listened. Yes, the man was skilled in music. He could certainly hold a note far better than he ever could.
When Domeric finished he bowed to Sansa as she applauded and then turned to Robb. “Your pardon Robb, but is your Lord father around?” He had turned slightly pink as he stole a look at Sansa, who was blushing suddenly and trying to look demure. “I would like to speak to him.”
Oho. He had an inkling that this might happen and he schooled his features to look grave and thoughtful. “I believe that he is in his solar,” he replied. “Allow me to take you there.”
“My thanks.” Domeric turned to Sansa and bowed again. “My lady.”
“Thank you Domeric,” she answered and then plucked a rose from the nearest bush, disguising the sudden wince from a thorn quite well. “Will you wear this for me?”
“I shall,” he replied with a smile, taking it from her and threading it through a buttonhole. “Lead on please Robb.”
They strode away across the courtyard, Robb leading with a slight smile. Oh, Sansa was taken with this one. And from what he had heard and seen, Domeric Bolton was not his father, was far better than his father and above all he was many, many leagues better than that little shit Joffrey. As they walked they talked about this and that, the hunting in the area, the signs that Winter was not yet here and how much Domeric had enjoyed his stay at Winterfell.
“I hear that a party from the Last Hearth arrived this morning,” Domeric told him and Robb frowned. He had missed that.
“I did not know that,” he replied as they passed through a doorway and then up the stairs that spiralled their way up. “Did you see them?”
“I certainly heard them,” Domeric quipped. “The man leading them was most loud. I believe that it was-”
“NED!” The voice boomed down the corridor. “Are you alright? Speak to me Ned!” It was coming from the solar and it was the voice of GreatJon bloody Umber and Robb’s heart leapt. The man had been his fiercest bannerman and loudest voice and he seemed to be worried about Father? He tore down the corridor, Domeric at his heels and burst into the solar.
Father was in his chair, shaking as if in the grip of a terrible palsy, panting as if he had run a race. He was holding something in his hand, which he now placed into a box and the GreatJon was staring at him as if he was terrified. And then he saw Father’s eyes. Green fire seemed to be in them, with red at the centre and when he heard Domeric gasp in astonishment he knew that the Heir to the Dreadfort had seen what he had seen as well.
“They are coming for us,” Father said in a voice like iron being beaten, “The King of the Others is awake. They are coming.”
And then his eyes closed and he collapsed in his chair. After a moment of horror Robb leapt for him. “Father!” he cried and he saw the GreatJon look at him. “GreatJon! What happened?”
The GreatJon stared at him, deeply confused. “Who are you again?”
“Robb Stark! What happened?”
“Gods boy, you look like a Tully. Oh – yes, I gave your lord Father the Hearthstone. It… was given to my ancestors from yours thousands of years ago, to be watched over, to be protected. It changed colour this year, so I brought it South to your father. And he held it and… he saw something. I know not what. But you heard him.” The GreatJon looked grimmer than he had ever seen him look. “The Others have returned.”
“Oh Gods,” Domeric choked as he crouched by Father and stared at him. “The Others?”
Robb shook his head. “What is this ‘Hearthstone’?”
“Something that we have kept watch over for many years,” The GreatJon rumbled. “We were closest to the Wall. I think that was why we were given it. I know not why else.” He peered at Father. “Perhaps we should give him some ale?”
And then Father came awake suddenly. His eyes were normal again but there was a look on his face of deep intent. He looked about wildly for a moment and then he looked at Robb. “Robb.”
“Father?”
“Search my solar. Search Winterfell. Look for anything my father might have left. Anything at all. Look for old rooms, old records. Search.” And then he collapsed again.
Robb stared at his father and then ran to the door and peered out. He could see Luwin hurrying down the corridor. “Come, Luwin! Quick!” And then he looked back at Domeric and the GreatJon. “We must search!”
Tyrion
Father was sitting in the smaller of the breakfast rooms that morning. Casterly Rock was a huge fortification with a huge number of rooms, but there was nothing like having breakfast with the sun on your face. Well, it was mid-morning at least. Ish.
Tyrion swung himself up onto the chair at the table and cast a careful eye over Father. He was sitting at the head of the table and was glowering at a piece of paper in front of him. It was not a nice glare. It was a glare that dared the small document not to burst into flames. He looked further down the table, where Uncle Kevan was busy tearing a small roll apart with his fingers and doing his best not to look worriedly at his brother. He then caught Tyrions eye and shook his head ever so slightly. No, asking Father what was wrong was not a good idea.
Instead Tyrion bowed to everyone from his seat, chose some bread and honey and then ate quietly as he ran through what he’d ate the previous night and if there had been any exotic cheese involved. He was pretty sure that there had not been, but that wine had dulled his recollections of the meal just a bit.
As he dabbed his mouth with his napkin and then thought about perhaps a honeycake or two, Father finally stood up with a growl, grabbed the piece of paper and stalked over to the window. “Are you well Tywin?” Uncle Kevan asked quietly.
“No,” grunted Father, before stalking back to the table and dropping the piece of paper in front of his brother. “I do not like things that I cannot explain. And the more I think about this, the less it makes sense.”
His uncle picked up the crumpled piece of paper, smoothed it out, read it – and then frowned at Father, before shoving it down the table at Tyrion. “Odd,” he said cautiously.
Tyrion reached out and picked it up and read it. Then he read it again and then a third time. Only then did he speak: “Eddard Stark is asking the Lord of the North for information – legends, stories and other information – about the Others?”
“It would seem so,” grumped Father as he stalked back to the window and glared out of it. “What do you make of it?”
Tyrion’s first thought was that perhaps Eddard Stark had contracted a sudden case of curiosity about the legends of the North, but then he had second, third and fourth thoughts about saying that. Father would not be behaving like this for an answer that simple, nor would he react well to such an answer.
Instead he leant back in his chair and thought deeply and swiftly. Yes, Father was right. This was odd. A Lord Paramount of Westeros, especially a Lord like Eddard Stark, who was said to be deeply serious, would not send out ravens to his main lords on a whim about a legend. This meant something.
After more thought he had to confess that if it did mean something then he knew not what. Which irritated him. “This makes no sense,” he said eventually.
This provoked a snarl from his Father. “I know that!”
“Stark merely wants information on the legendary Others,” Uncle Kevan muttered. “It’s odd, but am I missing something?”
“Uncle, from what I’ve heard of Ned Stark I do not think that he would send a raven lightly. But this seems so trivial that… I do not understand it.”
“I made the mistake of underestimating the North once,” Father muttered as he clasped his hands behind his back and glared harder at a hill in the distance. “After Ned Stark led the first Northern host to travel South of the Neck for hundreds of years and won at the Battle of the Bells and then at the Trident I swore that would never underestimate that man ever again.
“He holds his honour too high and the man would not last a month at Kings Landing, but he is not to be underestimated. And this, this message, means something. I just do not know what.”
He turned on his heel and glared at them both. “I have seen the Games of Thrones played by many men. I have seen it played by madmen and lost, like Aerys Targaryen. I have seen it won by savagery and brilliance, aided by luck, like Robert Baratheon. I have seen it bungled repeatedly by oafs like Mace Tyrell. And I have seen it apparently thrown away by dreamy fools like Rhaegar Targaryen. But this move by Eddard Stark… it does not fit into any stratagem that I can think of. It. Makes. No. Sense.” He bit the last four words out as if they pained him and then he turned and glowered again through the window.
Tyrion ran a number of possible answers to that through his head, decided that none of them were much good when Father was in this kind of mood and instead devoted himself to further thought, broken by a yawn. Yes, he really did have to ask what the cheese had been last night. Then he paused. “Could this be a coded message to his Banners? But what? And why? There is no reason for the North to plot at the moment, surely? Robert is a friend to the Starks, they grew up together.”
Father’s glance at him might possibly have held a smidgeon of slight approval. “Then you see the problem.”
“It could be something to do with the Wildlings,” Uncle Kevan mused. “I have heard that their raids get worse every year.”
“Yes, but the Others?” Tyrion shook his head. “Might as well ask about grumpkins and snarks. Why the Others?”
“I do not know,” Father said crossly. “And to make matters even more confusing word has reached me that the Maester of Castle Black is at Winterfell on this matter. Do you know his name, Tyrion?”
He thought quickly – and then paused. “Wait – isn’t the Maester of Castle Black Aemon Targaryen? The one who turned down the Iron Throne?”
“He still lives?” Uncle Kevan spluttered, having been surprised in the middle of drinking some weak ale.
“Oh, he still lives.” Father ground out. “Aerys was always looking over one shoulder at the Wall when he was at his most paranoid.”
Tyrion absorbed this and then pursed his lips slightly in thought. “We need answers then Father. Perhaps I should take a trip to Winterfell?”
Father swivelled an eye at him. “With what possible pretext?”
“Why I have always wished to visit the North. And to see the Wall! And should I happen to ask in Winterfell about the Others, who know what I might discover?”
There was a pause. Uncle Kevan looked at Tyrion worriedly, whilst Father looked out of the window musingly. “It might be dangerous,” Father said eventually. “But perhaps a dwarf like you might be able to find out a few things, instead of degrading this house with your drinking and whoring here – don’t think that I didn’t see you yawning. Yes. I think so. Travel north Tyrion. Go to Winterfell. Ask some questions. Don’t come back until you have answers.” And then Father swept out.
As Father’s footsteps receded down the corridor Uncle Kevan turned to him. “Are you sure about this Tyrion? It seems a risk.”
“Tis the least I can do. Why Uncle, I shall be asking questions about legends whilst I read! And the thought of sending me into a place like Winterfell almost brought a smile to Father’s face! Now – how often does that happen?”
Uncle Kevan winced. “Tyrion, this is…”
“This is a chance for me to see the North! The Wall! Why, I can take a piss off it and be the tallest Lannister ever!”
And this finally brought a smile to the face of Uncle Kevan. “Then I will help you plan this carefully Tyrion. And I hope to see you back here soon. Although - must you give your father so many arrows to send at you by whoring so much?”
He stared at his uncle. “I don’t know why Father said that. I didn’t visit any of the usual places at all last night. No the yawns have another cause. What was last night’s cheese again?”
Domeric
He vowed that he would remember the voice that Lord Stark had spoken with until the day that he died, whenever that might be. Surely the Old Gods had been speaking though the Lord of Winterfell. He had heard it and trembled like a leaf at the words. The Others had returned. And the King of the Others was awake.
And now, a day later he and Robb and the others were still searching the main keep of Winterfell, looking for anything that might have information about the deadly enemy North of the Wall. After giving the orders to search Lord Stark had collapsed again and had been ministered to at once, first by his frantic eldest son and then by good Maester Luwin and then finally by a frantic Lady Stark. Exhaustion had been the Maester’s conclusion and Domeric and Robb had helped Lord Umber to carry Lord Stark to his bed chambers to sleep.
Lord Umber had looked at him mostly strangely when he heard his name from Domeric and he had inwardly cursed his father’s reputation, as well as that of the family name. He would swear it again and again – the time would come when people would hear the name ‘Bolton’ and not quiver with fear and dread.
And now he, Robb, Jon Snow and the Greyjoy boy (who seemed to be always thinking about something these days) were all assembling in Lord Stark’s solar, where Lord Umber was pacing about like a bear with a thorn in his foot.
When they were all assembled Lord Umber raised an eyebrow at them. “Well?”
“I found an old store room at the bottom of the Broken Tower with six barrels containing a thousand old nails,” Jon said quietly. “But nothing else.”
“There is nowt in the First Keep that we could find,” sighed Robb as he gestured at Theon. “Save dust and dead spiders.”
“And I searched the Crypts,” Domeric said sombrely. “I found nothing.”
Jon Snow jerked his head slightly at the mention of the Crypts and then he scowled slightly. “We need to think about what we’re looking for,” he said musingly.
Lord Umber, who had been rubbing his hand over his beard and scowling, looked up at this. “What do you mean? Ned – I mean Lord Stark – told us to search for anything that his Lord father might have left behind for his sons about the Others, anything that would have been left behind by his ancestors.”
“Yes,” Jon replied, “But from what I have heard of him Grandfather would not have left any records or objects that were precious anywhere where they could have been damaged. The Broken Tower leaks when it rains. So does the First Keep. And the Crypts are below ground. Yes, the last two are old, but surely past Lords of Winterfell, not to mention the old Kings in the North would have found a safer, drier place for them?”
There was a silence whilst his words were weighed by the others. “By the Gods you speak sense boy,” Lord Umber rumbled. “Then we must search in the great Keep itself.”
“Is there any word of Father?” Robb asked worriedly. “He has slept for a day so far.”
Lord Umber smiled through his beard. “Your lord father awoke an hour ago, apparently hungrier than a Direwolf puppy and about as strong. He will join us soon.”
“I’ll join you now,” said a voice at the doorway and they all turned to see Lord Stark walk in. he looked tired and drawn, but there was a slight smile on his face. “GreatJon, thank you for taking charge of Winterfell whilst I slept.” He sank into his chair with a sigh and then looked at the little stone box on the table with an enigmatic look. “How goes your search?”
“Badly,” Lord Umber said. “Ned, your lord father must have had something passed down to him, some mention or hint or word. You said that Brandon was troubled for a day after he came of age. What could he have been told?”
“I know not,” Lord Stark sighed, before frowning and then looking about. “Wait. Could it be that simple?”
“What could?” Robb asked.
“This was my father’s solar before it was mine,” Lord Stark said sombrely. “I replaced the rug and added that bookcase in the corner, but I have not touched the rest. Have you searched here?”
The others all looked at each other – and then rather sheepish smiles emerged. “It would seem not,” Domeric said with a smile. “Lord Stark, with your permission?”
“Granted, Domeric, granted,” Lord Stark replied as he stood with a groan. “You’ll have to search without my help though as I feel as if every part of me is still tired.”
And so they started to search. Walls were tapped on, bookcases moved, rugs rolled up and stacked in a corner, until finally they faced the tapestries that were hung on two of the walls. One, showing a Godswood with Children of the Forest peering out shyly from behind the trunks and branches, revealed nothing more than a wall.
The second was different. It showed Bran the Builder at the Wall. And behind it there was a door. A locked door. Lord Stark stared at it, deeply shocked. “Why is it that I never knew that that was ever there?”
“Why would you have, Ned? Why would you have looked for it?” Lord Umber said sombrely. “Your father never had the chance to even tell you about it. This was all supposed to have been Brandon’s.”
A silence fell – a sombre one. Then Lord Stark stepped up to the door. “Well – I am here now.” He looked at the lock. “One thing that Father did leave was a set of keys, most of which looked as old as Winterfell. Robb – can you open the second drawer down on the left of the cupboard by the door? They should be there.” He frowned slightly. “I hope that one of them opens it. If Father took the key to this door South with him then… well, the wildfire would have melted it.”
A deeper, even more sombre silence, until Robb returned with the keys. And some of them did indeed look as old at Winterfell itself. But a few looked as if they had been used more recently than the others and Lord Stark fingered them thoughtfully and then tried them at the door. The first would not turn, nor would the second. But the third did, with a squeal of a protesting lock and as the door opened Robb Stark muttered about the need for a little oil in the lock.
There was a dark void behind the door, a passageway that Domeric knew that only the Stark in Winterfell should enter, but Lord Stark turned to them all. “We will need torches, no, lanterns,” he said huskily. “We will need light.”
Lanterns were brought and then Lord Stark stepped though the doorway, followed by Robb and Jon, then Lord Umber and then Theon and finally Domeric. There was much dust underfoot, but the air smelled dry and not damp. And after a few paces Lord Stark stopped to examine the wall. “The stones are different here,” he said musingly. “As if this part of the keep was built around another, older, building. A tower perhaps?”
Domeric thought about this. “Lord Stark,” he called out, “There are parts of the Dreadfort that are similarly built. Old parts build over and around. I wouldn’t want to guess what might be hidden there.”
“Given your family, lad, I really wouldn’t want to know what might be in those walls of yours,” Lord Umber rumbled and Domeric was glad of the near-dark, for he felt his cheeks grow hot with shame.
“GreatJon, go easy on the lad,” Lord Stark chided and then they passed on down the passageway until they stood in front of another door. This one was wood again, Weirwood perhaps, with a direwolf carved into it. Not the usual direwolf of the Stark banner, but something older and rougher.
A total silence fell and then they all watched as Lord Stark reached out and traced the outline of the direwolf with a finger that shook slightly. And then he pushed the door, which gave with a creak of hinges. The light from the lanterns caught the dust as it billowed slowly up.
There was a great stone slab in the little room, and alcoves in the walls around it. And they were all filled with… odd... things. There was a dull mirror of beaten bronze. A small leather bag that looked dried and rotted and by the edges that were peeping out contained what looked like arrow heads made from some kind of glittering rock. There was a skeletal hand in a small iron cage, with a dusty plaque under it and he watched as Lord Stark brushed the dust away to reveal what looked like runes of some kind. A tiny figure of a fat man with his legs crossed, made from some kind of green stone. And then there were the cylinders the length of his arm, with caps in the end about the width of a man’s fist, that were stacked in many places, as well as what remained of a great and very old book. It looked as if part had been burned at one point, and it lay on the stone slab, before a chest of very old and weathered wood.
By the Gods, this is old, Domeric thought with reverence. No, these are old. He looked around, seeing more things in various alcoves and as the hairs on the back of his neck rose up a feeling came over him that all of a sudden they were no longer alone, that the ghosts of past Starks had suddenly gathered to witness this discovery.
Lord Stark leaned over the bench and looked at the half-burnt book. “Even some records are better than no records at all,” he muttered.
Robb had reached for one of the cylinders and opened it and suddenly he looked up. “Father, this is full of paper! No – parchment!”
“This one has hide, I think,” Jon added, having opened one of his own.
“And that is no skull of anything that I have ever seen before,” Theon Greyjoy said with a slight quaver as he pointed at a something that had horns growing from it. “There is dust everywhere. When was that door last opened?”
“When my father was alive,” Lord Stark said with a sad smile. He held up a piece of paper that was also covered in dust. “This is a note from him. To remind him to tell Brandon about…” He squinted at the paper. “The… keys to this place. And to dust a little more often.”
“Ned, look at this,” Lord Umber said with excitement in his voice. Domeric looked over with the others at the alcove that Lord Umber was peering into. There was a little bowl there with a rune carved in the middle of it and a small depression at the bottom. “That’s the same rune as on the Hearthstone. As if it belongs in there.”
Lord Stark nodded. “Jon, will you go back to my solar and get that little stone box please? And do not, for the love of the Old Gods, touch what’s inside it?”
Jon Snow nodded and walked quickly out of the room. As he did Lord Stark turned to the chest and peered at the clasp. “Unlocked,” he said musingly and then opened it. The hinges on it also let out a squeal that made them all wince, before the lord of Winterfell let out a grunt of surprise. As they all watched he reached in and with a slight groan of effort picked up a huge mace, if such a word could describe the thing that he held. It was made of a dull metal of some sort that had not a touch of corrosion or rust. Old leather wrappings were wound around its handle, and its head… well it was a thing designed to crush and kill. And it had stones of some sort – almost like the arrow heads in the bag – embedded in its head. This was not a weapon of chivalry. This was a weapon of death.
“Robert would love this,” Lord Stark said with a slight smile. “This is a mace with but one purpose.”
Footsteps rang on stone and then Jon Snow was back with the little box, which he handed over to his father. Lord Stark took it with a word of thanks and then opened it, before taking a deep breath and pulling out a small worn stone. He weighed it in his hand for a long moment and then relaxed a little, before placing it into the little bowl. “A perfect fit,” he said. “I wonder what it does?”
And then the bowl flared with light, as if the Sun had briefly been within it, and Domeric heard a great voice in his head that drove him to his knees. “The Others come. The Stark calls for aid. You are needed.”
Jon Arryn
He watched the sail on the horizon start to diminish and sighed, heavily. The day had been one of the most chaotic ones at King’s Landing that he could ever remember. He’d woken to discover that Robert had, for some reason that he still did not understand, decided that he had to visit Storm’s End at once.
He’d found the King standing in the main courtyard of the Red Keep, almost juddering with impatience as he bellowed orders at scurrying servants. “Ah. Jon,” Robert had barked at him. “I need to talk to you. Need to visit Storm’s End.”
“Why your Grace? Is there trouble in the Stormlands?”
And this had resulted in Robert staring around the courtyard for a long moment, visibly considering his words. “Don’t think I can explain it, Jon,” the King finally admitted, almost shamefaced. “Feel like I’m needed there. There and… elsewhere. I’ll be back as soon as I can. It’s just… I need to be in Storm’s End.” Robert had then stared North grimly for another long moment.
“Keep everything in place here, Jon. I’m sorry to leave so suddenly, but…” He ran his hand over his beard thoughtfully. “I need to get this cut,” he muttered before catching Jon’s eye again. “I can’t explain it Jon. I need to be there and not here and I know that this all makes no sense but…”
Robert held up his hands and clenched and unclenched them repeatedly. “I can’t put it into words. There’s something in the wind, Jon, something in the wind. There’s fighting up ahead. There’s a war coming. I don’t who we’ll be fighting or where or when, but I can feel it. It’s in my blood Jon. And I feel more alive now that I have since the Greyjoy revolt. Ah – Renly! Get your arse over here! We leave on the next tide!”
And so he had, with just a small retinue, including Renly and Ser Barristan Selmy. The former had had a word with Jon during one of the few moments of relative quiet. “I don’t suppose you know why my royal brother has decided to on this visit at such short notice, do you Jon?”
“None whatsoever, Lord Baratheon. The King seems to have decided on this trip today.”
Renly had scratched his beard thoughtfully. “Odd. Even odder, I found him sparring with the Master at Arms this morning, with his warhammer. It left him exhausted but happy.” They had both looked over at a corner of the courtyard, where Robert was getting his beard severely trimmed.
All of this had left Jon with a feeling of great and very deep foreboding. Robert had perhaps picked up something about the Great Matter? But if he had then why not stay and fight it out? And why go to the Stormlands? Why not confront the Queen? No, he must not have any idea about it all, otherwise Cersei would be in a cell, or be dead, and Robert would have confronted that traitorous bastard the Kingslayer already. So why Storm’s End? He’d thought about telling the King everything, but they needed more time to move their forces into King’s Landing without any of the other players around them knowing. Varys had to know. Whose side was he on, really? And what of Baelish? The more he learnt of him the more he distrusted him. His web of financial affairs was wide and seemed to be a little too opaque in places.
But there had been one good element to Robert’s departure. His talk with Renly had bourn some fruit. “Bring back a stronger entourage of guards from Storm’s End,” he’d advised the youngest Baratheon. “Men and lords you can trust.” Renly had stared at him, stared at him intently, before nodding slowly and saying that he understood.
And now Jon stood at the docks and watched as the ship vanished off to the West. He was still amazed that Robert had taken a ship instead of riding out, but ships did not tire, nor they have to sleep at night. He wanted to get every mile out of every hour and that worried him as well.
Footsteps sounded to one side and he looked over to see Stannis approach. “Lord Baratheon.”
“My Lord Hand.” Stannis looked out at the Western horizon. “The King’s trip puzzles me.”
“And me. But he felt that he had his reasons. We must await his return – and plan how we must tell him about this Great Matter.”
Stannis winced and then lowered his voice. “He will not take it well. We must be prepared for that. And we must strike hard when we announce it. The Lannisters in this city will not take this lightly. We must be careful.”
Jon nodded tiredly. “Gods but I hate this city,” he muttered. “A city full of liars and conspiracies.”
The Master of Ships smiled thinly. “I have always hated this place my Lord Hand. ‘Tis a place where men lie as easily as they breathe. But there are a few who can be depended on.” He handed over a small roll of paper. “Your son is safe at White Harbour. Ser Davos Seaworth sends word from there by raven of their safe arrival. Lord Manderly has ordered that your son and his party be escorted to Winterfell by some fifty men.”
Jon took the paper with a frown. “That’s a strong escort. Why so many?”
“Seaworth does not say. The handwriting is not his, he does not have his letters well, but I recognise Lord Manderly’s hand. But he does say that he returns at once to King’s Landing ‘with the utmost despatch’, which means that he will risk everything to get back here quickly. I know Ser Davos Seaworth. He would not be returning with such despatch, risking his ship, unless something was the matter. Add that to the strong escort for your son and I fear that he has news of some plot or other.”
Ice water seemed to flow through his veins for a moment, and then he shrugged it off. “We will see what Ser Davos has in the way of news,” he said eventually. “Let me know the moment he arrives.” He set his jaw. “We have much to prepare for. When Robert returns we must confront him with this Great Matter. Can you have his bastard son moved from the smithy to perhaps the docks? We will need to keep the lad safe to use him as proof of the Queen’s infidelity.”
“It can be arranged,” Stannis said curtly. “Leave it to me.” He nodded abruptly to Jon and then strode off.
As he returned his gaze to the Western horizon Jon sighed. He wished that his son was there so that he could hug the little boy. He suddenly had the strongest feeling that he might never see him again.
Jory
The further they went from White Harbour the easier his heart rested within him. It was easier to see danger on the road. Easier to see everything. And there was also the fact that with every day that passed the closer they got to Winterfell and home.
There were two other things. With every day that passed the little Lordling seemed to change right before his eyes. At the start of the voyage he had been a dull-eyed pale little wraith, afraid almost of everything and with a spiteful and slightly demented tone to his voice. Oh, and a little stupid.
And now… well, he was tanned from the Sun, he looked healthier, sounded cleverer and he was so curious about everything that there were times when Jory wished that he could shut up for five minutes. The ‘medicine’ was being reduced day by day and Annah had told him that it was almost all gone now, that the little boy would soon be free of whatever it was.
Which left the question of who had poisoned the boy and why. Annah, he knew, had her suspicions. “Everyone who ever asks about the medicine is dismissed by Lady Arryn,” she had told him. “Everyone. I wonder why. The medicine makes him dependent on her. But I do not serve her. I serve Lord Arryn.”
He stole a look at the woman from the Vale. The two of them had been dancing around each other for some time now and he wasn’t sure where this dance would end. He was hopeful of getting a better look at that chest of here for a start.
And there was the other matter. The pull to the North. He felt it more strongly the closer they got to Winterfell and he had no idea why. Manderly’s men felt it too. They were travelling in the right direction and they all knew it. He didn’t want to think about what the feeling might have been like if they were moving in the other direction.
What intrigued him was the fact that Annah felt it too. She had told him that her family claimed descent from the First Men, apparently through one of the old hill clans. There was more of a story there. He was going to enjoy getting it out of her. Oh and young Robert Arryn felt it too, not as strong, but enough for the little lordling to talk about it. It must have been the Tully blood.
Jory squinted at the hills off to one side and then nodded to himself. Three more days until they’d see the towers of Winterfell on the far horizon. Just three more days until he could put down this burden of his. He looked over at the lordling, who was babbling a series of questions about the birds at one of Manderly’s men, who was answering him with a tolerant smile.
Yes, the boy was different. And according to Annah he reminded her of Lord Arryn’s dead nephew Elbert, whom she had seen when she was herself just a girl. He sobered slightly, recalling that Lord Arryn had had a number of heirs, all of whom had died. Well, not this one. By the gods, not this one.
Ned
Luwin knocked briskly at the door and then bustled in with yet another fist full of messages from the ravens in his tower. “From Bear Island and the Last Hearth, my Lord,” he muttered deferentially as he handed them over. “And from the cawing I heard as I was bringing these to you more ravens are arriving.”
“Thank you Luwin,” Ned said as he received them and then watched the man leave quickly. A small smile played around his lips as soon as the Maester was gone. When he had seen the new records, and the objects, Luwin had been like a small child being given a honeyed spoon to lick clean. As had Maester Aemon, who had put off his return to Castle Black to help Luwin with the work of looking at everything. The old blind Maester had a deep knowledge of runes that had been a blessing.
He opened the first. Maege Mormont had written it herself: “The Long Night comes. House Mormont stands with the Stark in Winterfell. Command us.”
The second had been written by an unfamiliar hand. “The Others come. Last Hearth stands ready.” He handed that one over to the GreatJon, who read it with pleased grunt. “SmallJon’s hand. Good, my son doesn’t have cheese in his bloody ears.” He looked up. “Lord Stark, House Umber stands ready.” And then he leant back in his chair and took a gulp of ale, before looking intently at the little mound of stone arrowheads that they had taken from the rotted bag in the secret room.
“Why do those fascinate you so much?” Ned asked.
“Because they remind me of the Last Hearth. I used to pick up arrowheads like this as a lad when I was walking around the North walls – there’s a rocky patch there. And the lower tunnels still have areas where you can mine these things as well. Most odd.”
Ned went still as something that the GreatJon had said on his arrival suddenly returned to him. “GreatJon, you said that the Last Hearth was named by my ancestors and that it was built on a crag. Did that crag have a name?”
The big man frowned. “Aye,” he said thoughtfully. “T’was the Glittering Crag. Why?”
Ned closed his eyes for a moment and suppressed the need to swear. “Because the records we found there mentioned the Glittering Crag and said that there had been a great siege there, that led to the Others being routed. Do you know anything of that?”
“Oh, aye,” the GreatJon said with a sigh. “There was a great siege there and a lot of men died. There’s a place to the South called The Burning where the dead were said to have been cremated. And there are still barrows to the West that we were told never to disturb, not least because nothing grows on them. After the siege was broken it was then that your ancestor gave the crag to my ancestor and told him to build a fortress there and then to guard it at all costs.”
“Why?” Ned asked intently, “Why that place? At all costs?”
The GreatJon blinked at him. “I don’t rightly know Ned,” he replied. He then winced. “We’ve lost a lot, over the years. All I know was that every year we had to mine the lower crag for rocks to send to Winterfell. But we haven’t done that for years – centuries even.”
He nodded in reply and then frowned at the little mound of arrowheads. “Our forefathers must have thought those important. I wonder why?”
“I don’t know. Stone can be brittle.” The GreatJon shrugged again. “How are your children by the way? Robb and Jon were affected as badly as we were by that bloody stone.”
“They all heard it. So did Cat. But whereas she was frightened by it, Arya is still excited at the thought of magic, Bran wants to know more about everything, Sansa is still thinking about it all and Rickon seems to have taken it all for granted.” Ned shook his head. “The young adapt better than the old.”
Knuckles rapped again at the door and then turned to see old Mikken standing there, twisting his cap in his hands. “Your pardon my Lords. You asked me to look at the mace you found?”
“Ah, Mikken. Yes, here.” And Ned pulled out the huge mace and carried it over to the blacksmith. He had to admit that he liked the way that weapon felt in his hands. It was lighter than it looked somehow and was well balanced. Someone had crafted it most skilfully after much thought. He laid it on the table that had been brought in by the door. “What do you make of it?”
Mikken bent over and peered at it carefully – and then he blinked rapidly and took a longer look at it. “Interesting,” he breathed quietly as he traced a finger over it. “Very interesting. Can I ask where you found this my Lord?”
“In a hidden room. It belonged to my ancestors. Yet it is no steel that I have seen before.”
Mikken stroked his beard with one hand. “I think,” he said cautiously, “That this is not steel. I think that it is sky-metal.”
Ned looked at the GreatJon, who stared back in astonishment. “Sky-metal?”
“Aye, I’ve seen a few old pieces here and there. When stars fall from the sky as rocks then sometimes they contain metal. And sometimes that metal can be smelted and used. It… often looks different. This mace, as you can see my Lord, has no corrosion on it. Not a speck of rust.” He paused, as if measure his words. “The make of it, the… way it has been worked? It is ancient my Lord. Most ancient. This is the work of the First Men. No modern mace looks like this. And… well, there were tales of magic being used on such weapons. Magic in the forging.”
Mikken straightened up. He looked faintly ashamed. “We have lost the means to make a weapon like this my Lord. Aye, as I look at it the more I am convinced that magic was used to make it. I can think of no other way that it could be forged.” And then he hesitated and seemed to be struggling with something.
“What is it Mikken?”
“My Lord – every smith in Winterfell has always had tales passed down to him from his predecessor. And there is a dim and distant tale of a great mace that was in the possession of your lord ancestors until they acquired Ice. My Lord – this… this might be the Fist of Winter.”
Ned looked at the mace in some shock. “From the tales,” he muttered. “There were references there to it.” he paused. “Sky-metal? So this is like Dawn, the sword of the Daynes?”
Mikken shrugged. “I’ve never seen Dawn, my Lord. But sky-metal varies, depending on the colour and nature of the star. And what can be done with it also varies. Magic again. Or so the tales say.”
“What of the stones embedded in them?”
Mikken scratched his beard thoughtfully. “They look like nothing I have even seen, my lord. But then I am not a Maester.”
Ned nodded and then looked at Mikken. “Very well – my thanks Mikken.”
“Happy to oblige, my Lord,” the blacksmith rumbled and then strode out of the door.
“So that’s the Fist of Winter,” the GreatJon grunted. “Aye, I’ve heard the legends as well. That looks like it’s got a lot of weight behind it. A weight of history as well.”
“Aye,” Ned muttered as he sat again. And then he looked up at the doorway again, having heard footsteps. Luwin then emerged at the doorway puffing as if he had been running.
“My Lord,” the old Maester wheezed as he approached and held out two pieces of paper, “Messages.”
Taking them Ned unrolled the first. “’Skagos stands with the Stark in Winterfell’. This is from Skagos??”
“It is, my Lord,” Luwin said. “And such a thing is rare indeed. Ravens from Skagos are… like hen’s teeth.”
Ned nodded and then opened the second. “’House Reed stands with the Stark in Winterfell. Lord Reed rides to Winterfell with all despatch with news of-‘” He paused and then continued: “’Dreams of Greenseers’? Surely that cannot be?”
Luwin coughed. “There was a third raven my Lord. It was from the Citadel. The glass candles are relit. Magic has indeed returned to these lands.”
“Oh bugger,” GreatJon Umber sighed and then he gulped down yet more ale.
Brynden
He was on edge as he strode to the Bloody Gate, but he knew that he could not show it. The Knight of the Gate had to be calm and collected and not show nerves. That said, he knew that something, somewhere was very wrong.
For one thing it was far, far too quiet. Normally there was always rumbling in the hills and mountains. The Mountain Clans were seen moving in the high passes, raiding here, stealing there, murdering when the mood took them and taking away women that took their fancy. They were outlaws, raiders, murderer, rapists and overall scum. But right now they were quieter than he had ever known.
Oh there had still been reports. Something about horns being heard in the high passes. But otherwise it was as if they had vanished into thin air. It was totally unlike them and that worried him. Worried him a lot.
And then there was that other thing. The thing that was also pressing upon his mind.
The Bloody Gate loomed before him and he made a mental note not to pass on his worries to anyone. Then he saw Ser Donal in front of him and his heart sank a little, if for a different reason. The old veteran had that young puppy lordling behind him. The youngest son of Lord Waxley was an incompetent, wet-nosed, brainless little idiot who had a habit of hopping from leg to leg like a small boy in need of the privy in a hurry.
“Well?” Brynden growled.
“I talked to travellers on the High Road. They all reported a quiet journey. Not a sign of the Mountain Clans. I don’t like it Ser Brynden. I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
Young Waxley, who had been jiggling in place, finally opened his mouth. “But Sers, the answer is obvious! The scum have finally been scared away by our great prowess and show of arms!”
Brynden shared a long-suffering glance with Ser Donal. “Lad,” Brynden rumbled, “The Mountain Clans have been a pain in the arse of the Eyrie for centuries. I hardly think that they’ve been scared off by the sight of a new coat of arms on a shield. No – this is something else.”
But any further discussions was curtailed by the sound of a shout from the Gate itself, as a sentry at the tallest part waved at them. “Ser Brynden! Riders before the Gate! Mountain Clans!”
“I knew it,” Brynden sighed and then strode off quickly towards the gates, which were already being pulled closed by the men. They were good lads, he had trained them well. As the gates boomed closed he entered the side gate to one of the towers, followed by Ser Donal and the Waxley pup, and then ran up the spiral stairs.
As they emerged from the door on the ramparts he looked out at the road. Yes, they were there. A group of figures on those small horses of theirs. Well, all but one was mounted. The one that was not seemed to be too large for a horse. Yes, they were Mountain Clansmen. Ten of them to be precise. And they were all… just sitting there, on their horses. Not doing a damn thing. Out of range of any bowman. Sitting there with the mist roiling down the valley towards them.
“This is odd,” Ser Donal muttered. “What are they doing?”
And then one of them, who was holding a spear, got off his horse and started to walk towards the Bloody Gate. Halfway there he jammed the butt of the spear into the earth on the side of the road and then took ten measured paces – and then stopped walking.
This got the Waxley pup spluttering. “He challenges us! What impudence! Ser Brynden, I can get the rogue from here with my bow!”.
“No,” Brynden said with a frown. “That is not a challenge. That is a parley. I will treat with him.” And then he turned and went swiftly down the stairs to the gates, before borrowing a spear from one of the men at arms and then slipping through a small postern gate. Once out he walked along the road, counting, until he reached the spot he had measured with his eyes from the ramparts. There he thrust the butt of his own spear in the ground and then marched ten paces forwards, taking off his wrist bracers as he did and then pulling up the chainmail and leather on the forearm of his sleeve.
The Clansman, who was as grey as he was and dressed in the usual mismatched armour of the Mountain Clans, was also busy rolling back his sleeve. When he was done he nodded at Brynden and then strode forwards and clasped forearms with him, skin to skin. “No hidden arms,” said the Clansman.
“No hidden arms,” Brynden agreed, before they both stepped back and replaced their sleeves.
“You are the Blackfish,” the Clansman said almost cheerily. “It would be an honour to kill you. I am Rhys, son of Daner.”
“I am the Blackfish – and you are the Head of the Sons of the Tree,” Brynden said, feeling intrigued. What was he doing here? They normally ranged far to the North-West.
“I am that,” the Clansman stuck his thumbs in his belt and then looked at Brynden sombrely. “We come here to bear witness. To warn you.”
“Your clan?”
Rhys sighed and then jerked a thumb at the group behind him. “All the Clans. We lead them.”
Ice seemed to trickle up and down his spine for an instant. All the clans? They were all there? He peered at them. The large man had two axes strapped to his back and another at his belt. He seemed to like axes. And one… seemed to be a woman? Yes, they could well be the leaders of the Mountain Clans.
“To warn us about what?”
“Why, that we shall return! That in our absence you shall not think that you have won the Long War, or that you send men to drive out those that shall remain to guard our lands!”
Brynden ran his words through his head, wondered if he had gone mad and then asked the one question that the situation demanded: “What?”
Rhys ran a hand through his beard and sighed. When he looked up Brynden recognised the look in the eyes of the man. It was the look of a man who thought that he might die at some point. “We are summoned,” he said almost gently. “We have all felt the call. The Old Blood is strong in us and we heed what it tells us. So we come here with a summons and a warning. The summons is for us. We are needed in the North. The warning is for you. We will return. And when we do the Age of Heroes will return and we will have it all back, Blackfish. Tell the Arryn we will have it all again. It will be our payment.”
“Payment? And what do you mean, you are going to the North? Why?”
This bought him a pitying look. “Ah, you have rocks in your ears. You did not hear it.” Rhys smiled a strange and terrible smile. “The Others have returned, Blackfish. We have heard the call.”
Shock roiled through him. “What call is this?”
Rhys looked at him. “It came days ago. The Others Come. The Stark-”
Brynden Tully interrupted him. “-The Stark calls for aid. You are needed.”
The Clansman opened his eyes at that. And then he smiled hugely. “Sa ha! So – the Old Blood is strong in you too, Blackfish! You have heard the call as well, your ancestors must have been mighty indeed. Perhaps we will fight together on the Wall.” The smile faded. “Many of us will die. But it will be a good death. Many new songs will be sung about us. But it will be worth it. We remember, you see. We remember.” He said the words with a curious intensity. “’Tis a curse and a blessing.”
This was madness. But he remembered the voice he had heard, remembered the feeling that it had sparked within him. He swallowed thickly. “But… the Others have been gone for thousands of years.”
A shrug from the Clansman. “Seasons turn. Winter is coming. The Long Night returns and with it the dreams. In the stars the bottom of the Crook can be seen for the first time in memory, as it was foretold. They come, Blackfish. They come. We march. But tell the Arryn that we will be back.” And then he turned and strode off, wrenching the spear out of the ground as he left.
Brynden took a step towards him. “Wait! You go North? How?”
Rhys waved a hand over his shoulder as he walked away. “Secret ways, Blackfish,” he called over his shoulder, “Secret ways.” And then the mist rolled in and he was gone.
Jorah
He liked Myr, even though it was too hot for his blood. Everywhere in Essos was too hot. He was of the North, of Bear Island and as he lay in bed and stared at the ceiling he thought of home for a long moment, before closing his eyes in anguish for a moment.
The thought of the trees and the steep hills, the little villages on the coastline, the fog that wreathed the island… He thrust the memories away before they could choke him with grief yet again and then slipped out of bed, leaving the girl sleeping on her side of it.
What was her name again? Oh yes, Leera. A sweet girl with a warm smile and a liking for him, given by the number of times she was available for him. He smiled at her slumbering form for a moment and then walked quietly to the chair and threw on a robe, before crossing to the window.
Ah, Myr. The city that people – men and women – never really slept. There was always something being made somewhere, or planned, or even thought up and then discussed very, very, loudly. He often wondered if the Citadel at Oldtown was like this place. Possibly it was lousder when inspiration struck.
He grabbed a chair from one side and then carefully placed it so the noise did not wake Leera, before sitting in it and then running his hands through his hair. The letter from Varys had been clear, he was to go to Pentos and spy on the Beggar King there. Pentos. He loathed that place. In Myr there were at least ideas and a slightly frenetic optimism. Pentos? It was riddled with cynicism and ruthless ambition. Trade was everything. And anything could be traded there.
But why was the Beggar King there? For what purpose? Apparently he and his sister were in the house of one of the Magisters of the city, one Illyrio Mopatis. He’d asked about the man. He was extremely rich and powerful and apparently wasn’t a man who liked fools.
So why take in the Beggar King? Viserys Targaryen was penniless, proud, desperate and increasingly unstable. Given who his father had been, the instability wasn’t that surprising. In his case the apple had not only not fallen far from the tree, but had nestled against the trunk.
No, Varys was right, something was indeed going on there. So he would have to leave Myr and travel North, to that city filled with men with deep pockets and naught but greed in their eyes. His own eyes flickered to the North-West. The pull of home was strong today. It grew stronger with every day that passed now, ever since the night that he’d come awake with a shout, startling Leera. It had been an intense dream. That voice… He felt the call of home. And yet home was denied him.
He ran a hand over his chin and resolved to shave that day. He preferred to be clean shaven here. Beards could be too sweaty otherwise. He thought of his father and the old man’s great beard and then smiled slightly before the smile ebbed. Home.
“Jorah?”
He turned to the bed and smiled in reassurance. Leera was looking at him sleepily, hair tousled and one breast exposed. “I did not want to disturb you,” he said softly. “’Tis morning.”
She smiled at him and then pulled the sheet down to show the other breast. “Come back to bed.”
He smiled back and then obeyed her command. Pentos awaited. Perhaps she would come with him? But the North still called.
Asha
There was a dead man in the gibbet on the end of the breakwater at Lordsport. Asha stared at the corpse as the Black Wind passed it. Whoever he was, he had not died well. His arms were bound behind him and what appeared to be wooden stakes had been hammered into his eyes. He hadn’t been there when they’d left and her men did not like the way this greeted them on their return. Many turned their heads and spat to ward off evil.
As they made the ship fast to the pier Haken nudged her. “Look yonder.” She looked and then blinked. She knew that ship, and that flag.
“The Sea Song,” she breathed and then as soon as the ship was moored properly she leapt over the side. “Feed the men, I have to see my nuncle,” she called over her shoulder and then acknowledged Halen’s wave of acknowledgement with one of her own.
She had to admit that she was troubled as she strode over the stone quay and over to her Uncle Rodrik’s ship. Perhaps he would have sound counsel for her. But he was not there. Instead his sailing master Dale was standing by the gangplank, one hand on his sword and a deeply worried look on his face.
He brightened when he saw her though, enough to crack a smile and joke about her hair. But then he stared at the castle. “Your nuncle has gone to see your father,” he said grimly. “And Lord Harlaw is… well, troubled.”
Asha nodded – and then she noticed the air of tension about the crew. The Sea Song looked as if it was ready to sail at a moment’s notice. “Dale, what is wrong?”
But the man had never been a very eloquent or talkative man and all she got from him was some hemming and hawing, before an entreaty to go to the castle and see if Lord Harlaw was alright, that he had been gone for too long. And so Asha finally nodded and left for Pyke.
The wind was blowing hard by the time she made it into the tower where her father’s solar was situated and she stopped to sniff it. There was more rain in that wind, and it was veering to the South-East again. There might be a storm on the way. She shrugged and then opened the door and strode down the corridor.
And then she heard the voices. The guards outside the solar looked nervous and on edge and when she identified the voices she knew why. Uncle Rodrik and Father were both in there – as was Uncle Aeron. Damphair himself was in there and she shuddered a little. He had been a very different man since his near-drowning, colder than the sea and as devout as any Drowned Man could ever be – and sometimes even more so.
The guards saw her and nodded at her as she reached for the door – only to have it opened in front of her. Uncle Rodrik stormed out and very nearly collided with her, changing course at the last moment. He looked as angry as she had ever seen him and beneath that anger was worry. His eyes widened as he realised who he had nearly knocked over and then he strode away down the corridor, although not before whispering: “I sail on the tide. See me before.”
She watched him go with a frown of puzzlement and then she turned back to the solar, only to see Damphair stride out. He looked at her, narrowed his eyes slightly and then left down a different corridor and she stared after him. There had been something about him that set her teeth on edge. There had been a set to his shoulders and a glitter in his eyes, almost amounting to a look of ecstasy, that worried him.
Father was staring out of the window of his solar and only looked around when she closed the door. He looked preoccupied, with a scowl on his face. “Asha,” he said eventually. “You are back early.”
“I had to return,” she said. “I felt…”
Father forestalled her by scowling even more and holding up a hand. “Speak not of it. It was Greenlander mummery.”
Asha stared at her father in astonishment. “Father, we were at sea! Half my crew heard it and the other half felt it, or felt something at least!”
“Speak of it not!” Father roared at her and she took a step back before Father rubbed at his forehead and then waved a hand in a semi-apology. “I have had your uncle Rodrik in there from an early hour. The Reader… spoke nonsense. I fear he is addled in his head. Anyway – Aeron was here and he explained everything. ‘Twas naught but a Greenlander mummery, as the Drowned God denied this ‘call’ to the North. We are to pay it no mind.”
Asha opened her mouth to passionately argue against this, but then she caught the fire in Father’s eye. Now was not the time. Not with his memory so fresh with Uncle Rodrik’s sanity and Uncle Aeron’s madness. No, she had a good idea about what was going on here.
So she nodded sharply and then passed back out through the castle, noting absently that the storm was indeed building but that it might pass to the West. And then down to Lordsport, where she found her sane nuncle pacing about on the quay by his ship.
“Asha,” he greeted her. “Let me guess – your father claimed ‘mummery’ of some type?”
“He did. But I heard it nuncle. I heard it as clear as I hear you. The Others come. The Stark in Winterfell needs us.” She shook her head, bewildered. “How can Father deny it? My own crew feel it!”
“I know, little one,” he said, another sign that he was very worried, “I know. It was strong at Harlaw. But your father…” Uncle Rodrik looked about carefully and then lowered his voice. “Your Lord father hates the North and the Starks for their role in the suppression of his rebellion. For the death of your brothers. To admit that he has felt the call to aid them? He cannot do that. Even if the threat is from the Others. He simply claims that the Others are no threat to the Ironborn, even if the Others even still exist and are not some tale told by old women in the North.”
His face set slightly. “And then there is your uncle Aeron. Damphair will never admit to hearing that call. Never. To do so means admitting to the existence of the Old Gods and to acknowledging that we are linked to the First Men. Drowned Men claim that we were made by the Drowned God. To your father and your uncle, admitting that they heard the call to the North to aid the Stark means that the Old Way is weakened. And that is something that they cannot abide.”
Asha thought it through and then sighed. “So what shall we do?”
“We watch and we wait and we keep our mouths shut.” Uncle Rodrik gestured at the breakwater. “Do you see that man out there?”
“Aye.”
“He traded with the North a lot. He heard the call and talked about the Old Gods in earshot of Damphair. So your uncle had him bound and then hammered stakes whittled from Weirwood driftwood into his eyes until he died. Damphair will deny everything and kill anyone who contradicts him. So I will sail back to Harlaw and I will read my books and do my research – and protect my people. Because foul things are coming from the North, Asha, winter comes. And with it… death. Don’t be on Pyke when it comes, niece. Because the Drowned God…” he paused for a long moment and then sighed. “The call to Winterfell is louder.”
Oberyn
The Water Gardens were still as lovely as they had ever been, he thought as he strolled down the little path. There were flowering herb bushes to each side of him and as he passed down the path he could hear the contented buzzing from the bees as they harvested the pollen around them.
As he walked he thought, and as he thought he did his best not to frown too much. Life was always a series of challenges and tests. Although the past few days had been… confusing. He had always had an ear for gossip and news and other things. But recently… it had been odd – even by his definition of the word.
He found his brother sitting quietly in his wheeled chair overlooking the most beautiful part of the Water Gardens. “My Prince,” he said formally, before nodding at him. “How are you today, brother?”
Doran smiled slightly. “Tolerable,” he said quietly, which was as good as he ever admitted. “And you Oberyn?”
He sat on a nearby bench and clasped his hands for a moment as he thought through everything in his head.
“Brother,” Doran broke in, “You are troubled. I can see it. What is wrong?”
Oberyn winced a little. “Nothing I can put my finger on, brother. Just… oddness. There have been a few ravens with peculiar messages. Activity in the Citadel at Oldtown. Robert Baratheon vanishing from King’s Landing. And…” He sighed a little. “Apparently the Company of the Rose is acting oddly in Braavos.”
“The sellsword company?” Doran asked with a frown. “Oddly how?”
He leant back on the bench and scowled slightly. “Apparently they turned down a major contract to fight some lunatic bandits that were bothering some Braavosi merchants. And apparently they have been negotiating with shipping factors about a trip Westwards. I have not heard where too exactly yet. But I am… concerned.”
Doran looked at him. “Odd activity amongst sellswords. Does this threaten our… enterprise?”
He thought about it for a long moment. “It… might. Sellswords will be needed at some point. And I like sellswords to be predictable. When they are not... well, I will find out more.”
Doran nodded slowly as he looked out at the sea in the distance. “And this news of Baratheon vanishing?”
“Is also odd. He went to Storm’s End. There is no word yet on why.”
Another nod. A moment of silence fell as they both stared into the distance. And then Oberyn looked to one side as he heard the thump of boots. Areo Hotah was striding towards them, a slight frown on his face. He stopped not too far away and bowed formally. “My Prince,” he said quietly to Doran. “Prince Oberyn. I crave your pardon, but an unannounced visitor asks for an urgent meeting.”
He saw his brother sigh tiredly. He did not like people to see him in his wheelchair. The Prince of Dorne wanted to be in his palace in Sunspear, not being an invalid in the Water Gardens. “Who is it, Hotah?”
The big man coughed slightly. “Lord Alster Dayne, my Prince.”
Oberyn exchanged a startled look with his brother. “I thought that he was supposed to be dying at Starfall?”
“It would seem that he has roused himself from his deathbed brother,” Doran said, looking fascinated. “He would not have come unless it was for a very good reason. Very well, Hotah, let him through.”
The Captain of the Guard bowed and then swept away, before returning with a smaller man dressed in riding garb that looked as if it had taken a lot of usage recently. He bowed to them both and then swayed slightly.
“Lord Dayne, be seated,” Doran said, leaning forwards slightly in concern. Oberyn cast an eye over the man. He did not look well, with a face that was drawn and pale from more than just travel. His eyes seemed a little sunken and there was a look to him that told of weariness beyond words.
“Thank you my Prince,” Lord Dayne said hoarsely and Oberyn reached to one side and poured a cup of wine for the man from the table to one side. “And thank you, Prince Oberyn.” he muttered and drank without hesitation. Oberyn smirked slightly inside. Normally he would say that it was a brave man who took anything to eat or drink from the Red Viper of Dorne. In this case caution was not needed.
Once the Lord of Starfall had finished drinking he lowered the cup and smiled. “My apologies for my attire. I have been travelling in a hurry and will leave for Sunstone as soon as possible. But I had to see you first.”
“For what reason?” Doran asked the question with a slight frown on his face.
Lord Dayne’s face worked for a moment and then he sighed. “I am called North my Prince. It is hard to explain.”
Doran’s frown intensified. “You are called North? Where? Have you been summoned to King’s Landing?”
“No,” Dayne sighed. “I am not. I am called further North than that but… it is very hard to explain my Prince. It is… something that the Stony Dornish understand and are dealing with, without I think understanding it, because they do not remember, and….” He swayed slightly and Oberyn watched him in concern.
But then Lord Alster Dayne collected himself, took a deep breath and then looked up – and Oberyn saw something in those violet eyes that made him blink. There was an iron determination there, and a need to be somewhere else.
“Your pardon, my Prince, I have not been well of late. But then… my Prince, House Dayne is one of the oldest families in Dorne. We are of the First Men, their blood sings within us. And echoes of… older times. One such echo has awoken. As the head of House Dayne I am called to the North. To Winterfell.”
To Oberyn this was pure gibberish and he looked at the other man in some concern. “Lord Dayne,” he said, with a sideways glance at his frowning brother, “Have you seen a Maester of late?”
Dayne smiled mirthlessly. “I am quite sane Prince Oberyn. It is just that… you are familiar with the ancestral sword of my house, Dawn?”
He thought back to the last time he had seen the sword, borne in the hands of Arthur Dayne, the last Sword of the Morning that House Dayne had produced. Dead now these many years, killed by Ned Stark. He had always admired that sword. It had a sheen that was unlike anything he had ever seen. “I remember it,” he said. “What of it?”
“It is… restless.” Dayne said the last word with a strange intensity. “It pulls me North. And I must go. I am not a well man. This might be my last trip. But North I must go. I will send word to King’s Landing, where my…” He paused for a moment to drink some more wine. “My son Edric is, telling him to join me at Winterfell.”
There was a long moment of silence. Then Oberyn looked at his brother, before turning back to Dayne. “Lord Dayne,” he said delicately, “Swords are not usually described as being restless.”
The Stony Dornishman nodded. “I know Prince Oberyn. As I said, it is hard to understand. Perhaps if you observed it – I left it with your captain. If he could bring it forwards?”
This was something else that made Oberyn blink. “I thought that Dawn was to remain at Starfall, until another Sword of the Morning was selected?”
“This is too urgent. It cannot wait for that.” Dayne said the words grimly. “It travels North with me. Its pull takes me North.”
Oberyn looked over at his brother and was about to ask him to send this dying lunatic man away when he saw a look on Doran’s face that made him pause. “What, brother?”
“Something our father once told us, and which I will tell you later,” Doran muttered, before raising his voice. “Very well. Hotah!”
“My Prince?”
“Bring Dawn to us.”
The big man nodded and then walked off to one side. When he returned into view he looked… troubled. He was also carrying a great sword in a sheath bound with red leather. Oberyn nodded slightly as he looked at the hilt and the odd sheen. Yes, that was Dawn.
Hotah approached and then knelt before them. He seemed to be sweating a little. “Dawn, my prince,” he said hoarsely.
“Prince Oberyn,” Lord Dayne said quietly, “Please touch the hilt.”
Oberyn almost rolled his eyes at this, but he was still wondering why Hotah looked as if he had seen a ghost and he squinted carefully at the hilt (nothing looked suspicious there) before touching it with a languid hand. And then he leapt to his feet with a stifled oath. “By the Seven! It’s quivering!”
“Yes, Prince Oberyn,” Hotah said in a voice that said that he wanted to drop the damn thing and then have no more of it. “It is.”
Doran rubbed his chin for a moment and then reached out a single finger, which he placed on the hilt. When he lifted it again he was pale. “Indeed it does.” He looked back at Dayne. “Do you know what calls you North?”
Dayne looked at him. “I do,” he said in a grim voice. “I do not think that I will ever return, save to the crypt at Starfall. And even now I do not think that you would ever believe me when I say what is there. But there are dark things in the North. Things that… the South must be protected from. And so I go. Back to my kin in the North.”
The Lord of Starfall stood slowly and then looked about the Water Gardens. “A very beautiful place in the Sun,” he smiled. And then the smile faded. “Farewell my Prince.” He gently took the sword out of the hands of Hotah, who sighed in relief, and then Lord Dayne walked away tiredly.
“Brother,” Doran said slowly, “Can you please send a raven to the Citadel?”
“To ask if the glass candles can be lit? I will send that raven at once.” And then Oberyn ran.
Robert
There was a storm coming. There was always a bloody storm coming, that was why his ancestors had name the fucking place Storm’s End.
He looked out over the ramparts of the massive curtain wall at the horizon, before looking back at the Great Tower with a scowl. He hadn’t the faintest bloody idea why he was here, in this, the seat of his ancestors. All he knew was that he’d woken up in the middle of the night with a sudden need to head off to his family seat. And on the sea journey South that call had gotten worse and had then been joined by another call, this time to go off in the opposite direction.
He turned back to the sea and scowled again. What the hell was wrong with him? Why was he dithering around like an old woman? What was here to make him come in the first place? He didn’t know.
The first day had been bad enough. He and Renly had burst in on an astonished Ser Cortnay Penrose, the Castellan that his brother had appointed and whom Robert had to admit wasn’t doing a bad job. Robert had spent just long enough to bath and break his fast, before raging around the castle, inspecting it with his brother and Barristan Selmy right behind him, both a bit bewildered.
He knew that he was looking for something. The problem was that he hadn’t the faintest bloody idea what it was, where it was, or how to find it. He just knew that it was here somewhere.
The second day was worse, as he continued to rage around the castle, with many people doing their damnedest to avoid him, even young Edric who he had noticed peering around walls trying to catch a look at his father. He liked the boy, but he had no time for him just now, no time for anything. He had to work out why he was here.
And now it was the third day and he was still nowhere near working out why he was fucking here. He scratched at his beard again and then frowned. Sod the beard, he needed to get it shaved off completely. And then he looked at his belly in disgust. He was fat. When had he gotten fat? How had he gotten fat? Was it all that bloody city and that damn chair?
He set his chin. Right then. A shave and then a sparring session? With who? He needed to lose this damn fat. So he turned and clattered down the nearest steps off the wall and down to the green of the grassy expanse that lay to the West of the Great Tower. And then he paused and frowned. There was a little sapling growing out of the grass, its leaves poking up tentatively into the sky.
Robert walked up to it and then bent over to look at it. By the Seven, it was a Weirwood tree. He looked about the place. What the hell was a Weirwood tree doing growing here? And then he thought about it. His ancestor Durran had built this place, possibly with the help of Brann the Builder. So there must have been a Godswood here once. Hundreds of bloody years ago. Where the hell had this thing come from?
“Your Grace?” Selmy asked behind him and he pointed at the delicate little thing.
“A Weirwood sapling,” he muttered. “I don’t remember ever seeing any of those before?”
The Lord Commander of the Kingsguard looked over at it. “Perhaps it came from a seed dropped by a bird? Weirwood trees have small seeds.”
“Perhaps,” Robert mused. The little sapling reminded him of the North and of Lyanna. There were times when he could barely remember what she looked like and he made a vow to visit her grave soon. There would be a statue of her by it, a reminder of what she looked like. She wouldn’t have let him get fat, not his she-wolf.
“Oh,” said a fussy voice to one side and he looked up to see the Septon, a thin streak of piss whose name escaped him, bustling up to them and sneering at the sapling. “Another one of those things. If your Grace will allow me, I shall remove it.”
As he reached down Robert placed a large hand on his arm. “Wait. You said it was another one? There have been more of these?”
The Septon blinked at him. “Why, yes your Grace. There have been several of them. They started growing about ten days ago.”
Robert looked down at the sapling. That was about the time that he had left King’s Landing. “Odd,” he growled, before looking at the Septon. “Leave it. ‘Tis but a tree.”
This seemed to aggrieve the Septon, given the violence of the gabbling that followed. “But your Grace! It’s a pagan symbol! The Seven will frown on the presence of such a thing here!”
“Then why,” Robert said through gritted teeth, “Do the Seven still permit Weirwood trees in the North?”
The Septon seemed to do his best to look censorious. It was not a good look for a man who appeared to have no chin and a very large nose. “The pagans of the North, your Grace,” he started to say, “Are uncouth and-”
Given that the tale of how Robert had gained the throne must have been told in Storm’s End more times than he’d had whores, the man must have been mad. Robert grabbed by his robes and hoisted him into the air.
“My beloved Lyanna came from the North, you little piece of filth!” Robert roared at the man as he shook him like a rat. “And my friend Ned is the Warden of the North and the finest man I’ve ever known! Uncouth!?! I’ll uncouth you right in the face, you bastard!”
The Septon was squealing what appeared to be a combination of apology, cry for help and appeal to the Seven and Robert glared at him, before giving him one last shake and then dropping him on his arse – away from the sapling. The man cowered before him, before noticing that they had an audience, whereupon he shakily stood.
Robert loomed over him and narrowed his eyes. “If anything happens to that Weirwood plantling,” he ground out, “I will know exactly who to blame – you. And I will personally spread your nose clean over your face. Now bugger off.”
Visibly glad to still be alive the Septon gave a ghastly attempt at a grin and then vanished like the little fart that he was.
Robert watched him go and then stomped off back to the Great Keep, where he had that shave. And then, once his face was bare, he waved a hand at Renly. “Come on, grab some practice swords. I worry that all that time in the Reach is making you soft.”
“Robert,” his youngest brother said with a laugh, “I joust.”
“I know, but I worry that you forget that real war consists of men on foot clattering away at each other until one falls over and leaks his guts out. So – we will spar.”
And spar they did. Renly wasn’t as bad as he had feared, but not as good as he obviously thought he was and Robert beat him down twice before finally breaking his practice sword.
“You’re…. getting… soft,” Robert panted as he stood over his brother and then offered him his hand.
“Robert,” Renly replied as he pulled himself up, “What’s going on? Why are we here? What are we looking for? And what’s this talk of war?”
“You can’t feel it then?”
“Feel what?”
Robert clenched and unclenched his hand. “I don’t know. And that holds for all your questions. Something pulled me here, Renly. I don’t know what. And there is a war coming. I can feel it on my blood and in my bones. I just don’t know who we’ll be fighting. You really don’t feel it?”
Renly frowned and then pulled a face. “I have felt… restless this past ten days. As if I need to look over my shoulder.” Then he paused and nodded slightly. “We have an audience.”
He turned to look and then saw young Edric watching them, his mouth open with wonder. He was carrying… a little warhammer? He smiled slightly and then beckoned his bastard son over. “Come here and let me have a look at that boy.”
Edric approached, looking nervous. “I am sorry your Grace, but I saw you practicing and I-”
“You were curious, lad. Don’t worry, it’s in your blood.” He reached out and gently took up the little warhammer. “A good first weapon. Penrose training you with it?”
The boy nodded eagerly. “Ser Cortnay has been instructing me with it, your Grace.”
“I’m your father, lad, you can call me that instead of all this ‘your Grace’ stuff,” Robert rumbled, before handing it back. “Come on then. Let’s see you use it.”
And the boy did know how to use it. He had the makings of good warrior, blessed with good reflexes and a quick mind. He learnt fast, picking up Robert’s barked instructions and warnings and not having his head turned by any praise. They ended the session when Edric was dropping with exhaustion, as Robert nodded at Ser Cortnay as the yawning lad was led away by a smiling guard.
“You’ve done well,” he smiled. “He’s a good lad.”
“He is that, your Grace,” the red-bearded man said with a smile. “He’s clever and knows when to ask questions and when to stop and listen.”
“Looks like me too,” he said with a grin and then he paused as his stomach rumbled. “Supper calls. Ale too.”
He ate just enough and drank just enough that evening, because all of a sudden he was so tired that he almost fell asleep in his chair. It was a good tiredness, a tiredness in every limb that came from exercise and he fell into bed and was asleep in an instant.
The storm came that night, the kind of storm he remembered from his childhood. But the dreams had him first, the dreams that this time he remembered. He dreamt of Lyanna for the first time in years and this time she was just as he remembered her. She seemed to be trying to tell him something, shouting against a great wind that seemed to snatch her words away. She looked terrified, as if she was pleading him for something, but he couldn’t get close to make her words out. There were Weirwood trees there too, at first far behind them, but then suddenly they rushed towards them and then they were in them, the trunks around them. He lost her then, as if she had been snatched away and he screamed with frustration and ran through the ghostly wood around him. There was snow on the ground all of a sudden and his breath smoked as he panted. And then he entered a clearing and a… thing with white hair and bright blue eyes that shone like stars stared at him with some surprise.
He came awake with a shout and then blinked muzzily about him. And then there was a boom of thunder right above him and the room shook slightly. Yes, the storm had come. He lay back in bed, his chest heaving as he panted. What had that dream been about? What had she been trying to tell him? And what had been that thing?
More thunder and then a strange, irrational feeling came over him. Suddenly he was terrified for that little Weirwood sapling. There was thunder and lightning and torrential rain outside and would it survive?
So he stood and dressed hurriedly before darting out of his room and then out into the night. The rain was falling hard and yet more lightning cracked across the sky, followed by the boom of thunder. He hurried across the wet grass – and then he saw the other figure, the one cloaked and hooded from the rain and also heading towards the sapling. He eyed the figure and then he sped up. There was a horrible intent in the way that figure was stalking.
He was right. The figure ahead was peering at the ground – and then it stopped dead and tilted its head at something, before raising a foot. But Robert hurled himself forwards before the other man could get a chance to stamp on the sapling, grabbing the bastard and pulling him off to one side.
The other man left out a shout of shock and Robert snarled in fury as he recognised the voice. Sure enough the hood fell down to reveal the Septon, who snarled at him – and then recognised him and by the smell of it pissed himself in terror. Robert’s fist came back and down and he felt the Septon’s nose break with a wet crack as he smeared it across the other man’s face. Blood spurted all over the place and then as the other man squealed in anguish Robert brought his bloodied fist around again and caught him on the side of the head, knocking him senseless.
“You leave Lyanna’s fucking tree alone!” Robert screamed as the thunder boomed around them, in what he later admitted to himself was a deeply nonsensical statement.
And then he straightened up and searched the ground carefully. The last thing he wanted was to step on the thing. No, there it was, still upright. A bit bloody perhaps from the Septon’s nose, but intact and none the worse from the weather. He nodded and then knelt by it, before touching the little leaves gently and-
It was dark down here. No, black. Pitch black. Water was falling somewhere, dripping slowly down. Where was he? Underground. Yes. And… he was being watched. Who was there, in that darkness? That deep, smothering darkness? He quivered. It was here. What he sought was here and-
“Your Grace! Are you well?”
He looked up, startled. The rain was slowing and the Septon was stirring. Barristan Selmy was next to him, looking worried. “Selmy? What’s wrong?”
“I should say the same thing to you, your Grace. You were motionless. What happened?”
He could see Renly approaching and also Penrose and young Edric, the latter yawning as if he was about to fall asleep in an instant again. Robert looked down at the Septon. “I woke up – odd dreams,” he said thickly. “I was… worried for some reason. Came out and found this bastard about to stamp on the Weirwood tree. He was probably going to blame it on the storm. I got to him first and then swatted him. Penrose, get some guards to throw him in the nearest cell. Septon or not, I want him gone.”
“I never liked him,” Renly muttered. “Man always thought that the way to piety was to point out everyone else’s flaws.” They all watched as the guards arrived and dragged the suddenly awake and piteously squealing man away.
“Something… happened when I touched the Weirwood tree,” Robert said slowly. “I was underground suddenly.” Young Edric’s head whipped around as his son stared at him, his face very white.
Robert looked back at him. “Edric,” he said seriously, “Has that happened to you too?”
His bastard son nodded, slowly. “The first time I saw it. I touched the leaf and…. I was somewhere dark. There was water dripping. And… I did not imagine it, I swear, but I thought that I was being watched.”
He smiled. Yes, this lad was his son. Then he paused. “Penrose, bring me maps, plans, everything you have on the catacombs of Storm’s End. I have been searching for something. I think that it lies not up here but beneath us.”
An hour later if he had thought that he had known every inch of the tunnels beneath Storm’s End before he knew even more now. And there was indeed a tunnel that led in the direction of the where the old Godswood must have been – the Long Passage. But there was a problem.
“There’s nothing bloody down here,” he said disgustedly as he and Renly stood at the end of it and stared at a stone wall. “Although I remember a lot of crates of old pickled herring here once, when I hid as a child. Plus there are a lot fewer rats.”
“We ate most of them,” Renly muttered quietly. “Robert, during the siege Stannis had the entire castle searched from end to end for food. He found nothing down here.”
“Aye, but what’s the point of the Long Passage, anyway? It doesn’t lead anywhere! There are no side passages, or bricked up entrances to rooms… what was it for?”
This bought him a shrug from his brother. “Who knows? Perhaps it was stopped before it was completed.”
“No, there’s something down here, I know it.” Footsteps sound behind them and they turned to see Edric and Penrose coming towards them, the latter counting under his breath. When they reached them the Castellan looked at them both, his eyes shining. “Your Grace, I have paced it out – the end of this passage is not under the place where the tree grows, it is short of it by at least sixty feet.”
“I was right,” Robert cried, exulted. “There is something down here!” He turned to the wall. “It must be behind here.”
“Your Grace,” Edric piped up to one side. “The walls to each side are laid stone on stone. The wall at the end is laid stone on mortar on stone. They are similar stones but different build.”
He squinted at the wall. “Well spotted lad,” he said and ruffled the boy’s hair affectionately. “Need a knife. Let’s take a look.”
“Edric’s right,” Renly mused as he pulled a knife out and poked at the mortar. “And shoddy mortar at that. This was built in a hurry.”
“Then it can be demolished in a hurry,” Robert muttered as he grabbed a knife proffered by Penrose and started to scrape the mortar away. Although the Castellan offered to get men to do this Robert and his brother, the latter now at last filled with excitement, shrugged off the offer of help and instead worked on breaking down the wall. As the mortar was removed (and young Edric was also helping) the chance came for Robert to get a grip on one stone and pull as hard as he could.
Fat or not he still had some strength. He could feel the sinews strain and the muscles burn, but the first stone came out of the wall with a screeching groan and he tossed it to one side. And where that stone had been was a void, black as night.
“Wait, your Grace,” Selmy said urgently behind them. “Test the air first with a torch. It might be foul.”
That was good counsel and he nodded at the old Kingsguard respectfully before placing the proffered torch near the hole. It dipped and flickered for a moment and he nodded. “Let’s clear the rest of this thing carefully. Stone by stone.”
Men were called and he and Renley worked at taking the wall down and handing each stone back, so that they could be passed back down the corridor. By the time they were finished the wall was gone and in its place was the continuation of the corridor – albeit covered in dust.
Robert swallowed as he took a tentative step into it. Who knew who had last walked down there? Not he – nor any man alive, he would wager good coin on that. And then his eyes widened as he saw that the passageway ended in a great stone door, with a massive lintel over the top, etched with runes.
“Those are the runes of the First Men,” he breathed as he looked at them. “Fetch Maester Jurne.”
Maester Jurne was, it turned out, not far away as he had just awoken and was afire with curiosity at the new discovery. The man arrived almost at a dead run, and then stared up at the runes, his hands shaking as he held his torch up and traced the shapes out. When he was finished he stepped back, white as a sheet.
“Well?” Robert barked. “What do they say?”
“Your Grace,” the older man quavered, before he rallied. “Your Grace, your ancestors lie within. The inscription reads: ‘House Durrandon sleeps here, awaiting the call to fight the Long Night.’”
Robert looked at the stone door for a long moment. And then he walked up to it and with a trembling hand of his own he pushed at the right hand side of it. It resisted him at first and then he felt it give a little. So he pushed harder. Whoever had built it had done a bloody good job, because it pivoted slowly on the left hand side. Once it was open he retreated back into the corridor and then waved his torch at the entrance. Nothing happened to the flame, so he shrugged and then walked in slowly.
It was a great room, with a stone ceiling supported by great pillars cut from the living rock. He frowned at that and that stared at the walls. Sheer rock as well. “What is this place? How old is this place?” he muttered.
“Robert,” said a stunned Renly to one side. “Look.”
And then he saw the tombs. They were everywhere – cut into the sides of the walls with inscriptions saying who they were, some in stone coffins that marched in lines parallel to the walls and some even buried in slots cut in the floor.
“I always wondered where the Durrandons were buried,” he breathed as he looked about. Then he frowned. “But why were they hidden?”
“Edric, stay back,” Penrose called out, but as Robert looked he could see that the boy was walking forwards anyway. From the light of the torch he carried he could see that Edric’s face was blank of all thought. He passed down the line of tombs and then stood before an alcove that lay at the far end, dark and mysterious.
When the lad reached the alcove he turned and faced him. “Father,” he said in a strange voice, as if others were speaking through him, “It is here. This is the place you seek. The Old Gods are strong here. The dead have not forgotten them.” And then he quietly folded up and collapsed.
He darted forwards at the same time as Penrose and Renly, but being closer he got there first. His son was unhurt, but seemed to be asleep and he passed him gently to the Castellan. “Get my son to bed,” he told the man quietly. “He has had a long day already.”
And then he turned to the alcove. Silence fell after Penrose’s feet had passed away and he could hear the sound of water dripping somewhere. He shivered slightly. Yes, this was the place. He walked forwards slowly, Renly by him, and as they approached he could see the alcove better by their torchlight. There was a statue there, a man dressed in archaic armour with a huge greatsword of archaic design in his hands. More runes were carved into the wall by the statue. “Jurne!”
The Maester stumbled forwards, tongue-tied by everything around him and then he stopped and stared at the inscription. “Erm… oh. Your Grace. It says: ‘The Long Night will come again. The Durrandons must always stand against it. Ours is the fury, ours is the storm. Because the Others will come again.’”
“The House motto,” Robert muttered. “’Ours in the fury’. So this is where it comes from.” And then he paused. The statue and the sword seemed to be different.
“But the Others are a Northern myth,” Renly objected, although his voice wobbled up and down more than a bit.
“Are you sure about that brother?” Robert muttered. And then he passed his torch over. “Here, hold this.”
“Why?”
“That sword. It’s that sword.” He stepped forwards and then laid a reverent hand on the hilt where it met the hands of the statue. As he pulled it, it moved and he placed both hands around the grip. And then he felt a tremor run though him – and then the eyes of the statue seemed to open to reveal orbs of red fire, before a voice seemed to roar in his head: “Storm King!”
He shook like a leaf but retained his grip. He sensed Renly stumbling backwards and Selmy letting out a cry of alarm and then darting forwards. “Hold,” he said thickly. “I am Robert, descendant of the Durrandons. I am king.”
The eyes looked at him. “Then go North Storm King! Go North!” The eyes closed, the sword fell into his hands and then he found himself falling backwards, to be caught by Jurne and Barristan Selmy. “Bugger me,” Robert said and then he passed out.
Chapter Text
Allara
She found him on the great rock at the Anvil, the northernmost point of the island. Her husband was staring North at the sea with an odd look on his face – the look of man undecided and uncertain. She ran a hand over her swollen stomach. She knew what kept him here, just as she also knew what was pulling him North. Things that she did not understand were in motion and she wanted to cry for a moment. Why couldn’t things be as they had been? Why did the world have to be the way that it was?
But then she calmed herself and took a deep breath. “Here you are,” she said. “I knew you’d be here.”
He turned as if he had known she was there and then gave her that dazzling smile that still made her stomach turn over. He was wearing his white eyepatch today, the one that hid most of the scar that split one eyebrow and then marked his cheek. “I was watching the waves,” he said teasingly. Then the smile slipped and his looked North again. “I am drawn away and I don’t really know why.”
“I have a suspicion,” she said quietly. “Mother sent a message. The Mirror is clearer. You know what that means. And - danger grows to the North.”
Her husband looked at him in some shock, before looking at the ground in contemplation. “I feared that,” he said hoarsely. “I am pulled there, Allara. I am pulled there.”
She strode to his side, placed her hands on both sides of his face and kissed him fiercely. “I know, I know. Just promise that you will come back.”
He kissed back passionately and then placed a hand on her belly. “Always,” he said intently. “Always.” And then he smirked slightly. “Besides, our hall is still half-built even now.”
She rolled her eyes at this. “You and your hall. It will never be big enough for you, will it?”
He ran a hand down the side of her face. “It is home,” he said simply. “It has you. And our children. And our children to be. So, yes, I may be pulled North, but I will always return to you. I love you.”
“And I you,” she said and kissed him again. When she reluctantly freed her lips from his she sighed. “Allarion needs to talk to you.”
“About what?”
“He feels the pull North too.”
And this drove the blood from his face. “No!”
“Yes,” she said gently. “He came to me this morning. And he is packing even as I speak. He insists on going with you.”
He pulled a face and then glared at the Northern sea. “My blood sings in his veins. I wish it did not.”
“Our son loves you very much,” she sighed. “Besides, he says that he might see the other half of the family there. He has always wondered.”
“Oh,” he laughed, “I admit that I would love to see the face of my brother if he met my son! If he even still lives, the black-hearted scoundrel. Very well.”
They strode down the seashore for a longest time, unwilling to part from each other for as long as possible, until they finally turned and made it back to the hall that was still unfinished because of his always-changing plans.
Their children were waiting there. Little Darion, three years old now and starting to turn into as headstrong a boy as his twin sisters, Darsha and Ela, tall pale Tarsha and then Allarion himself. He was standing there, still, composed, his hands behind his back and his dark blond hair as messy as ever. He stood a little straighter the moment that he saw his father – and then she caught his eye and nodded slightly and something seemed to pierce that composure – relief.
Her husband looked at them all, placed a hand on Allarion’s shoulder and nodded at him before then kneeling before in front of the others. “I am called North, you know that don’t you?”
They nodded with various degrees of understanding. Darion nodded because the others did so as well. The girls looked at him sadly. And Allarion… well, he stood ready.
“I will return. I promise you that. I and your brother will return to mother and you and our home. You have my promise. And I always keep my promises.” And then their crying children hurled themselves at him and he hugged them long and hard.
Matters moved swiftly after that. Her husband liked to move quickly and pack lightly and besides, as he said with a smile, the Summer Isles lacked the kind of clothes that they would need in the North. In Westeros.
It was not until she saw him stand before the far wall of their bedroom and then slowly take down the cloth-wrapped shape that was on the shelf that she started to lose her composure. “Aye, I thought that you would take that.”
He turned to her and smiled hesitantly. “I paid a heavy price for it,” he said as a hand rose and then fell from his eyepatch. Then he hefted it. “But in the finding of it I also found you, so it reminds me both of the curse of duty and the joy of love. Besides… Allarion will need someone to teach him how to wield it one day.”
She nodded, the tears falling down her face and then he was with her, folding her into his embrace. “I will come back. You know that. I have given my promise to you. And I always keep my promises.” She cried as she hugged him back, hot and bitter tears, and he cried too. But when they broke their embrace he looked at her and then kissed her again. “Send word to me when the babe comes.”
“Babes,” she laughed. “They are twins, I feel it. They kick enough for it.”
He looked at her and then grinned, looking as roguish as ever. “Then send word to me when the babes come. I will go first to Dorne and then take ship to White Harbour. I will write as often as I can. Allarion too.” The grin faded a little. “The North calls me, wife. It sings in my blood. The Stark needs me in Winterfell. I wonder what my brother thinks of such a call, if he still lives. Probably such humiliation as I can ever imagine.”
They sailed on the next tide and she stood there and waved until her husband and son were no more than a dot on the horizon. Tarsha stood next to her, silent and red-eyed. “They will return, won’t they Mother?”
She placed a hand on her belly. “Never doubt that,” she said fiercely. “Your father made a promise. And he always keeps his promises. A bit like he pays his debts.”
Robb
As he walked down the corridor his mind was on other things. So very many other things. Things that he had done wrong the first time around and that if it came down to again he would differently. Not that much would, not this time. Things were so very different this time.
Theon was different for one thing. He seemed less boastful and more thoughtful than before and he had even seen him reading a few books, which was not very like the old Theon that he knew. Father had talked to him, he knew that, but about what exactly he knew not. What he did know was that Theon was different. For one thing he seemed to be spending some time in the Godswood. Not praying, not meeting anyone, just sitting and staring at the Heart Tree.
And then there was Jon. Who was not going to the Wall, not going to throw his life away in what might have been a futile attempt to defend the wall from the Others. No, this time it would be different. He would keep his brother close to him, as had always been the case in Winterfell. No matter what Mother said – although she had been a little more forgiving when it came to Jon these past few weeks. He frowned slightly. Why? Had Father said something to her?
He walked up a short flight of stairs and then knocked at the door. Hearing a command to enter he opened it. Inside he found Maesters Luwin and Aemon, sitting at a table that was now covered in books, documents, pieces of paper and above all the rolls of parchment and skin from the secret room.
“You wanted to see me, Maesters?”
“We did indeed, young Robb Stark,” Aemon said almost cheerily. “We have need of your young eyes for a start. Mine are quite inadequate as they no longer work and Luwin here is struggling a little.”
“Indeed I do, my eyes are not what they were,” Luwin sighed as he put down a piece of parchment. “Much of the ink has faded badly and your Lord father has ordered me to start making as many copies as possible. We cannot risk the loss of any other information.”
“Aye,” Aemon said grimly, “Too much has been lost already. And yet there is still so much that we do not understand. These parchments… some of them seem to be copies of records that have long been lost by Castle Black. Which disturbs me greatly. Where could they have gone to?”
There was a short silence. “Lost, I fear,” Luwin said sadly. “Who knows what was lost when so many of the castles on the Wall were abandoned? Who knows what might lay in the Nightfort? Rooms such as the one here in Winterfell… rooms with information. And things that are now no longer understood.”
Robb nodded. “Then let us look into what we have here Maesters. What do you want me to look at first?”
And so they started off on a voyage through time, looking through old parchments that looked as old as Winterfell in places. Robb found it more than a little eerie, to read the words of men long since dead and buried. More often than not the parchments mentioned deliveries to the Night’s Watch, or descriptions of things to be noted. Which of course brought up a few problems.
“We have no context for these documents,” Maester Aemon sighed. “All too often they refer to things that the Starks of old, or the Night’s Watch took for granted. That last document referred to the ‘usual delivery’ from the Last Hearth. They obviously knew what they were referring to. We, sadly, do not. This is most vexing. I feel as if we are viewing a map, but that we cannot read the names of the places on it.”
Something tickled at the back of Robb’s mind, but he put it to one side when he realised that he couldn’t quite place it. Instead he moved on to the next one, which was an old skin with the writing very faded indeed. Pulling it close he squinted at it and read it carefully. After a moment he frowned. “Maesters, listen to this. ‘Whyn yr Starke did arryve att Castell Black he did inspect ye armoury and rote wroth whyn he did view ye weapons, crying that they were of steel and nott glytterglass, as was told in ye rules handed down from ye Time of Heroes. But ye Lord Commander did say that ye Peoples North of ye Wall did vex them and that steel was needed.’”
He looked at them. “The old Night’s Watch didn’t use steel, they used this ‘Glytterglass’, whatever that is. Why would they do that? Unless… they needed it to fight the Others.”
Luwin nodded thoughtfully and then went scrabbling through the records. “Wait, there was another reference, here… ah, yes. ‘And whyn ye Lord Commander asked why there were shards of stone in ye armoury, he wast told that-’ And the rest of the record is too faded to see. Humph. Robb, can you look at this?”
Robb took it and then peered at it. Yes, it was very faded. “I take it that all these records will be copied out again?”
Both Maesters nodded and he quirked a smile before looking back at the piece of parchment. “wast told… that… they were… from… olden tymes, but… that… the armourer knew nott… why they… were there.”
There was a short silence. “Weapons to use against the Others is my guess,” Robb said slowly as he put the pieces together. Then he turned and looked at the little pile of arrowheads to one side, before picking one up. “This is stone – and it glitters. What is it made from?”
“Obsidian,” Luwin said slowly. “Which is also known as dragonglass. It can be found in old volcanoes.”
“It’s all over Dragonstone,” Aemon breathed. His sightless eyes were moving from side to side, as he was obviously in the grip of deep thought. “A stone born out of heat – and such a heat! Born from the bowels of the earth. Born from fire. And with the Others linked so closely to the far North and the ice there…”
“Fire beats ice. The stone affects the Others!” Robb blurted, suddenly excited. “The siege of the Glittering Crag, which became the Last Hearth – there are no volcanoes in the North that I know of, but if the place was an old volcano, like an older version of Dragonstone…”
“We have a weapon,” Maester Aemon said with a grim intensity. “We have something that can be used to fight the Others. And that, my friends is something that we must pass to Castle Black at once. We will need more obsidian and we will need to train the Night’s Watch in its use. And they will resist that.”
Robb and Luwin both stared at the old man. “Why?” Robb asked eventually.
“Why because they are used to their swords. Their steel swords. I cannot imagine Alliser Thorne, the master-at-arms at Castle Black taking well to being told that he needs to train the men to use stone weapons against the Others. He is a humourless man enough as it is. And besides, there is another problem. We have these arrowheads, but they are a drop in the ocean to what we need. Can you say that every arrow will find their mark? And if they work against the Others, do they also work against wights? The records say naught about that. Will we need steel against wights, but obsidian against the Others? Can we create obsidian daggers? Or swords? From I remember the stone is sharp but also can be brittle.” He smiled slightly. “We have made a good start, but we have far to go. Young Robb, you have a good head for war on your shoulders. You can see the difficulties, can you not?”
Robb thought the matter through. “I can,” he agreed. “Maesters, I must bring this to my Lord Father. And also Lord Umber. He will know what stones can be mined at the Last Hearth. And if need be Father can send a raven to Stannis Baratheon and ask for obsidian from Dragonstone.”
He stood and left quickly, striding down the corridor with urgent steps. And as he did he found himself looking in the direction of the woods yet again. The pull was growing stronger. The direwolf that would birth grey Wind was getting closer, he could feel it. And then he broke into a run. He had the feeling that they were starting to run out of time.
Jon Arryn
Lysa was still coldly furious with him. However, he cared not a whit. He had known, instinctively, that it had been the right thing to do, that sending his son away from King’s Landing was the only thing to do.
His wife had not taken it well, had cried and screamed and then shouted hysterically that without her young Sweetrobin would die, that only she could take care of her baby, that only she loved him. And there had been a look of such hatred on her face that he was quite taken aback and had ordered her confined to her rooms until she recovered her balance. Which had taken some time. Although she had finally warmed a little recently, after Baelish had begged to have a word with her.
Jon had breathed easier once word had arrived that young Robert had reached White Harbour, although he admitted that he would not truly relax until Ned sent word that the boy had arrived safe and sound at Winterfell. And why had Lord Manderly sent so large an escort with them?
He tapped a finger against the side of the window that he had been staring out for the past few minutes and then shrugged internally. He had no answers and besides he had a meeting of the Small Council to attend.
When he reached the room he was unsurprised to find Stannis Baratheon there. He was invariably early for such meetings, as if he had an internal sundial. Robert had once actually said that, only he had been far more… colourful in his terminology.
“My Lord Hand,” the Master of Ships said, standing and bowing slightly.
“Lord Baratheon,” Jon replied with a bow of his own. There was no-one else there, but Jon knew that it would not do to mention the Great Matter there. He had his suspicions about the place. Too many dark corners, too many corniches, too many fireplaces. Too many potential ears. And yet the great matters of the kingdom were discussed here. Who listened to what and reported to who? Oh, this terrible game they all played, this game of thrones.
Hearing feet he turned to the passageway to the right. Pycelle, unless he missed his guess, judging from the shuffling gait. And sure enough it was the old Grand Maester, clutching something in his hand. A message?
“My Lord Hand,” the older man puffed weakly, his wattles jiggling a little, “A message from His Grace the King. And a passing strange one too.”
Jon frowned and took the proffered piece of parchment. Well, it was certainly written in Robert’s hand. It was near-illegible, meaning that he had either been extremely drunk or incredibly excited when he had written it. ‘Staying at Storm’s end for a few more days. Have found lost Durrandon relic. Lost Durrandon tombs too. Robert, King of Westeros etc. etc. etc.’ Yes, ‘passing strange’ was one way to put it.
He handed it over to Stannis, who looked at it with a deepening scowl. “Lost Durrandon relic?” Stannis asked with as much incredulity as Jon thought he was capable of expressing. “What nonsense is this? Lost Durrandon tombs as well? Preposterous. I know that castle like the back of my hand. I grew up there and I was besieged there. There are no lost tombs there that I know of. Just the Baratheon ones.”
“And yet that is what His Grace claims. Well – we must wait for his return.”
The sound of slippered feet could be heard approaching and Varys appeared. A Varys who looked as puzzled as he ever appeared. Seeing the others he seemed to smooth his countenance and bowed slightly to them all. “My Lords, Grand Maester Pycelle, I trust that you are all well?”
Stannis, whom Jon knew loathed the Spider, nodded shortly before returning to his seat. “Well enough,” he grated. “Better once the King returns from Storm’s End.”
Varys nodded and then fluttered his hands a little as he himself sat at the same time as the others. “Has any word of His Grace arrived? His trip to his ancestral home was… somewhat precipitate.”
“Here,” grunted Stannis as he handed over the message. “See what you make of that.”
The Master of Whispers looked at the parchment, seemed to re-read it and then looked up, his brow furrowed. “Durrandon relic? Durrandon tombs? I was unaware that such things existed.”
“They don’t,” Stannis ground out as he looked at Varys. “We’ll have to wait and hear what he found, but I know nothing of any such things ever even being suspected there.”
There was a short pause whilst Varys seemed to absorb that information. “That would fit in with the odder snippets that my little birds have brought me on this day,” he muttered. “Which have been… odd indeed.”
“I see that this meeting of the smaller version of the Small Council has already started,” a voice said to one side and Petyr Baelish swept in to take his place at the table, placing his book of accounts down to one side. “What word of the King?”
Varys passed the parchment down, the Master of Coin squinted at it and then looked up. “Relic? Tombs? At Storm’s End?”
“I am sure that His Grace will enlighten us when he returns with Lord Renly,” Jon said, taking charge of the meeting. “Now, Varys – you said that you had odd information?”
The eunuch nodded. “Apparently there has been a great meeting between the Brackens and the Blackwoods at the Red Fork, fifty miles East of Riverrun.”
“Oho!” Baelish chuckled, “Another attempt at a truce? How many died this time? A dozen? A score? Those two families will hate each other until the end of time.”
But Varys greeted this with a slight clearing of the throat. “Actually, Lord Baelish, not one man died. They seem to have met and discussed most seriously an end to the enmity between the two houses. And then they, erm, swore a great oath to, erm, protect the land against…” He wound down.
“Against?” Jon prompted gently as they all stared at the eunuch.
“Against the Others,” Varys finally said, looking around the table. “My little birds were very exact on that term, because I questioned it.”
Oddly enough it was Pycelle who first spoke next. “Preposterous! The Others are but a Northern myth!”
“Ah, Lord Varys, I fear that your little birds have led you astray,” Baelish said with a slow shake of his head. “The Others? Rank madness.”
“Normally I would agree with you,” Varys said with more than a little hauteur, “If it were not for my other news. From Essos I hear that the sellsword company the Company of the Rose are seeking passage across the Narrow Sea. Apparently they claim that their time of exile is over.”
“Time of exile? They are hardly Westerosi anymore, they are the descendants of those that would not bend the knee to the Targaryens when they obtained the surrender of the North,” Stannis exclaimed. “Why would they want to return? Who is paying them?”
“Apparently no-one,” Varys said quietly. “It is most… confusing.”
“Then it is my turn to add to the confusion,” Jon broke in. “I have had word of two most peculiar things. The first is from the Vale. Apparently some days ago the leaders of the Mountain Clans appeared before the Bloody Gate. All ten of them.”
This seemed to stun Baelish, who as a Vale lord knew how bizarre this news was. “Impossible! All ten?”
“All ten, Lord Baelish – and you know how likely that is.”
“Not even a little,” Baelish muttered. Then he looked at him, his eyes narrowed. “What did they want?”
“Apparently to say that they will return. That the Eyrie should not think that their absence means that their battle for their old rights has been suspended.”
“Absence, my Lord Hand?” Varys asked, his eyebrows heading upwards again.
“According to the Blackfish, Ser Brynden Tully, who was at the Bloody Gate, the Mountain Clans said that they are going to the North. That the Others have returned, and that they are heeding some kind of call.” He looked at their faces. “Had this news come from anyone else than the Blackfish I would have thought them mad. However – he is reliable.”
Another silence. Pycelle broke it. “Preposterous!” But it sounded weak.
“Grand Maester Pycelle,” Jon said eventually. “Is it true that the Citadel at Oldtown has announced that the glass candles can now be relit?”
The joggle of the wattles gave them all their answer before the wretched man said another word. “I have sent a raven back to the Citadel,” he said eventually. “Asking them to confirm that message. As it is insane! Magic has gone from this world!”
Jon looked around the table. And then he saw that Varys was pale and trembling, his eyes on something that no-one else could see. “Lord Varys? Are you well?”
The others looked at the eunuch as well, who finally noticed that he was being stared at and offered them all a weak smile. “Your pardon my lords,” he said shakily. “Bad memories. Talk of magic… brings on bad memories.”
“Perhaps,” Pycelle wheezed, “You might need bloodletting my lord Varys! Yes, looking at you I can see that your humors are out of balance.”
The eunuch shot a dirty look at the Grand Maester. “My humors, Grand Maester, are exactly where they need to be and do not need correcting with a bloodletting.”
Pycelle leant back in his chair and humphed with disgust. “You know nothing about modern medicine,” he muttered. “Plus I have a new bloodletting device. With six blades!”
“If I may return to the purpose of this meeting,” Jon broke in, “Grand Maester, the messages about the glass candles have gone out to every major house in Westeros and even some of the Free Cities by now. I hardly think that it can be a mistake – not without having been corrected by now.”
Pycelle seemed to slump a little in his chair at this, whilst Varys closed his eyes for a long moment, but then reopened them as he seemed to rally. “What would you have us do, my Lord Hand?” The eunuch asked the question in a very steady voice.
“Something… bizarre is happening and we need to find out exactly what. And the King will soon be returning from Storm’s End, so that we can get to the bottom of what he found there. In the meantime we still have to ensure the smooth running of the Realm.”
And so they plunged back into the business of the Realm, Baelish with his woeful accounts, Pycelle with his expostulations about the health of the city and then Stannis with his growled update on the current state of the Royal Fleet. As he watched them all Jon wondered about them. Stannis was the one man he could trust. Pycelle seemed to have ties to the Queen – thank the Gods she was not present, although Pycelle would soon relay what they had discussed back to her – and Baelish… well, he was still having doubts about the man. Yes, he was very skilled at finding revenue in the most unlikely places, but he seemed to be, well, far too amused by things. As well as on no-one’s side but his own.
That said, something seemed to be worrying the smooth little man a little today. There were small, tiny indications – a tap of a finger on the table, a look at the window occasionally. What could be wrong? Jon shrugged a little internally. He knew not.
They ran through the meeting and then as they went their separate ways a man in Baratheon livery appeared out of a doorway to one side and then silently bowed to Stannis and passed on a piece of paper. Stannis took it silently, nodded and then looked around them. It was just Jon, Stannis Baratheon and the messenger.
“Ser Davos Seaworth has returned,” Stannis muttered quietly. “And he requests an urgent – and most secret – meeting with us both.”
Renly
He sat on the low wall and looked about Storm’s End. Robert was training Edric again on the grass sward, showing him the best way to keep his balance when he swung his Warhammer, how to move his feet, what to look for in the eyes of an opponent. The boy was drinking in every word with a slight frown of concentration. Now that Robert was clean-shaven again that day it was as if he was instructing a miniature version of himself.
Renly suppressed a slight wince. Oh, the boy was having an impact on his father. Hopefully Robert wouldn’t do something stupid and take him back to King’s Landing with him. Cersei would not like that at all. In fact the bitch-Queen of Casterly Rock might view the boy as a direct threat to Joffrey.
He thought about the other lad for a moment. Joffrey looked nothing like Edric. Come to that he looked nothing like Robert. But then he himself looked little enough like Stannis, so you could never tell with the way the family tree twisted its branches. That said, he almost wished that Edric was legitimate. He was a nice boy, far nicer than that little monster Joffrey.
Renly looked North for a moment and then scowled a little. Yes, he was feeling it too. It seemed to be stronger here in Storm’s End. What ‘it’ was, was of course another matter. He just felt this pressing need to be somewhere further North than he was at this time. Judging by the way that Robert and Edric would occasionally look North as well, they felt the same thing. He wondered if Stannis felt it and then dismissed the thought of their brother actually trusting in a non-rational instinct.
Hearing voices to one side he looked over to see the Castellan and the Maester stroll past, deep in conversation. Penrose had carefully searched the catacombs that no-one had even known even existed again and it looked Jurne had found something. He strolled over and as he approached the two saw him and bowed respectfully.
“So what’s the latest discovery?” Renly asked with a smile.
“My Lord.” Jurne replied, or rather gabbled a little from excitement, “I have found a reference in the archives. It seems that after word came of the Last Storm and the death of Argilac the Arrogant, there was a short pause before Orys Baratheon arrived here at Storm’s End, and whilst Argella waited for him in defiance, having proclaimed herself the Storm Queen, she gave orders that ‘her father’s things’ be put away safe for ‘another day’. Now, every thought that such words merely referred to her father’s personal possessions – but what if they did not?”
He thought this over and then nodded. “Yes – but wait. Didn’t her own garrison rebel against her and hand her over to Orys in chains?”
“Aye,” Penrose said quietly. “But what if that was all a mummer’s farce? To hide the relics and the tombs and anything else they made it look as if there had been a riot and a rebellion against Argella?”
Renley stroked his chin thoughtfully. “That would make sense,” he muttered. “Has anything else been found there?”
The other two men looked at each other, before the Maester nodded slowly. “I have translated the runes around the statue,” he said quietly. “The sword is Stormbreaker. The legendary sword of Durran Godsgrief, or so the legends say.”
The hairs on the back of his neck rose up and he shivered a little, before looking over at where the sword was resting, on a table, wrapped in a cloak, with Ser Barristan Selmy watching over it. The sword fascinated him. But then that was unsurprising, it fascinated everyone who saw it. That is, everyone that Robert allowed near it. His brother was as transfixed by their ancestral sword as anyone else.
And oddly enough it was Ser Barristan Selmy who seemed the most fascinated by the tombs of the Durrandons. Although the statue troubled him. He did not blame the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard – the statue troubled him too. The sight of those stone eyes burning red and that terrible voice speaking, telling Robert to go North…
“Thank you,” he said quietly, dismissing the two and then he strode over to the table and the old Kingsguard, who seemed to have one eye on the sword and the other on Robert. “Ser Barristan.”
“My Lord,” the older man said with a respectful nod. “His Grace seems to be enjoying his training session with his son.”
Renly looked over to the two, where Robert was now crouched at the same level as Edric, adjusting his stance a little. Both had almost identical brilliant smiles on their faces. “The art of the Warhammer, Ser Barristan. Naught else like it for my brother. Although I do think that he will soon be pressing to learn how to wield this weapon.”
“He already has,” Selmy said with a slight grimace. “Very early this morning I am told. I saw you talking with Ser Cortnay and Maester Jurne. Is there any further news about the catacombs?”
“Apparently the sword has a name. Stormbreaker.”
Selmy blinked hard at this. “Gods be good,” he breathed, “Do we really live in a time where legends come alive again? My ancestors fought for the Storm Kings and Stormbreaker was said to be a mighty weapon. No-one has seen it for many centuries though.”
“You saw the statue, Ser Barristan,” Renly said quietly. “You saw it.”
Selmy’s head dipped for a long moment. “I did,” he said softly. “And suddenly I have… doubts. About the Seven. Something calls to me my Lord. I… cannot say what. Some part of me that has the blood of the First Men, some part of me that wishes that there was a Godswood here. Strange to think that I should have such thoughts now.”
“Renly! Ser Barristan!” Robert was striding towards them now, as Edric continued to practice his swings. “What do you think of him?”
The Kingsguard cast an eye at the lad. “He swings it well your Grace. As if he was born to it.”
“Aye,” Robert said as he grabbed a mug of weak ale and then drank from it. “Gods I’ve got a thirst on me. And I ache like I have not for years! But… ‘tis good to be here again. And to spar properly.”
And it was true. Robert was still fat, but a little less than before and there was an energy to him, a life that fair crackled off him like lightning. “Robert, Jurne had news. The sword of the Durrandons… well, it has a name.”
His brother looked at him sharply. “What name?”
“Stormbreaker.”
Robert stared at them astonished. “He is sure?”
“He is sure.”
There was a long pause and then Robert’s face set in a look of implacable determination. “Very well then. Ser Barristan?”
“Your Grace?”
“It seems that I require training in the use of such a sword. You are the finest swordsman that I know of. Will you assist me?”
The Lord Commander of the Kingsguard blinked at his king for a moment and then he nodded. “With everything I have your Grace.”
“Good, because we have little time. I was right. War does march on the Seven Kingdoms. Why else would we find Stormbreaker now? What gods now control our destiny?” He looked over at Edric, who had stopped practicing and was now looking at them with concern. “My son, where does the wind call you?”
The boy looked confused for a moment – and then a look that seemed to mirror his father crossed his face. “North, father.”
“North indeed. Pack your things. I am sending you and Ser Cortnay to Winterfell. You’ll learn to fight there. And we-” Robert looked at Renly and Selmy, the latter looking as if he had heard the horns of war itself judging by the way that he was flaring his nostrils, “We are going back to King’s Landing. The Realm must be put in order.”
Jory
The moment that he caught sight of the Broken Tower he let out a deep sigh of relief that he hadn’t even known that he’d been holding in. Winterfell. They were within sight of Winterfell.
It wasn’t as if they had had a hard or difficult journey, the Kingsroad had been its usual self and had even been repaired in a few places, so they had made good progress. It had instead been the constant vigilance required the entire time, that need to eye any fellow travellers on the road (especially those on horseback) carefully and also keep an eye on the treeline whenever the road went through a wood. And with every league that passed he found himself marvelling over the difference in the little lordling.
When they had left White Harbour he’d been riding on Annah’s lap, bundled in furs and yet looking around him with an increasingly keen gaze. These past two days he’d been on a horse of his own, albeit one that was tied to that of one of Lord Manderly’s men. He wanted to learn how to ride. He wanted to learn how to use a bow. He wanted to learn how to use his dagger. He wanted so very many things! So no, he was not the same boy. Lord Arryn would likely not recognise him, without his pallor and the dark circles under his eyes. Instead he looked like a healthy little boy. He had not had a shaking fit for days now, and Jory stared at the trees fiercely in an effort to hide his glare of fury. How could someone do that to the child?
Hearing hooves to one side he looked back to see Duncan, the man in charge of Lord Manderly’s escort, approach. “Winterfell is ahead – we should prepare to enter the castle in a manner befitting the son of Lord Arryn.”
He nodded at that. “Aye, we should. Banners to the fore if you please.” He then waved at Willets and the Valeman trotted up. “Winterfell approaches. We need to announce the arrival of Robert Arryn.”
Willets, who was a terse man of few if any words, nodded shortly and then smiled crookedly. “We have a banner,” he said quietly, before nodding and then riding off to talk to Rikson, who fumbled in a saddlebag.
And so it was that some hours later the party clattered though the main gate of Winterfell, led by the sky-blue falcon soaring against a white moon, on a sky-blue field of House Arryn and the white merman with dark green hair, beard and tail, carrying a black trident, over a blue-green field of House Manderly. They had of course long been seen and noted and reported on and as they drew rein Jory could see the familiar figures of Lord and Lady Stark striding towards them.
He dismounted and bowed formally to them both as they drew up to him. “My Lord, my Lady. I brought Robert Arryn, the son of Lord Arryn, the Hand of the King, to you. I have fulfilled my oath to Lord Arryn that I would bring him here safe and sound.”
Lord Stark looked at him and then nodded. “You have done well Jory Cassel.” And then he smiled and clapped him on the shoulder. “Lord Manderly sent word of your departure. You have made good time.”
“And you must be Robert,” Lady Stark said with a reassuring smile at the now solemn little boy on his horse, which was now being held by the bridle by Willets. “I am Catelyn Stark, your aunt.”
“And I am Lord Eddard Stark, your uncle,” Lord Stark rumbled. “Welcome to Winterfell.”
The little lordling stiffened in the saddle a little and then nodded solemnly. “Aunt. Uncle. I am very pleased to see you.” And then he swallowed. “Lady Stark, your hair is like my... my mother’s and…” He stopped there, his face slightly twisted as he obviously tried to hold back his tears. The boy was young and tired and had been travelling for so very many days.
Lady Stark quickly smiled and reached out and gathered him into her arms as he slumped out of his saddle and then allowed her to take him away, followed by an anxious Annah. Willets and Rikson stamped, bowed and then followed them, leaving Jory and lord Stark with the rest of the men.
“You’ve done well,” Lord Stark said with a smile at the mounted men. “There is hot food and ale waiting for you in the barracks. Beds too and baths. My thanks to Lord Manderly will go to White Harbour today by raven, and I’ll make sure that he knows of your good service.”
The men nodded and bowed, well-pleased, and as they passed on to the barracks Lord Stark turned to Jory. “A powerful escort,” he said quietly. “Why such numbers?”
“I have much to tell you, my Lord. Lady Stark too. Perhaps we should talk in private? The nurse, Annah, will need to be there too.”
Lord Stark looked at him and then nodded. “Let us go to my solar then. Given that this is likely about my nephew, I will ask your uncle to be there too.”
“Maester Luwin too my Lord. There is something that he needs to see. Oh,” and he pulled out the sealed leather wallet. “I also have a letter from Lord Arryn my Lord.”
Ned
By the time that Cat and a grim-faced Annah entered the room Ned had read and re-read Jon’s letter. It worried him.
“My dear Ned. “Thank you for your letter and your warning about bad products coming out of the West. You may be very sure that I will be keeping a close eye on the West indeed. I would like to know how you smelt the trouble on the wind, but that is a conversation that we must have face to face I think. I know how hard it is for you to come to Kings Landing, just as you know how hard it is for me to come to Winterfell, so perhaps a meeting in Riverrun instead? I will send word soon. “In the meantime I entrust the care of my son to you for fostering. It is time that he knew his family in the North. And from goodbrother to goodbrother I must tell you that he worries me. His mother smothers him with too much affection at times and because the child is sickly she often refuses to let him out of her sight. Hopefully by fostering him with you I can bring him out of her shadow and turn him into an Arryn of the Vale. I am sending his nurse Annah with him, who knows about his medicine, and also two of my men, Willets and Rikson. All have served me well over the years and should be trusted. “News might reach you soon about events here at King’s Landing. Your help might be required. I will write more soon. “Jon Arryn, Hand of the King, Lord of the Vale, etc, etc.”
So Jon knew something, as they had suspected. What exactly did he know though? How long had he known it? Who suspected that he knew it? Was the news from Lysa Arryn in that other future that the Lannisters had poisoned Jon accurate, given what that future Cat had told Robb about her sister’s near-madness? So many things to consider, so many things to worry about.
Luwin and Rodrik Cassel were quietly talking to Jory in the corner. He glanced at the group and then made a mental note that none of them would die in the future. Not if he could help it. And then Cat and Annah entered.
“Jory – your report please?”
“Lord Stark, we sailed North on a ship commanded by Ser Davos Seaworth, one of Lord Stannis Baratheon’s best men. And when we drew up to the East of the Fingers Ser Davos came to me with most worrying news. One of the men that joined the crew at King’s Landing was a ne’er-do-well, a man who was going to damage the ship enough to force it to seek harbour and once there he intended to set a fire, slip a knife in my ribs and vanish in the confusion with Lord Arryn’s son.”
Ned and others all stared at him, whilst Rodrik scowled and muttered something about never trusting a bloody sailor.
“Why would he kidnap my nephew?” Cat asked faintly, looking horrified. “For coin?”
“He had orders my Lady. Ser Davos questioned him most carefully and discovered the name of the man who had given him those orders. Lord Petyr Baelish.” Ned looked at Jory quickly. According to Robb, Littlefinger had promised him help in King’s Landing, but then either betrayed him or been outmanoeuvred. Either way he was not to be trusted. And then he looked at Cat. She had turned whiter than milk.
“You are sure about this, Jory Cassel?” Cat asked. “I know Lord Baelish. I grew up with him.”
Jory reached into his pocket and pulled out a letter. “Ser Davos lacks his letters, my Lady, but this was written by Lord Manderly.”
She looked at Ned, received his nod and then took and opened it, after reading it quickly. “It is as he says,” she said in a voice filled with resigned shock. “Petyr Baelish is not the man I knew. He can no longer be trusted.”
She handed it over to Ned, who glanced at it quickly. Yes, it all was as Jory had said. “Thank you Jory,” Ned said quietly. “You have done good work.”
“My Lord,” Jory broke in, “There is more. When Ser Davos found out the plot he ordered that the guards on Lord Arryn’s son be doubled. One of the guards knocked over the medicine for Lord Arryn’s son, for his shaking fits. Ser Davos reassured us that he knew of an apothecary in White Harbour who could probably ascertain what the medicine was and then make up some more. But when Ser Davos and Annah went to the apothecary – well, Annah I had better let you tell the tale.”
Annah was a slightly hard-faced Valewoman about the same age as Jory, if Ned had to guess, and she stepped forwards and pulled out a stone jar from a pocket. “My Lord, my Lady, Ser Davos brought me to the apothecary – Barlan he was, by name – and we showed him the medicine that Lady Arryn had directed me to give young Robert Arryn. “But when Barlan inspected he frowned and sniffed it and then sneezed most violent and held it away from him. And then he asked us why we had brought him poison instead of medicine.”
Ned stared at her, as did all the others bar Jory, who was standing there with his hands behind his back, as grim-faced as his father had ever been. Cat looked openly horrified. “Poison? Surely not?”
“Poison my Lady,” Annah said in a voice like iron. “He was most clear. Said that it was a mixture of some kind of metal and powdered chalk.”
“My Lord, my Lady, Lord Manderly questioned the man and gave me this to give to you about what he said it was. Something from Essos I believe.” And Jory handed over a second letter bearing Manderly’s seal.
Ned took it opened it, with Cat suddenly standing next to him, and they both read it, finishing it at about the same time. When they finished it he met her appalled gaze. “Who,” she said with a note of horror in her voice as she sank into a chair, “Who… could have done this? Why would they do it?”
All of a sudden Ned had some horrible suspicions in his head, but he watched as an ashen-faced Luwin inspected the contents of the jar. “’Tis called Shadow Root my Lord. I have witnessed this once before. It is not common and it is used over time to weaken someone and give them fits.”
“Aye,” Annah said – and there was fury in her voice – “And we were told that we could not simply stop giving it to the little lordling, but instead diminish how much he got day by day, to wean him off it.”
“Exactly right,” Luwin said as he stoppered the jar and then brushed his hands clean. “People who have been poisoned by this noxious powder do best by being exposed to less and less of it as time goes on, until they are free of it.”
“We have done so,” Annah said quietly. “And Lord Arryn’s son is greatly changed as a result. He has not had a shaking fit in many days now and every day that passes he… changes, my Lord. He is a different boy from the one that left King’s Landing. He has come alive.”
“Aye, I can testify to that my Lord,” Jory said with a smile. “When I first met him, in King’s Landing, I thought – your pardon my Lady, I mean no offence – that the boy was a lackwit. But with every day that has passed since White Harbour he has indeed changed. Fair bombards you with questions about the world around him for a start.”
“My Lord,” Rodrik Cassel rumbled as he stood, “I must tell the guards to watch every visitor from the South. If there has been one attempt to seize the lad, along with an attempt at poisoning him, who knows what else will come to threaten him – and Winterfell?”
“Agreed,” Ned said after a moment of thought. “Warn the guards. Luwin – will you inspect the boy, once he awakes? I think that we would all feel happier once we knew that my nephew is free of this poison. Jory, my thanks again. And you too Annah. I have no doubt that Lord Arryn will also send his thanks once he knows of all of this.”
“He should know soon, my Lord,” Jory sighed. “Ser Davos sailed South with all the information we have just given you.”
Ned nodded. “Good. Thank you all.” And then he watched all but Cat file out of his solar. Once they were gone and the door was closed he turned to his wife. “Cat?”
She stood shakily. “He is but a boy! Why would someone poison him?”
He grimaced. “Robb said… that the other you, the you from the future, said that Lysa was, well, unstable. If not insane.” There. The word was out. It was brutal, but it was out. “She dotes on the boy, but she needs him to be dependent on her.”
There was a pause whilst Cat struggled to absorb this. “Ned, my sister…”
“Sat in the Eyrie and refused to lift a finger to help you, or our son during his war, according to Robb’s memories. And he said that you told him that Lysa was… wrong in the head. For such a person this might make sense. The ‘medicine’ would make him totally dependent on her. I like it not, but it is the only conclusion that I can come to. Where did she get this medicine, from whom and for what purpose?”
Cat looked at him desperately and then closed her eyes in defeat. “I do not know,” she whispered. “But we cannot allow her anywhere near him until we have more information.”
He nodded and then held her in his arms. “I know,” he whispered. “He’s just a boy. But that boy is the son of Jon Arryn, and I will protect him, no matter what it takes.”
Tyrion
He hated to admit it, but the records were absolutely fascinating, he thought as he lay on his bed in the ship and tried not to think about the motion from the sea. He never thought that he could ever say such a thing, but they really were fascinating. He had brought books of his own on this trip and he had actually finished one, a fascinating discourse on the possible cause of the cataclysm that had claimed Valyria.
But it had been the little book on the runes that could be found on certain lower levels of Casterly Rock that had attracted his attention. The book that some Maester called Hamil had written back in the days of his great-grandfather. The runes themselves could be found in an old storeroom to the North of the Rock and he remembered that room quite clearly. When he had been a child he’d once asked Jaime what they had meant – and had been answered with a shrug and a muttered comment about perhaps Uncle Gerion knowing.
Uncle Gerion had smiled and shrugged himself. “Perhaps they date back to Lann himself? Tyrion, we know very little about the early history of the Rock. Keep asking questions my boy! You have quite the enquiring mind! Just – don’t ask your father. He has a… set view of the history of our family.”
He had heeded that advice. And now he knew why Uncle Gerion had said what he had said. The runes were very old and dated back to the time of the First Men. To the time of Lann, allegedly. And the runes, whilst being unclear, at least hinted at Lann the Clever being purely of the First Men and not part Andal. Which Tyrion found fascinating. What had happened to the Casterlys? How had the Lannisters gotten hold of the Rock – really? Not the legends, not the tales, the truth?
And the other records held other accounts, other odd references. The sending of men North to the Wall. Why? Some kind of ceremony? It sounded like one, something that had long since been abandoned. And then… that reference to ‘iyf Glytterglass be founde then worde is to be sent to Ye Stark at once.’ Glytterglass? Was that a reference to obsidian? Perhaps it was. Fascinating. But why send word to ‘Ye Stark’? For what reason? He had to admit that Uncle Gerion had been right not to mention any of this to Father. For one thing it implied a greater degree of influence for the Starks of Winterfell. But again, why?
Thinking of Uncle Gerion made him pause for a long moment. Where was he? Could he really be dead, in that never-ending quest for Brightroar? He hated to think that that warm smile and that bright wit could ever be gone. The world would be diminished without that man. His world especially. Uncle Gerion was a good man. He still would not – could not – think of him in the past tense. Even is Father had written him off as dead, lost somewhere in the East.
He took a sip of wine and then stared at the wooden walls of his cabin, forcing his mind away from that fell subject. Perhaps this trip was not entirely without interest. And at least this part was not too onerous. By ship from Lannisport to Seaguard and then the ride Northwards. He wasn’t looking forwards to the Twins as from all accounts Lord Frey was an old and unpleasant man who liked to wring what he could out of guests. Well, he would pass through as quickly as possible, protected by his family name. His father had given him that at least. No Frey would ever think to get a thing out of a Lannister.
Then he sat up suddenly. Someone up on deck was shouting, quite loudly. He pulled his boots on quickly and then got down and waddled to the door as fast as possible, just in time to nearly get bumped in the face by the door as it was opened by young Jon, the cabin boy.
“Your pardon my lord! The captain’s compliments and would you please join him on deck?”
“Lead on,” Tyrion muttered and then watched as the boy vanished. He had his suspicions about the lad. He looked so much like Captain Harklin that he strongly suspected that the boy was his bastard son.
Reaching the deck he blinked as men ran past clutching various weapons, all looking either angry or as if they were about to piss themselves in terror. He watched them go by and then climbed the steps to the fore-whatever-it-was, where the captain was peering ahead at something. “Is there trouble ahead good captain?”
Captain Harklin (who had been carping these past few days at the lack of other ships) peered at him and pointed. “We have company. Mayhaps Ironborn, but ‘tis too soon to tell.”
Tyrion peered cautiously over the gunnel, or whatever it was called. Far ahead there was indeed a sail and it seemed to be heading towards them. “I thought that the Ironborn was supposed to be behaving themselves after the King’s noble quest to see how many of their heads he could squash with that Warhammer of his?”
“Oh they have been,” Captain Harklin muttered as he peered at the ship through his Myrish spyglass. “But I haven’t lived this long in these waters by trusting Ironborn scum as far as I can throw them. They might not reave any more at the moment, but the moment they think they can get away with it they’ll go back to their old ways. Wait… Aha! I know that ship. It’s old Fosswill’s ship, the Sea Bull!”
Blinking hard, Tyrion looked at the man. “I wasn’t aware that any such creature existed.”
“Oh it doesn’t. But he was drunk at the time and it was a better idea than the other ones that he came up with. He started off with Arsekicker and then moved on to Krackenwalloper and then Squidsquasher. A good man, but he lost a brother to the Ironborn and fought with Old Stoneface’s fleet at the siege of Pyke.”
“’Old Stoneface’?” Tyrion thought about this for a moment. “Do you mean Stannis Baratheon?”
“That’s the man. Your pardon – Jon! Fetch me my speaking trumpet! Bos’n prepare to spill the wind a little in the sails! We’ll need to lose some speed to speak with him. I like not the fact that we’ve barely seen an Ironborn ship these past three days.”
The ship seemed to come alive as men ran back for forth doing nautical things that involved pulling on ropes and then apparently releasing what looked like the same rope. It made Tyrion tired just watching them. If, the Gods forbid, he ever had to do anything naval he’d do it from the safety of a big chair on the quarterdeck. With a saucy wench in minimal clothing next to him, holding a bottle of wine no doubt.
He was distracted from this appealing thought by the sound of a hail from the other ship, which was also slowing. A man dressed in the same kind of clothes as the captain was standing at the pointy end and was holding a speaking trumpet. “Good Gods,” he called out, “Are you still sailing that deathtrap? Hasn’t her keel fallen off yet?”
“No better than that old scow you’re mishandling over there,” Harklin bellowed back through his own trumpet. “Where are you from and where are you bound?”
“Seaguard via Ten fucking Towers, heading to Lannisport. Avoid the Iron Islands my friend.”
Harklin frowned as he started to walk towards the blunt end, so as to keep pace with the other man. “Why?”
“They’re wailing about their religion again! Damphair’s gone mad and is killing people who mention the Old Gods.”
A number of crew started at this and muttered, whilst Tyrion looked at the other captain with narrowed eyes. The Old Gods again. Yes, something was most certainly up.
The problem was that he didn’t believe what seemed to be happening. Which was a little… inconvenient. Especially given his dreams of late. Those cold blue eyes that stared at him… and then the roar that seemed to split the heavens and shake the earth beneath his feet.
“What do they say?” Harklin shouted.
There was a pause as the other man seemed to think about what he should say. “Some feel the call North. And some heard it. ‘The Others come. The Stark calls for aid. You are needed’. The blood of the First Men my friend. May your winds be fair!”
And the other ship was past them, heading on that opposite course. Harklin stared after it and then as if in afterthought he shouted back: “May your winds be fair!” He seemed… stunned. As did more than a few others. And then as Tyrion watched he recovered his wits. “Bos’n, more sail! Take her North a point or two – closer to the wind. All hands, prepare to rig another sail!”
Tyrion watched as the organised chaos thundered past him, before walking slowly and thoughtfully back to his cabin, where he picked up the little book. He was about to plunge back into the joy of research when he heard a knock on the door and he looked up to see Harklin at the entrance.
“We’re putting on more sail, so as to get to Seaguard quicker. ‘Tis a little risky, but we need to get you to Seaguard as soon possible. If the winds were set right I’d actually pass through the Iron Islands, past Flint’s Finger and as far into Blazewater bay as possible, to get you to Moat Cailin, but we cannot do that just now. Besides, you need the Kingsroad and good steeds.” He smiled slightly. “I may sail from Lannisport now, but I was born in Ramsgate. I have seen many strange things and heard many strange tales, but right now I am of the North and as you have books and such about the Time of Heroes ‘tis my duty to get you to Winterfell at once.”
And that Tyrion could do was nod sombrely and say his thanks – and then return to his books.
Willas
He wanted to pace, but that would not have been a good idea. His leg would not allow for it – not at the rate at which he wanted to pace, anyway. He was still baffled as to what was going on. All he knew was that he needed to be both at Highgarden and somewhere North. It made no sense whatsoever and made him also fear that he was losing his mind.
Closing his eyes he leant back on the stone bench that he’d been perched on for the past ten minutes, after limping around the courtyard until his leg hurt too much to bear any more. Why here? What was it about this place? This small old courtyard with the weathered statue of Garth Greenhand, set next to the oldest part of Highgarden. And of course the Weirwood tree. The old tree, with the faded face carved into it.
Hearing the clack of a cane he looked up and then smiled slightly as his grandmother entered the courtyard. “I should have known that you’d be here,” she humphed after a long moment. “You feel it too, don’t you?”
He looked at her, slightly confused. “Feel what, Grandmother?”
The end of the stick was suddenly right under his nose for an instant. “Don’t you start sounding like your idiot of a father all of a sudden!” She glared at him before sitting on a bench by the Weirwood tree. When she spoke again, it was more softly. “You feel the need to be here, in this place, don’t you? And the pull North. Don’t deny it Willas, I see it in your face. I cannot explain it, other than it must be a remainder of the First Men blood that flows through us both. And last night I dreamt a dream – such a dream that I have never had before. Garth Greenhand himself was talking to me, but as if from far away. I could not hear a word, but his face…”
Willas stared at his grandmother in shock, as she visibly pulled herself together. “But what does this mean?”
She shrugged. “I know not. But I do know that something is happening. I can feel it in the air. So it seems can the Florents. Your fool of a father is complaining about them now. Something about sending a raven to Winterfell. And then there is the little matter of the raven from the Citadel, claiming that the glass candles can be relit. Your father laughed at the message. I did not.”
Willas thought this over for a long moment. “Magic has returned then,” he said musingly. “But why? And what must we do here?”
Another shrug. “What do you feel?”
“I need to walk,” he replied, bowed respectfully to her, which bought him a thoughtful nod of acknowledgement, and then he left. Down the Old Bower Path, around the corner to the Gate of Thorns. And then around again to the Oldgate. But the pull was taking him in the other direction now and he turned and retraced part of his path, before descending a short flight of ancient steps and walking past the Spring Wall. Legend had it that once there had been a little spring somewhere in the area and indeed there was an old and faded channel that issued from one ivy-clad wall, but that had not flowed in centuries.
And so, following his feet and his senses, he found himself back in the little courtyard. Grandmother was still there and she looked at him with narrowed eyes as he limped back in. He closed his eyes and concentrated. I am here. What must I do? He could not explain why he thought those words, or who he thought them to – he just thought them.
Something creaked to one side and he opened his eyes and looked at the Heartwood Tree. This had been a Godswood once, a long time ago. Obeying some feeling that he could not explain he reached out and placed a hand on the tree. Nothing. And then he placed it on the carving of the face.
Death. Fire. Blood. Despair.
He jerked back. The smell of char and destruction had filled his nose for a moment and then the scent of the trees and the flowers had driven it away.
“Willas?” His grandmother was on her feet and was staring at him. “What is it boy?”
“I… I am not sure.” And then he put his hand back to the same spot on the trunk.
No. No. This was a nightmare. The sky was filled with death. It was the dragons. Balerion the Black Dread was overhead, incinerating scores of his soldiers. There was fire everywhere, fire and death and scorched remains. His host was breaking, his sons were dead, the Lannisters were either dead or running. This was death and ruin. His sons were dead, oh why had he brought them to this terrible place? His pride, his foolish terrible pride.
He was going to die. He knew that now. The next pass would kill him. And so much would die with him. The knowledge of the Gardener Kings. The secrets passed down by his ancestors. Things that no-one else knew. He could hear the flap of those terrible wings and he instinctively reached for the little Weirwood pendant that his father had handed down to him. Gods of my ancestors, he thought, taking refuge in the old ways for the last moments of his life, the Old Gods, allow me one boon, one gift. Let one of my family know. Let the Garden bloom again. When the Starks sent the call, let the garden bloom again. What did the words mean? Explain to them. He pulled the pendant off his neck, snapping the chain and then he hurriedly stuffed it into the stone bottle of wine at his side, before hugging it close to him. Perhaps it might survive. And then the fire struck and he opened his mouth to scream for an instant before the darkness fell.
Willas fell to his knees and screamed. And then a mist seemed to fall over his eyes, a veil. He watched himself stand stiffly and then walk out of the courtyard, his leg suddenly obeying him. Grandmother was hobbling after him, calling out worried questions as others arrived, drawn by his scream, but he strode on without acknowledging them.
Down the path, down to the Spring Wall. There, where the old channel came out of the ivy-covered wall, he stopped. Drew a dagger. Cut the ivy. That was important, he had to cut it back. The stuff was old and thick, woody tendrils that snaked everywhere, but he hacked it back at the spot where the old channel met the wall. Others to each side helped him as a babble of baffled voices filled the air, but he ignored them all.
And then he saw the bricked up doorway. It was old, weathered, and scarred by the roots of the ivy. “It must be broken down.” He didn’t recognise his own voice. “Bring me a hammer.” The veil before his eyes deepened for an instant and he swayed slightly, and then a gardener was pressing a rough two-handed hammer into his hand. He hefted it for an instant and then he swung. The bricks splintered and then he swung again. And again. And again. Bricks shattered and fell down – and then he saw the blackness on the other side.
More hammers suddenly appeared as others helped to open the doorway. He swung once, twice, three times more and then the doorway was clear.
“Willas?” It was his grandmother. “You have brought us to this place. You must enter it.”
Still acting under this strange compulsion, with this veil over his mind, he stepped in. It was a room, about thirty feet deep and thirty across, with the channel ending at the base of the opposite wall. And there was a statue next to it, barely lit by the light coming through the doorway. He recognised it. Garth Greenhand, with one hand outstretched. At his feet was a shrivelled bunch of flowers and a small wooden pendant with a chain attached, and as he looked at it he remembered the battlefield that he had seen. And so he reached down and picked up the pendent, before placing it in the hand of the statue.
He could hear the voice of his father now, behind him, and his grandmother as she barked something acerbically at her son. The veil was fading fast now and he was starting to shake with tiredness. What was this? What was affecting him?
And then the hand of the statue seemed to close around the pendant, as stone eyes opened with red fire. Someone screamed behind him, and then three things happened. He heard a great voice shout: “Let the Garden bloom again! Send help to the Stark in Winterfell!” He heard the sudden gurgle as water suddenly started to flow from the spring that must have been behind the wall. And then he felt something happen to his leg as pieces seemed to realign.
He had just enough time to scream in agony before he blacked out from the pain.
Chapter Text
Jon Arryn
Stannis Baratheon had a remarkably fine Myrish spyglass and he was using it now in looking at the ships in Blackwater Bay. After a moment he grunted in surprise and then snapped it shut. “Aye, he has returned,” he muttered in a low voice that was barely loud enough to hear. “And he’s worried enough that he’s used smuggler’s tricks to make his ship look different. He’s stepped his topmasts a little differently and he’s using different colour sails. Looks more like an old scow from Braavos now.”
“Then he is worried about being recognised by someone in King’s Landing,” Jon muttered, before looking about carefully. That was the problem with the Red Keep, you never knew who was watching who. There might be half a dozen eyes on them right now. “Lead on.”
Stannis nodded shortly and then led him down a short path to a flight of stairs, where they found a small group of men in Baratheon livery, all of whom looked as if they had been through the school of hard knocks before going to sea a lot. By the fact that one of them bore a close resemblance to Seaworth, if far younger, he could guess that they in the presence of one of the Onion Knight’s sons.
“Where?” Stannis asked quietly.
“The Old Path,” the boy replied, before leading them off down another set of stairs that snaked downwards.
“Devan Seaworth,” Stannis muttered to Jon as they pattered down the stairs. “Squire to me.”
They kept heading downwards, by stairs and passageways that Jon had never seen before in his life. “Who found…. This passage?” he panted after a while, conscious that his legs were starting to complain.
“My father, my Lord Hand,” Devan Seaworth called up softly. “But I pray that you keep silent, if you please. There are other passageways and tunnels throughout this place and not all of them are known, by us at least. And we know that the Spider has his own paths though these places. ‘Tis best to pass through in silence, ‘lest we attract attention.”
This was a good point and he nodded in acknowledgement before concentrating on where to put his feet. Down and down they went, their way now lit by lanterns with cunning faces that revealed just a little light and which provoked a snort of amusement from Stannis. Smuggler’s lanterns unless he missed his guess.
Down again, until his feet wanted to fall off his legs and then, mercifully, a level section. And then suddenly he could see light ahead and smell the sea and hear waves. He walked forwards and then blinked as a little jetty came into view, cunningly hidden behind rocks at the entrance.
“My Lords, my father will be here soon. My men and I will guard the tunnels. Please do not raise your voices too loudly – we do not know who else has been here recently.” The young Seaworth held up a small piece of wood. “Something from a wooden chest, unless I miss my guess. Someone has been here in the past month. We will guard.”
As the men walked back to the tunnel Jon looked at Stannis. “You have good men in the Seaworths.”
“Aye,” Stannis replied as he stared at the entrance. “And I wish that I had more of such men.”
Jon sighed a little and then sat upon a handy rock. This was a secret place for secret deeds. He wondered how Seaworth had discovered it. And then he wondered who had built it. And of course who used it now. Varys? Probably. The Spider knew so very many things, secret things. Secret places.
And then he heard the sound of oars. No, wait, an oar. A shadow appeared on a rock and then a small dinghy waggled its way into view. A man in a cape and hood was sculling it into the cave with the swift sure strokes of a man who knew how to use an oar. As he entered the cave Jon placed a hand on his dagger, just in case – but then relaxed as the man in the boat pulled down his hood. Yes, Seaworth.
The former smuggler navigated his way to the jetty, moored the small craft quickly and then leapt ashore. “My Lord Hand,” he greeted Jon, before bowing to Stannis. “My Lord.”
“Welcome back Ser Davos,” Stannis said quietly. “We had word of your safe arrival in White Harbour. Why then this sudden need for secrecy?”
“Because of what happened on the voyage to White Harbour my Lord,” Ser Davos said just as quietly. “My Lord Hand – there was a failed attempt at abducting your son.”
Shock roiled through him. “What? By who?”
“A man named Mikon, who joined here in King’s Landing just before we left. My Lord Hand, we left under such conditions of secrecy that I would have thought that no-one could have learnt of the departure of your son. But someone indeed found out. Someone talked.”
And now shock was replaced with rage. “Indeed, and I will have their head!” He closed his eyes for a moment to repress the rage. The attempt had failed. Robert had made it to White Harbour and Lord Manderly had sent him North to Winterfell with a strong guard. Hopefully a raven was winging its way South from Ned to tell him of the successful arrival of the party. “Go on.”
“The man Mikon is on my ship, under close guard. And while he knows not how someone knew that your son was being taken North, he does know who gave him his orders.”
There was something in the voice of the Onion Knight. Something that made him pause for thought. “Who was it?”
“The Master of Coin. Lord Petyr Baelish.”
The shock was so great that he took an involuntary step back, his legs shaking. “What??”
“I am afraid that you heard me correctly, my Lord Hand. T’was Lord Petyr Baelish who gave this man the command. He disabled the chain pump and planned for the ship to lose an anchor, which would have forced me to seek the nearest port. Well, that would have been in The Fingers. Where he then planned to set a fire on the ship, to knife Lord Stark’s man and then escape in the confusion with your son.”
This made no sense. No sense at all. There had to be a mistake somewhere in that line of thinking. Surely such a thing could not be possible. “But… he is one of my bannerman! Not a major lord, but he is of The Vale! He has sworn allegiance to me!”
“And yet he spreads coin in this city, and buys influence, working towards something,” Stannis said heavily. “My Lord Hand, Baelish is a man who I have never trusted. There is much about him that is false. But still, this is… beyond belief. There must be a reason for this. We must question this Mikon.”
“My Lord, here is his full confession,” Seaworth said, holding out a letter. “As written down by Lord Manderly, who was most angry to hear of this plot, and witnessed by myself and Lord Manderly’s son. And as this Mikon pointed out to me, if he is placed in a black cell then he will die with a few hours. He said that Lord Baelish has eyes everywhere, paid with by good coin and soft threats.”
Jon felt his skin crawl for a long moment. “Perhaps then this Mikon must be kept somewhere safer. Dragonstone perhaps?”
“Aye,” Stannis said after a long moment. “I agree my Lord Hand. Ser Davos, do you need to provision your ship, or can you sail there on the tide?”
“We have enough to get there my Lord.”
“Good,” said Stannis – and then he frowned. “By the look on your face there is something else. What is it?”
Ser Davos cleared his throat slightly. “My Lords, there is indeed something else. Another plot, a murkier one, was discovered at White Harbour.”
Jon stared at the former smuggler again. “A plot against who?”
“Your son again. When we discovered the plan to abduct him I doubled the guards on your son onboard my ship. In the process some of his medicine was knocked over and ruined. When we got to White Harbour I took the rest, along with your son’s nurse, to an apothecary that I know there, one Barlan by name, so that we could obtain more. But when he examined it he said that it was not medicine, but instead a form of poison. Something to weaken the lad and make him dependent on it – and that it caused fits of shaking.”
So great was his horror that Jon’s legs nearly gave out beneath him and Stannis and Ser Davos had to escort him to a low rock to sit whilst he collected his scattered wits. “Poison?” He eventually gasped. “Someone has been poisoning my son? My heir? My little boy?”
“Aye my lord,” Ser Davos said gruffly. “I told Lord Manderly all – here is his letter.” And he handed over another letter. “He delivered it to me just before we sailed. A copy has also gone to Lord Stark in Winterfell. The good news is that my lessening the dosage of the powder every day it is possible to wean your son off it, and just such a process had started when I last saw him. By the time he gets to Winterfell, if he is not there already by now, he should be free of it.”
Jon opened the letter hurriedly, brought it close to his face and then read hurriedly. Yes. Yes, by all the gods, old and new, it was true. He saw how his hands shook as he lowered the letter and then saw the look of sympathy that both men were giving him, Ser Davos openly and Stannis in the form of various facial tics.
“My son will indeed recover,” he said weakly. And then the rage came back. “Who could have done such a thing?? To poison a child?”
“My Lord Hand,” Ser Davos said quietly. “Where did your lady wife get this medicine from?”
He opened his mouth to reply – and then he paused. “Lysa,” he said, after a long and stunned moment. “My Lady wife said that she was given it by a Maester that she consulted.”
“Did you ever talk to this Maester? What was his name?” Ser Davos asked shrewdly. “Speaking as a father myself, my Lord, I have every wish to help you to get to the bottom of this matter.”
He thought about it for a long moment, his wits all over the place. “Nay,” he said slowly. “Lysa never mentioned who he was. Just that the medicine would help.” And then various horrible suspicions raised themselves in his mind. “Wait… wait… Lysa knew Baelish. They were always close when they were children as he was brought up at Riverun – their fathers knew each other. What if she got it from him? What if this too is a part of whatever plan he has made?”
And then something truly terrible entered his mind. “She was frantic when I told her that young Robert was going to be fostered in Winterfell. Angry beyond belief. Almost mad with anger. But then she calmed down after I bade Baelish talk to her in an effort to calm her down. Why? What did he say to her? If he was plotting to abduct my son then… No. No, this cannot be!”
The other two men looked at each other and then fell silent As Jon put the pieces together in his head and came to a conclusion that he did not like. “It seems,” he said in a calm but brittle voice, “That I cannot trust my wife on this matter. Not until I have talked to her. As for Baelish… well, he belongs in a black cell, guarded by men that I trust absolutely. And then I can question him about what he knows. Ser Davos – you have my deepest gratitude in this. Your devotion to duty and your discretion are most appreciated. You will have a suitable reward.”
The former smuggler flushed slightly and then bobbed his head in salute. “I have but done my duty, my Lord Hand. I could do ‘naught else. Now, if you will excuse me my Lords, I must get back to my ship and make for Dragonstone.”
“Safe passage,” Stannis said, and then they both watched the man leave the way that he had arrived.
“Lord Baratheon,” Jon said heavily after a long moment. “Given the… great matter that we have been looking at, I have had an unpleasant thought. Should anything happen to me before it comes to a conclusion and before I can ascertain what has been happening within my own household, I think that I must need to place a codicil in my will. You are a man of some legal substance I am told. Will you witness it? I mean to place my son more fully in the hands of my goodbrother and his wife, should the worst happen. Until I know better, I cannot trust my wife.”
Stannis nodded shortly. “Aye, I will, my Lord Hand.”
Which just left the long trudge back up the stairs. Fortunately Devan Seaworth could see that he was tired and had them pause more frequently on the journey upwards, until they finally reached the Red Keep. Once the matter of the codicil was completed in a small side room, and Stannis Baratheon had left with his men, Jon walked tiredly back to the Tower of the Hand, where his men greeted him with concerned looks.
“Some food and wine,” he told Quill after the man had asked if he needed anything. He waited in the topmost room as he waited for it to be brought to him, his mind astir with worry and conjecture. So, he was dancing on the edge of a narrower blade than he could ever have imagined. Peril now lay to every side. But his son was safe. That much was certain.
Now – who could he trust? Truly trust? Because the stakes were now so very high. When Quill slipped in with a plate of roast chicken and a small flask of wine he nodded his thanks and then raised a finger for the man to pause.
After he had swallowed a bite of chicken and a gulp of wine he wiped his mouth and then beckoned for the man to approach. “I need the services of a man who can be devious and if need be very violent,” he whispered. “A man who when bought stays bought, by me at least. Someone intelligent, who knows that the Hand of the King can deliver far more than a man – no matter how rich – on the run. Do you know of any such man?”
Quill, who had raised his eyebrows briefly during this, showing how surprised he was, paused for a moment and then frowned. “I believe that I might just know of such a man,” he said eventually. “He is a sellsword and he has done some work for many people on many things, without saying much about it. Given a sufficient… incentive… he can be trusted. I like him not, but he has his talents.”
“Is he in King’s Landing?”
“Not too far from it. I believe that he has just finished a job killing bandits just to the South.”
“Excellent. Bring him to me. What is his name?”
“Bronn, my Lord Hand.”
Ned
“I bid thee farewell, Lord Stark. I will talk to the Lord Commander when I get back to Castle Black, especially about sending a party to the Nightfort, but above all I will send word about your brother’s quest North of the Wall. And of course of any other developments.” Maester Aemon then bowed stiffly in his saddle.
“Thank you Maester Aemon. I wish you a safe trip back to Castle Black. And I will send word of any other news that reaches us here. Winterfell stands with Castle Black. No – the North stands with Castle Black.”
The old man nodded. “And I believe that I shall be one of the first men of the Night’s Watch to witness the results of your new portage scheme up the Long Lake. It is an intriguing idea.”
Yes, it was an intriguing idea. And ironically it had come from something that Theon Greyjoy had said in passing to him. Assembling the boats would be the tricky bit, but once that was done they could start to send a lot more North without overtaxing the Kingsroad to the Wall, which was still being repaired in places. It wasn’t a complete solution – the Long Lake didn’t go all the way up to the Wall – but it meant that more supplies could be sent North in greater amounts.
Of course there was also the little question of getting the supplies further North from there, but, well, he had some good men working on it.
He turned his thoughts back to Maester Aemon, who seemed to be doing some thinking of his own. “I shall also send word from Castle Black as soon as I have talked to the Lord Commander,” the old man muttered, before smiling slightly. “Who would have thought that at my age I would witness such an adventure?”
Ned laughed softly at this and then sobered a little. “Give me your hand Maester Aemon.” The old man extended an age-spotted hand and Ned grasped it firmly. “May the Old Gods grant you safe and swift passage back to the Wall. You of all people know of the task that we face.”
“My thanks Lord Stark. May both the Old Gods and the New look over you here at Winterfell. There is so much at stake.”
And then he looked ahead of him. “Lead on,” he called, and then the line of men and horses started through the gates of Winterfell, heading North. The old Maester of Castle Black rode awkwardly but with a look of grim determination on his face.
As the last of them left and the gates closed Ned looked to one side, where Jon was standing, his face thoughtful. “Jon.”
“Father.” The young man who he had protected for so long smiled slightly. “Before you ask I said my farewells to Maester Aemon earlier. He promised to send word and asked that I do the same.”
“Aye, he’s a good man.”
Jon nodded, seemed about to say one thing and then seemed to switch to something else. “I still can’t believe that he’s a Targaryen. He goes against everything I heard about them.”
Ned eyed him carefully. “Never judge a family by a few members,” he pointed out. “Aerys… was not always the man that he ended up as.”
Boots scuffed to one side and they both looked over to see Domeric Bolton approaching them. The son of the Lord of the Dreadfort had been very quiet of late, obviously mulling what he had learnt. And now he looked as if that conversation that had been put off once before was about to finally happen.
“Lord Stark, may I speak with you in private?” The young Bolton looked distinctly young and awkward and pink-cheeked.
Ned looked at Jon for a moment, who was somehow both smiling and glowering at Bolton. “Of course Domeric – walk with me. Jon, you should return to your training.”
Jon stomped off muttering and Ned led Domeric towards the Godswood. “I suspect that I already know the answer to this question, but what would you like to talk about?”
Domeric paused for a moment, as he seemed to be having trouble with his breathing, before swallowing hugely and then opening his mouth. “Lord Stark, I would like to thank you for your hospitality over these many weeks. You have made me most welcome here at Winterfell.”
I was trying to keep you alive and away from your mad half-brother who is now thankfully very dead, Ned thought but did not say out loud. Instead he nodded. “Your help here has been invaluable,” he replied instead, which was perfectly true. “Things have… been interesting.”
“Aye,” Domeric muttered. “The Others… well, on behalf of my Father you know that House Bolton stands with you.” Then he coughed slightly. “I have enjoyed my time here and I have been much honoured at meeting your family. Lady Stark has been most appreciative and your son Robert is a good friend. But there is someone else in your household who has caught my respectful attention and with your permission I would like to speak of her to you.”
They had arrived by the Heart Tree by now and Ned looked at the young man in front of him. “You are referring to my daughter, Sansa.”
Domeric somehow went even paler and then looked even more resolute, as if such a thing was possible. “Aye, Lord Stark. I…. I would be honoured if I could be considered for the hand of your daughter Sansa.”
Ned looked at him through slightly narrowed eyes and did his best to mirror the look at his own father used to direct at people, the look that once caused one minor lord to actually piss himself. Judging by the way that Domeric swayed slightly and then somehow straightened even further, as if he had replaced his spine with a spear, he had at least the basics of the look.
“You think that you are worthy of my daughter?”
Domeric opened his mouth for a moment, flushed slightly and then rallied a little. “I would battle to be worthy of her,” he replied simply. “I would strive every day to be worthy of her.”
This was an answer that he had expected from a man who had been fostered at the Redfort and it was so unlike anything that Roose Bolton would have said that he nodded slightly. “Well said,” Ned muttered. “Well said. I must ask this of you though – does this come from you or your father?”
The young man swallowed jerkily. “My father urged me to press my suit, Lord Stark, but this request comes from me. I know that Starks and Boltons have not always been allies in the North, but given the threat to the Wall and the need for us to unite behind you against the Others, I think that closer ties between our houses would be a good idea.”
Ned clasped his hands behind his back and then stared at the Heart Tree. “I shall discuss this with Lady Stark and also with my daughter, Domeric. This is not a decision that can be made quickly.”
“Thank you Lord Stark, and I would heartily agree with you. I would not want this to be decided in haste.”
Another point in favour of the lad. “Very well. Thank you for your candour Domeric. I will consider it most carefully.”
Domeric nodded, turned to leave – and then suddenly turned back. “One last thing, if I may Lord Stark?”
Ned nodded slightly.
The Heir to the Dreadfort looked at him with eyes that burned with determination. “I am not my father Lord Stark. And I am most assuredly not the creature that I am told my half-brother was.”
Ned smiled slightly. “I know that Domeric. If you had been anything like the thing that Ramsey Snow was, you’d be on your way back to the Dreadfort by now. Perhaps even with your head still atop your shoulders. Thank you lad.”
Domeric nodded a little and then bowed respectfully, turned and left. Ned watched him go carefully. Yes, the name Bolton was one that had been feared once and he had his own quiet suspicions about Roose Bolton. Something still did not feel right about things around the Dreadfort. But his son was someone very different. Well, he had a lot to think about. Perhaps a chat with Cat, a word with Sansa and then a raven to the Dreadfort?
In the meantime the North had to be run and he strode off to his solar, with his usual list in his head. More ravens had arrived from remote areas of the North, promising aid and fealty to the Stark in Winterfell. Messages had even arrived from the Brackens and the Blackwoods and he winced at what his goodfather would probably have to say about two of his houses sending such a message to Winterfell.
As he strode down the corridor a throat cleared itself as he passed a side-passage and a voice called out: “Lord Stark I presume?” It was a Northern voice, a rough voice, but one with power in it.
“Aye, I am Lord Stark,” he replied and peered at the man who was walking slowly towards him. He was in dark robes that looked travelstained and had a long face framed by greying hair. He also looked familiar. “Wait – I know you don’t I?”
“We have met, long ago. I once rode as escort to Lord Commander Qorgyle when he came South to meet you.”
Ned looked long and hard at the man. And then something clicked in his mind. “You are Mance Rayder.”
“I am.”
“Why are you here?”
“I must talk to you about what’s happening North of the Wall. At once.”
He looked at the man who others called the King Beyond the Wall and then nodded. “Join me in my solar.”
Theon
He stared at the parchment and then wondered how he was going to ask his uncle all the questions that he dared to. It would not be easy, he felt as if someone had stuffed his head with straw at the moment. He was not sleeping well at all, he would wake at least once a night with a cry of fear from a nightmare. He could never remember the dreams, but he knew that they were related to that boat and his dead brothers. And that terrible shore. What had that figure been? Who had it been?
His eyes returned to the letter. All the news here in Winterfell was about the discoveries that had been made so far, all the old artefacts and documents – and all the holes that lay in them, sometimes literally. Lord Stark was doing his best to pull it all together but he did not envy the man. He admired him greatly now, but he would rather not be him. The Stark in Winterfell had so much weight on his shoulders.
Which was why he was writing to his uncle Rodrik. Rodrik the Reader was the only person he could think of in the Iron Islands with as open a mind as possible and who might – just might – have research as well that might help. He wished that he knew his uncle better, he wished that he knew how to best appeal to his uncle. Had his uncle heard the Voice?
His father… he had an instinctive feeling that if his father had heard the Voice, had heard the call to aid Winterfell, but that he would be doing his best to ignore it. The Old Way. His father was wedded to it. His father had made his stand on the Iron Islands based on it.
His father was a stubborn fool, he knew that now. The war had been a disaster.
As for Uncle Damphair…. No. He’d just get a curse back in return, if anything at all.
So here he was, writing a letter to an uncle he barely remembered, to help a people he barely remembered to help in turn Winterfell. He had to do this. He had to write it. He didn’t know why exactly, but the dreams were behind this. He knew that much. So he bent over the letter again and kept writing.
Ned
As he led the former Night’s Watch man into his solar and closed the door Ned found his mind racing at a great rate. Why was Mance Rayder here? If he meant him any ill-will surely he would have tried to stab him by now?
Instead he stood by the great table and stared at the huge amount of reading matter there with a frown on his face. “Your research on the Others?” Ned nodded. “Very impressive.”
Ned gestured to a chair to one side, before pausing and walking over to a side table. This was a gamble, but one that needed to be taken. He poured a glass of wine for himself and then one for Rayder, before tearing off a hunk of bread from the loaf that must have been brought to his room recently. Digging around at the back of the table he discovered some salt in a little stone jar and he then carried wine, bread and jar over to Rayder, before returning for his own wine.
As he sat in his own chair he watched as Rayder stared at the offering - before what must have been some carefully concealed tension leaked out of him. “My thanks,” said the King Beyond the Wall as he tore off some bread, sprinkled some salt on it and then bit a chunk off it, before sipping some wine.
“Given who you are and what it must have taken to get you here, I thought that an offering of Guest’s Rights was important.”
The other man smiled quickly and kept eating. As he did Ned sat back and studied him. Mance Rayder was no longer a young man, but whilst he had greying hair his eyes were still very lively and had a lot of laughter lines around them. He wore travelling clothes and riding boots, so he must have ridden South and Ned found himself wondering how he had gotten to Winterfell. As Rayder ate the last of the salted bread and then drank some wine he also leant back and regarded Ned carefully. “Well, Lord Stark, I will not waste your time by beating about the bush. The Others are coming. But then you know that, don’t you? I was coming South anyway, after hearing word that you were looking for evidence of the Others – and then I heard that damn voice in my head, saying that the Others come again and that the Stark in Winterfell needs help. Damn near wet meself. So I came South even faster. Because you know that the Others have returned.”
There was a certain amount of relief in his voice and Ned looked at him closely.
“I do. And your presence makes things easier for me. I was going to go to the Wall soon to try and get word of you. News that there is another King Beyond the Wall spread fast. As did word of your increasing raids.”
Rayder raised a languid hand. “I have sent word for them to stop at once. Of course I cannot say that they will all stop. The Free Folk are… well, free. You think of the title of ‘king’ and you think of your friend Robert Baratheon. I… merely have influence. They follow me because I have a plan. And because we are desperate.”
“When did the Others return?”
The other man shook his head. “That… is a very hard question to answer. Some of their creatures never left. And with the Free Folk so scattered… I will tell you what I know. You have a map of the North over there I see. We should look at it.”
Ned sipped at his own wine and then stood. As they walked over to the map, which was parchment tacked to a board, he could sense Rayder’s eyes looking over everything in the room. When they both stood before the map Rayder smiled slightly at the area North of the Wall.
“I see that your map is lacking in a few details,” he said in a grim but almost cheerful voice. “May I add to it?”
Ned nodded and Rayder looked about and then grabbed a quill and a little pot of ink. “This river here goes Northwards, into the Valley of the Thenn. What lies beyond the Frostfangs to the West is a mystery, but to the North of the Haunted Forest and the Then lies…” he sketched a number of lakes, and then a mountain range. “This.” The quill shook a little as he drew a long mountainous ridge that looked familiar.
“What’s that?” Ned asked slowly.
“It has many names,” Rayder said as he put the quill down and carefully stoppered the inkpot with hands that shook a little. “Some call it Deathridge. Others Winter’s Heart. Depends on the tribe you see. But most call it Hopemourne. There was a time, when I was a lad, when you could go North and see it. From a distance at least. These days if you go North to look upon it you don’t return. Don’t return alive that is.” His eyes seemed to go somewhere else for a moment and Ned recognised the look of a man viewing memories that he didn’t want. And then Rayder shook his head a little and smiled bleakly.
“We know nothing about where they come from, not originally. The Lands of Always Winter are harsh and terrible, even for the lands beyond the Wall. But Hopemourne is where they have always been associated with since the building of the Wall. And it has always been… guarded. There are ruins there they say. Who built them – no-one knows. We know that the First Men built the Fist of the First Men, sad ruin that it is now, but Hopemourne?” He shook his head. “Men always tended to vanish there if they strayed too close to it. An evil place.”
Ned swallowed thickly as he remembered the vision that he had had when the Hearthstone had been placed in his hand. “A long mountain, like a ridge, with ruins on it, and guardians that were not… not human.”
Rayder was looking at him oddly. “Aye. How can you know of it?”
Ned ran a trembling hand over his face for a moment. “A vision. From, I think the Old Gods. When the Hearthstone was returned here from the Last Hearth. I saw it then, Rayder. I saw the mountain. And the great hall within it. There was a mockery of a Heart Tree. And… things that had once been men to the sides. And a dais. And a throne. And a creature on that throne that had white skin and blue eyes like stars.”
The King Beyond the Wall went white as a sheet. “What was it?”
“From what I said after my vision brought me back here, it was the Night’s King. The real one – not the twisted thing that legend said once held power at the Nightfort. This was something else, something terrible, something evil beyond words.” He shook his head again. “So, yes. I know what we face. I might not have laid eyes on a wight, but I know the threat from the far North.”
Rayder looked at him for a long moment and then little more tension seemed to leave his face. “Good, you share the burden then,” he muttered, before turning back to the map. “The first villages vanished more than a year ago. Little places, far to the North. A handful of the Free Folk here, a handful more there.” His finger traced a rough line. “And then it got worse. Worse quickly. We of the Free Folk have always burnt our dead. Suddenly we needed to. Wights. Just a handful at first, to match the numbers of people vanishing, but then they started to grow. And then the sightings started.”
“Sightings?”
“The Others. White Walkers some call them. But – the Others. Places grow cold, quickly. The White Cold, they call it. And then they come. White hair. White-blue skin. Swords that will cut through any steel. Nothing kills them. Fire can drive them away.” Rayder’s finger traced a line down the map. “They have been coming South. We cannot stop them. We cannot touch them. We cannot kill them.”
Ned nodded slowly and then walked back to the table, where he poured more wine. “You mentioned that the Wildlings – the Free Folk you call them – followed you because you had a plan. What is it?”
There was a pause as Rayder rubbed a hand over his chin and then strode over to join him. “My plan died the moment that I heard the Voice announce that the Others had returned and that you needed help here,” he said slowly. “Which is why I hurried South. Lord Stark, what do you know of the early history of the Wall?”
“Just that it was built to stop the Others,” Ned said with a frown. “At the end of the Age of Heroes.”
“Ah,” Rayder said with an ironic smile. “How you of the South forget.” He paused, licked his lips and then looked at Ned. “The Free Folk remember what the Night’s Watch have forgotten. The Wall was built in the one place where it could both last the summers and also use the land the best – the shortest and most defensible stretch. It cut off many of the Free Folk, but that was alright. I think that there must have been a plan. The Free Folk were the scouts for the men manning the Wall. The Night’s Watch patrolled the wall, maintained it and acted as a defensive force. And when the Others came again the Stark in Winterfell would call the banners and lead the real force to defend the wall.
“But when the Others vanished it all went awry. The Night’s Watch changed. It had little to do, other then maintain the castles. Commanders died, other men came in, memories faded with time. The Watch started viewing the Free Folk as a threat. Of course it takes two to make a quarrel – it wouldn’t have taken too much to get the hotter heads amongst the Free Folk to bite back. And there you have it. Too much time with no threat from the Others, too much familiarity between Night’s Watch and Free Folk.”
Ned stared at the man wryly. “Do your people really have such long memories?”
A shrug. “In places. Tales get told and changed a little, but once you compare a dozen of them you can see a common thread. Besides, there are inscriptions in the lands beyond the Wall. Runes. The men of Thenn still speak the Old Tongue, the language of the First Men. Learn the tongue and you can read the runes. There’s a cave near the Fist of the First Men, Lord Stark. It’s a shame that you don’t know of it, because there’s an inscription on one wall that says: “Ys Agreement wytnessed by Ye Starke of Wynterfell.”
There was a short silence. “Agreement?”
“Something to do with the Wall. Part of it is lost.”
Ned sighed. “I know nothing of it. But then we are still going through the documents discovered here in Winterfell.” He caught sight of Rayder’s raised eyebrows and explained. “There is a room near here that I knew nothing of until recently. My father did though and possibly my brother. A room filled with documents about the old times, about the Others. A room that had… objects, one of which I used without knowing it to send the call to those who seem to have the blood of the First Men. And a room that contained… well, I shall mention it later.”
Rayder’s eyebrows remained raised. “You knew nothing of it at all?” He choked the words out and seemed to be having trouble breathing. “How could the Stark in Winterfell not - ” And then he sank back in the chair that he had half-risen from. “You were fostered in the Vale. And Aerys murdered your father and your brother when you were still young.”
No wonder he was King Beyond the Wall. Ned nodded sombrely before standing and walking to the great box. “This was also in it,” he said as he lifted the great mace within it. “The Fist of Winter.”
Rayder stood the moment that he saw the weapon, his face very pale again and his eyes glittering with what seemed like unshed tears. “You know, there’s a saying amongst the Thenn,” he said slowly. “Who call themselves the last of the First Men. They say that the only time they’ll ever leave their valley is when the Stark wields the Fist of Winter again. And the way they say it, it is as if they don’t believe it will ever happen. You asked about my plan Lord Stark. I need to bring the Free Folk South of the Wall. I feared that only we knew about the Others, that by the time that the Night’s Watch could be persuaded about the danger too many of the Free Folk would be dead, or worse. That I could somehow force a way South, settle the Gift and the New Gift and then persuade the stubborn fools in Castle Black that I could help defend the Wall.”
He looked at Ned and then at the mace again. “When the Call came I knew that I had to talk to you at once, that you knew that they were coming. That you could help us. Do you know how to kill them?”
Ned nodded at the table to one side with the obsidian arrowheads. “Obsidian. Or dragonglass as some call it.”
The unshed tears started to spill down Rayder’s face as he screwed his eyes shut for a long moment, before opening them again. “The Free Folk are so called because we did not bend the knee. Will not bend the knee. But I know when to ask for help and when to do what must be done.” Slowly, reluctantly, but determinedly he knelt. “Lord Stark, the Stark in Winterfell, help me save my people from what the night brings.”
“Stand,” Ned urged. “I would not have a proud man beg me to do what it right. Stand and help me. And tell me how I can help you.”
Rayder stood and then bowed his head in a slow salute. “Thank you Lord Stark, I will not forget your kindness,” he muttered. And then he laid a hand on the head of the mace. “I would swear an oath on this.”
And then they both heard the crash of thunder overhead.
Doran
His brother was standing there, staring at the message in his hand as if it represented a personal affront to him, and Doran sighed to himself a little as he brought his wheeled chair to a halt. Normally he would get someone to push him, preferably Oberyn when he was around, but only close family. He did so hate this weakness, this pain in his feet.
After a long moment Oberyn finally surfaced and noticed him. “Your pardon my brother,” he said in a distracted voice. “I was thinking about the message I have received from the Citadel. The news is true – the glass candles can be relit. Magic has returned to these lands.”
Doran nodded slowly. “And what are your thoughts about the impact of this?”
There was a pause as Oberyn sat on a nearby stone bench slowly, his face set in concentration. Doran liked watching his brother think. When he bothered to take his mind off drinking and fighting and fucking and brooding over their revenge Oberyn had a remarkable capacity for brilliant thought. He seemed to be exercising it now.
“This might change everything,” Oberyn said heavily. “There are the obvious things, the less obvious things and the things that terrify me.” This was enough to get Doran peering at his brother worriedly. “What terrifies you?”
Oberyn pulled a slight face. And then he paused. “First, brother, let me ask you a question. When Lord Dayne was here with Dawn you were troubled and you said that you had thought of something that Father told you. What was it?”
Ah. That. Doran leant back in his seat tiredly. “When I came of age,” he said quietly, “Mother told me many things about what it means to be a Martell of Sunspear. The need to lead, the men I should watch, the women I should watch even harder, the agreements that were in place between us and Kings Landing. And also the old agreements, the secret ones, within Dorne.”
Oberyn stared at him. “Within Dorne?”
“Agreements with the Stony Dornish. Some are old, Oberyn. Very old. And one dates back to the time of Nymeria. It is also… a kind of prophecy.”
Something flickered in Oberyn’s eyes at the very mention of the word ‘prophecy’, a combination of uncertainty and annoyance. “Prophecy, eh? You do know that half of them are total pigswill that can be bent like a serving girl into all manner of positions, whilst the other half are gibberish?”
He looked flintily back at his brother. “This one is different. It was very clear. The Daynes swore allegiance to our ancestors early on, with one condition. That nothing would ever stop them from going North with Dawn if ever ‘The Call’ came. It was important to them. And when Nymeria had a dream that led to her confirming this… well that set it in stone. Especially when she said that to stop the Daynes from going North with Dawn would result in the fall of Sunspear, and of Dorne… and of all men in Westeros.”
His brother raised both eyebrows at him. “So…” he said thoughtfully, “That was why you gave Lord Dayne permission to go North, despite the fact that he’s visibly dying?”
Doran nodded tiredly. “A prophecy, but a clear one, my brother. And one that I hoped I would never have to see. But it came anyway. And now we have the news of the return of magic. Surely there has to be a connection? So – what are your conclusions?”
“As magic has returned,” Oberyn said heavily, “We must view prophecy in a new light. A careful light, but we must view it again. I cannot imagine what this has done to the Citadel, but I imagine that every Maester who has ever studied magic will be looking at it again. There certain things that were alleged to be created by magic that might be affected. The Wall perhaps? Storm’s End? Anything at Sunspear? I know not.
“What worries me more are… well, dragons. The loss of the Targaryen dragons, as they shrunk in size with every generation… that showed that magic was leaking out of this world. Now that it is back… well, what if some fool decides to try and bring a dragon egg to life with another version of Summerhall? What will people do with their dragon eggs, or their alleged dragon eggs? I can see trouble ahead.”
Doran looked at his brother for a long moment. “And what of the thing that terrifies you?”
Oberyn raised his head a little and then grimaced. “I have heard of many odd things of late. Robert Baratheon visits Storm’s End for no reason, pulled by something. Rumour has it that he has discovered something. What? I do not yet know. Alster Dayne came here with a restless sword that drew a dying man North. Blackwoods swear great oaths with Brackens, ending centuries of hatred. Willas Tyrell is said to have stalked Highgarden like a man possessed by something or someone. The Mountain Clans of the Vale have vanished, apparently saying that they are going North. And… Stark is asking for information about the Others. Stark the pragmatist, Stark the practical, asks for information about a legend. And that, my brother, is what terrifies me. What if… in these times of magic… legends are real?”
And then Doran shivered as if his bones had for a moment turned to ice.
Varys
He sat there in the silence of his room and stared at the map of Westeros that took up a part of one wall. He didn’t really need the map, he knew every location as if it was etched in his mind, but it served to focus his mind – and the Gods alone knew how much he needed that right now.
Speaking of focus – he lifted his right hand and then smiled slightly. The shaking had stopped. That was a good thing. Memories of… memories what had been done to him by that madman who thought that he could revive blood magic… well, such memories were bad ones. The pain, the blood, the need to move and scream when that was denied him… A finger twitched but he willed it to be still. Yes, that was better.
He returned his gaze to the map. Things were… changing. Altering. Moving out of his gaze. And he disliked all of those things. He preferred people to be, well, reliable. Reliable people could be predictable, could be controllable. Instead…
Robert Baratheon was in his own way deeply predictable. He could be relied upon to be headstrong, greedy, violent in his choice of actions and overall a bad king. But his recent decision to go to Storm’s End on a total whim was not predictable and was a mystery to Varys. Why had he gone? The one message that his little birds had been able to send him from that place had been a brief one, that the King had attacked a particularly foolish Septon and had then vanished underground in the tunnels. It was all most peculiar. And unpredictable.
Other events were also worrying him. Apparently it was quite true that Aemon Targaryen had left Castle Black and gone to Winterfell. Why? Something to do with all this talk about the Others. And apparently ravens were flying all over the North about the same things, as well as protestations of loyalty to ‘The Stark in Winterfell’. Ravens from South of The Neck as well apparently.
And then there was all this strange activity in Highgarden, with Willas Tyrell apparently demolishing parts of walls and then screaming a lot. The message had been very shaky and unclear, as if the little bird who had written it had been shaken by something. He needed to look into that. He needed his little birds to be reliable these days.
He didn’t like it. It was… chaos. Perhaps there was some kind of order behind it, some pattern that he had yet to discern, but if there was he couldn’t yet see what it was. Varys pursed his lips slightly. Perhaps a raven to Illyrio, to see what he had learnt about it? After all, his old friend had his finger on a surprisingly large number of pulses.
A small figure appeared in a doorway, approached carefully, deposited a small rolled up message and then vanished the way it had come. Varys picked it up and unrolled it quickly, before reading it. And then both eyebrows went up and then down and he lifted a plump hand to his mouth to swallow a chuckle. Oh dear. It seemed that a certain noble lord here in King’s Landing was about to have his day – no, his entire life – absolutely ruined.
Perhaps he should sell tickets?
Petyr
The warehouse smelt of many things. Rotten apples was the main odour, followed by old boxes, damp straw, mildew and rat droppings. Such a charming bouquet, one that was seeping into his clothes with every moment that had passed since he’d been forced to take refuge in here. And that was a lot of moments.
He closed his eyes for a long moment and successfully resisted the temptation to shout at himself. He’d been stupid. He’d been hasty, he’d been arrogant and he’d been stupid. Years of work, years of patience, years of careful manoeuvring, all ruined. Because he’d seen one of the pieces of the game move in a way that he hadn’t foreseen, or at least had moved before he had anticipated.
He’d always hoped that one day he might be able to manipulate dear sweet deluded Lysa in such a way that he could rise to power somewhere. There were so many intriguing possibilities, but Jon Arryn was an old man and his son was young and sickly – and the heir to the Vale. Possession of Robert Arryn was important.
So he’d gambled, in a hurry and without a decent plan. And he’d lost. Fortunately he’d had warning of the moment that he had lost, thanks to a hurried message from a Goldcloak with a gambling problem who had apparently heard the news that the Hand of the King had issued a warrant for his arrest not long after the fact.
Fortunately when he received the message he had not been in the Red Keep, but instead visiting one of the many brothels that he owned in King’s Landing and he’d been able to slip out of a side door down an alleyway and into this warehouse, that he also owned. Where he was now waiting for nightfall.
He looked at the upper storey for a moment and sighed. He’d been able to leave a sign for one of his emergency plans to be activated. It wasn’t a brilliant plan, it was dangerous, but at least it was better than sitting in a black cell awaiting a trial. He looked at the cloak and cowl, both made of rough and scratchy material that would be his disguise on the way to the meeting place. They’d better all be there. He had paid them well beforehand, with the promise of another payment once they got to the ship. And after that he would be well on his way to Braavos and the money that he’d been saving there for years. Well, diverting and then saving there.
Bells tolled in the distance and he looked up. Ah. Almost sundown. Well, at least the waiting was almost over. He ran a hand over his smooth face. Parting with his facial hair had been a wrench, but also a necessity. People on the streets would be looking for him. Risking discovery just because of his vanity was nonsensical.
As darkness finally started to fall he put on the cloak, draped the cowl around his face and then went out into the street. He faked a slight hitch in his gait, not enough to make people take notice of him, but just enough to make them think that here was an old man going home.
The streets were alive with people even as darkness fell – King’s Landing seldom slept – but he stayed away from the lamps and the largest concentrations of people. Better to be careful. But soon he was away from the busiest areas and in the more quiet streets. Of course there was danger here as well – a man on his own could easily fall victim to a footpad or three, and he clutched at the dagger up his sleeve every time someone walked past him.
But nothing happened and he passed on down the quiet streets until he reached an archway. Through he went, down a short dark alleyway and then he was in front of the gate. He looked to either side carefully and then pulled out his key and unlocked it. Once through he made for the lit courtyard beyond.
He could see a dark shape at a window above, with a crossbow on the window ledge. That was good. The four idiots sitting around a table in the courtyard with flagons of wine in front of them was bad. He huffed in fury as he pulled the cowl down and then shrugged off the cloak. “I thought that you’d be ready by now – we have to go.”
No response and he felt his hackles rise. Ah. By now news must have spread about the bounty on his head. He wondered what it was. Arryn must have promised quite a lot to whoever brought him in. Well, he had expected that. “Remember our bargain – and that I can pay you again in Braavos.”
More silence and he paused and then peered at the figures. They were all very still. Perhaps too still. Slowly he walked up to them – and then reeled back once he smelt the blood and the evidence that at least one of them had voided himself after dying. Dead. They were all dead.
Someone behind him took a step forwards, boots scuffing on stone, and he turned in a flash. A lean man with dark hair and stubble, dressed in dark leather armour was standing there, cleaning his sword on a piece of rag. He smiled cheerily at Petyr after a moment and then pointed at the dead men at the table with the hand holding the rag. “I don’t know exactly where you go them, but they were rubbish. Pay them much did you?”
Petyr narrowed his eyes. This man was new to him. “You killed them all?” Hopefully the man at the window would get this rogue with the crossbow. Why hadn’t he before though?
“Oh yes,” the man said with that same cheery smile. “Oh, if you’re wondering about your man up there with that crossbow, he’s dead too. First one I killed. Now he wasn’t bad – I think he spotted me and almost got a warning out. Not that it did much. You must be Petyr Baelish by the way. Lost the fuzz I see. Shame about the grey streaks in the hair. And everything else about you.”
The dagger was still up one sleeve and all he needed to do was get close. But perhaps there were other ways.
“You found me out. Clever of you.”
The man shrugged. “Nah, easy really. I know a lot of people here. More than a few thieves too. People like that tend to know where’s safe to steal from and where’s not. This is one of the places that has a warning outside. In thiefspeak of course. A lord like you wouldn’t be able to see it by the way. So I wondered who owned this place. Turned out it was you.”
Petyr’s tongue moistened suddenly very dry lips. “Very resourceful of you then. Tell me, what’s your name? I always need good men.”
“Bronn.”
Petyr sketched a salute. “Pleased to meet you friend Bronn. I see no House colours on you, so you cannot be from the Tower of the Hand.”
“Oh I’m not.” Bronn smiled that cheery smile again. “I’m just a sellsword. But Lord Arryn sent me after you. He seems a bit annoyed with you.”
Oh. Aha. A sellsword. He could work with this. “Whatever Jon Arryn is paying you, I’ll double it.”
The cheery smile again, but with something else behind the eyes. “Oh, he said that you’d say that. It was good of him to warn me. Very generous man Lord Arryn.”
This was not going as he had hoped. “Then I’ll triple it. As I said – I always need good men.”
Bronn pursed his lips slightly and then wiped his sword again. “I’m guessing you have a plan. Wait – let me guess. Get to the docks, get to a ship, get to Essos and then access money that you’ve been squirrelling away for an emergency?”
Petyr smiled a little. “An excellent guess.”
“Not a bad plan,” Bronn said as he stuffed the rag into a pouch and then looked at him. “Just a few problems with it.”
“Problems?”
“Well, firstly the Hand of the King said that you’d try and bribe me, or rather better his own offer. Nothing wrong with that, I’m a sellsword. But he also pointed out a few facts. First that every gate is watched, as is every wharf. Getting you away wouldn’t be as easy as you might think. I’m just the one man – I can’t fight my way through a gauntlet and protect you at the same time. Then there’s the fact that you’re offering money that you can only get in Essos. You can’t it here, not with everything you own being ransacked. And it is, right now. Lord Arryn’s got some mousy little fellow going through your books. And the secret books you had.”
Shock roiled through him. No. No, they were too well-hidden.
“I’ve known a lot of clever men. Odd how they always hide things in places that they think are hard to find – but aren’t.” Bronn looked at him with a wry smile. “There was a lot there. Every property, every bribe, every transaction. You’re a ruined man Lord Baelish. Lord Arryn can afford my fee and then pay me again several times over by the morning. You, on the other hand, are a bad investment.”
This was slipping away from him, too fast for comfort. “Do you have any idea what I could pay you in Braavos?”
Bronn pulled a thoughtful face and for a moment Petyr felt his heart rise in exultation. But then the sellsword shook his head. “No, I don’t. But then I’ll guess that you don’t either. The ravens are flying Lord Baelish. Lots of information in those books. Plus Lord, erm. What was his name, oh yes, Lord Varys turned up and said that he had details of your account in Braavos. Lord Arryn was very pleased with him.”
Horror stole over him. No. No, this was disaster. He had to get away. The dagger. He needed to get rid of this smirking man and get away from here. His hand flashed into his sleeve for the pommel of his knife, but as he reached for it he could see Bronn darting to one side. As the dagger emerged he saw movement to his right and he looked up just in time to see a fist crash into his temple and-
Everything went black.
Tywin
He went through the books quickly but carefully. There was a lot of information to take in and as always a lot of instructions to send out. He liked this time of the day. Just him and the books, with a pile of outgoing messages quickly piling up to one side. People to be paid. People who owed him money. People who needed to be encouraged to repay their debts. And others who needed an… abject reminder perhaps, if they were not already aware that it was dangerous to cross him, of what happened to people who got on his bad side.
Besides, it helped to take his mind off the nagging feeling that was still weighing him down. That pull North. That feeling that he needed to be elsewhere in Casterly Rock. That irrational, illogical, maddening pull.
It had to be ignored. That way madness lay.
He worked on, looking at the books, the accounts, the details that were so vital to the proper administration of the Westerlands. And then, finally he was finished. He locked the books away, picked up the messages that needed to be sent, deposited them in a box to one side for the Maester and then strode out. He needed a light lunch.
Instead he found his brother waiting for him outside. Kevan looked… disturbed. “Tywin-”
“Not now.”
“Yes, now. I must speak with you.”
“And I need to eat. So if you must speak then speak and walk.”
His brother rolled his eyes a little and then followed him. “We must speak about what is going on.”
“Mmm? And what is going on?”
Kevan scowled at him. “Why do you continue to ignore what has happened? Tywin, the ravens from Oldtown are clear. The glass candles can be relit. Magic has returned, Tywin, magic.”
He felt a muscle flutter in his cheek and he sternly willed his face to obey his instructions. “That has yet to be proved.”
“Yet to be… Tywin! My brother, why do you continue to deny this?”
“Because it has yet to be proved!” He snarled the words furiously before catching himself and taking a deep breath as they passed down a long corridor.
“The glass candles can be relit. And then there was that voice. That voice Tywin – do not deny that you did not hear it. The Others return – Stark needs our help.”
He stopped for an instant and then waved a finger under Kevan’s nose. “A mummer’s trick! Or something contrived by a Faceless Man from Essos, to panic us into… something that I cannot see.”
Kevan stared at him, with wide eyes. “Tywin… why can you not see clearly on this matter?”
Tywin worked his jaw for a moment and then resumed his walk towards lunch. “Because I remember Aerys and his madness. He mentioned dragons a great deal. There were times towards the end of my Handship when I wondered if the tragedy of Summerhall would be repeated under my nose. Talk of dragons, talk of magic.”
He waved a finger in the air. “Magic… is inconstant, from the tales. Unpredictable, despite what some people might claim. And it breeds madness. Summerhall again. How many dead, because of that? As magic dwindled so did the dragons of King’s Landing. Perhaps it was right that it did so. It left the Targaryens reliant on steel and blood and good counsel. When that good counsel was insufficient, when the steel broke, when the blood failed… well, that saw the end of the Targaryens.
“If magic has returned, then the rules of the Game of Thrones have changed, brother. Changed to a different level. A more unpredictable level. A return of dragons… would destabilise things a great deal. Obviously.”
They had reached the room where he had arranged to have lunch and he poured some wine and then nibbled on a piece of fresh bread. Kevan sat to one side and peered at him as if he was trying to discern him properly. “You are worried about dragons?” His brother said eventually.
“No, I am worried about fools who think that they can wake dragons, or rather their eggs. Once word gets out that magic has – apparently – returned, every idiot in the Seven Kingdoms will be dreaming up fanciful and dangerous schemes. Did you ever hear the tale of how Varys became a eunuch? You shouldn’t hear it when you have a full stomach, you’ll vomit every mouthful out. I have a very good source on that matter. No, if magic has returned we’ll get every kind of insanity.”
Kevan nodded slowly. “And dragons can be dealt with,” he muttered. “And Stark’s obsession in the North?”
Tywin felt an odd cross between a sneer and frown cross his face. It unsettled him. “I know not. I want to proclaim it madness, as the Others are no more than a myth, but I still cannot explain it. Perhaps Tyrion will find out something at Winterfell. If he can keep his nose out of a bottle, a book or a brothel that is.”
His brother winced. “You do him a disservice. He is your son and dwarf though he be, there is a fine head on his shoulders. He has an excellent mind, Tywin.”
Tywin paused to glower at Kevan. “He cavorts with whores, he drinks too much and above all he is a dwarf.”
“He is also your heir. Well, once you officially announce it.”
Tywin shook his head. “Jaime will be my heir. Once I get him out of that damn white cape that is. Tyrion? Never.”
Kevan sighed and then looked about for some food of his own. “Very well. And now a different issue. Perhaps two. The Voice? Can you explain that? Truly?”
“A mummer’s trick!” Tywin said in a voice that was part snarl and part sigh. “As I said.”
“I heard it. As did you. In different parts of Casterly Rock, Tywin. T’was no trick. Something has changed. Something has called us. The blood of the First Men is within us brother. It may be diluted by Andal blood, but it is still there and it cannot be denied.”
He ate slowly, the taste of the food and the wine almost dead in his mouth. “If so,” he said eventually, “It was a call from the dead to those who no longer care. The Others are a myth so therefore Ned Stark needs no help from us. Will get no help from us.”
This got his brother peering at him again, as something flickered in his eyes. “The North and the Westerlands used to be very close Tywin. What if this call is for the repayment of a debt?”
He stopped eating for a moment as his brain processed this. It was a good point. Then he shrugged. “All debts we owe the North have long since been paid. Now – your other point?”
“I want to reopen the North Passage. I… feel a need to go there.”
He regarded his brother with a steely glare. “No.” He grated the word out with great finality.
“Tywin-”
“I said no! We are to pay no mind to the fripperies and the fancies that our father held so dear.”
Kevan leant forwards. “Tywin, there must have been a reason why he liked that passage so much. And that room. The runes there-”
“Are meaningless! And besides, our father was a weak-minded fool! Now that is my final answer! Get out!”
His brother sighed again, directed a glare of his own at Tywin, but then obeyed his order. As he left Tywin gazed Northwards in the general direction of that damn passage. Then he set his jaw and looked away. No. It would not do. Besides – anything that fascinated his father had to be pure idiocy.
Daenerys
She stood on the balcony on the terrace and stared out at the sea. She was looking North, she could tell that. How exactly she knew that however was a different story and a harder one to explain. She felt this... pull. Which confused her. She’d never felt it before.
Viserys, she knew, felt it as well but he had his own theory about it. It was the pull of destiny, he said, the pull home to King’s Landing. Home. She often wondered where that was exactly. She had no memories of Dragonstone, where she had been born, and all she knew of King’s Landings were tales and drawings. Those were supposed to be the places where the Targaryens were supposed to be based, were supposed to call home.
She didn’t really know where home was. Or what home was like, other than the house with the red door in Braavos, from many years ago. She and her brother had gone from city to city, all over Essos it seemed, with their tiny retinue. Mother had died giving birth to her, Ser Willem, old dear kind Ser Willem, was dead. There was little gold and it seemed little support for her brother’s claim to the Iron Throne.
She worried about him. Viserys was a proud man but also increasingly bitter. He had great dreams, but lacked the means to do anything. She’d heard the reports of what the littlefolk called him. The Beggar King. She often wondered if he knew. She daren’t tell him. She was too afraid of angering him.
But now things were a little different. Here they were in Pentos, in a great manse that overlooked the sea, under the protection of Magister Illyrio Mopatis, a powerful and very rich merchant. And also a very fat man. He hadn’t always been so, because there was a statue of him in armour on the grounds, where he looked, well, almost handsome. Such days were long since passed.
Dany still wasn’t quite sure what to make of Illyrio Mopatis. Yes he was very generous and had taken them in and promised them his full support. But why now? Why not earlier? Had it been because Viserys had been so young at the beginning? Boy-kings, she knew, seldom prospered. But why not take them in from the start, until Viserys had grown up? Had it been the danger from the Usurper’s assassins? The manse was guarded by Unsullied, the almost emotionless eunuch-soldiers.
And there was the little matter of the man’s eyes. They seldom showed much emotion, no matter how much he smiled at her. She wasn’t sure how much she trusted him. But Viserys did trust him, so she remained quiet.
She sighed a little and then walked to the little grotto what she had discovered on her third day at the manse. It was quiet there, in that little shaded spot by the trees. Few people went there she knew now, although there was a path that snaked by it, heading down to the sea.
Sitting on the old stone bench she stared North again. She wished she knew why she felt this… pull. It was odd. She also wondered why Mopatis had been so bemused these past few days.
Hearing footsteps and voices she looked around. Someone was on the balcony and the wind was carrying a muttered conversation. Ah. It was the Magister.
“-must be patient,” she heard. “He has been patient all this time, he can be patient a little longer.”
“He will not like it, but I will tell him,” said a resigned and sibilant voice that had a peculiar accent to it. “When should he come?”
There was a brief silence. “In a month’s time,” Mopatis said eventually. “We should have more news by then. Our friend in King’s Landing will have sent more word about what in the name of the Seven Hells is going on. And we will have more news of the Dothraki and their sudden move East. I do not like this… this change. There is something in the wind that makes me uneasy.”
A gurgling laugh. Then the other voice: “Magic has returned, so you should be uneasy. We should all be uneasy. Word has come from Qarth that the House of the Undying… is no longer dying.” A pause. “It is a warm day, but I see you shiver. Are you suddenly cold?”
“You would shiver too, if you had ever seen that accursed place,” Mopatis growled. “Warlocks. Warlocks and mad men. Anyway – tell Connington to wait. Especially as the Company of the Rose are going home to Westeros. There are just enough men there who might recognise his face. They always were obsessed with the home that they exiled themselves from. More madness.”
Another pause, before the other voice spoke again, this time in a lower voice that Dany could barely hear. “And what of the Beggar King and his sister?”
“Not here,” Mopatis replied almost as quietly and then the two moved away, as she could tell by the sound of receding footsteps.
She sat there for a while, puzzling through what she had heard. She did not doubt that she had not been meant to hear it, the mention of the cruel nickname for her brother told her that at least. Connington… that name seemed familiar. And what was the House of the Undying? And what was this talk of magic?
Once she was sure that there was no-one on the balcony she walked up there and then looked at the Manse. Oh. Viserys was pacing about in front of it, deep in thought and with his hands behind his back. She approached him cautiously. “Are you well brother?”
Viserys started slightly and then stared at her. “Dany! There you are. Have you heard?”
This made her cautious. “Heard what?”
And now her brother’s eyes and face came alight with a strange and almost terrible glow. “Why – word has come from the Citadel! Magic has returned, Dany, magic! Do you know what that means?”
Bewildered at his vehemence she shook her head.
“Dragons, Dany, dragons. If magic has returned then so can dragons. And a Targaryen king needs Targaryen dragons. I will instruct Magister Mopatis to bring me the biggest dragon egg that he can find. Because I will be able to hatch it!”
She smiled at him weakly as her brother continued to babble, but all of a sudden she was deathly afraid of him. And she did not know why.
Tyrion
The Twins was… well, it wasn’t Casterly Rock. It was impressive in its own way, but the home of the Freys, vast family that they were, was basically not a patch on Harrenhall or Casterly Rock.
That said, as the only crossing point over the Green Fork for hundreds of miles it had a number of points top recommend it. Anyone trying to besiege it would be in trouble right from the start – you’d need to assault both ends at the same time to make an impact, plus you’d need to make river traffic untenable.
Tyrion peered at the place as his party approached the South end of the Twins. Oh, he could see why some regarded it as one of the strongest fortresses in Westeros. But then he could also see the weak points. Break the bridge connecting the Twins and you’d halve the job of taking it. Siege engines would work, from the right place. Plus there was a forest to the North. Lots of huge trees there. A few axes, get the trunks to the water - childs play.
He frowned to himself a little. Where had that come from? His thoughts had been decidedly martial of late. Perhaps it had been all the reading that he had done about the North. The links between Casterly Rock and Winterfell had once been far better than they were now. Well, Father had always been too busy rebuilding the respect owed to the Lannister name to really spend the time needed to butter up the other Lords Paramount. His comments about Mace Tyrell could best be described as derogatory and at worst woundingly accurate.
A small party of horsemen were waiting at the gateway and he lifted a hand in greeting at their leader, a youngish man with brown hair and a certain look about him that proclaimed him to be a Frey.
“I bid you welcome to the Twins. You are Tyrion Lannister?”
“I see that word of my approach has spread. Yes, I am Tyrion Lannister. My men and I are on our way to Winterfell, post-haste. I must therefore use your splendid bridge, with your permission, Ser…?”
“Ser Tytos Frey, at your service. Passage is not a problem, not for the son of Lord Lannister. However, my grandfather, Lord Frey, has expressed a desire to talk to you.”
Tyrion swapped a look with Emmon, the man that Captain Harklin had chosen to get him to Winterfell. And a damned good man he was too, one able to think on his feet and organise things in a trice. Emmon raised his eyebrows at him and he shook his head. “Get the men fed and watered. The day is only half done and we have a long way to go. I will talk to Lord Frey.” Then he turned to Ser Tytos – such an ironic name – and smiled. “Lead on Ser.”
The great hall at the Twins was… odd. There was a coldness to it that was not of temperature but rather of the soul. The main source of that coldness seemed to be Lord Walder Frey, an ancient man who sat on his great black chair, with his carved representation of the Twins on it, and stared at him over the table. There was the remains of lunch strewed about the table, and Lord Frey was busy slurping wine from a goblet.
The overall atmosphere was one of fear, namely fear of Lord Frey. Who had eyes that glittered with malice the moment that he caught sight of Tyrion. Malice and something else. Greed. So this was the infamous ‘late’ Lord Frey.
“So you’re the dwarf,” Lord Frey barked slightly wetly from his cup, before placing the goblet down and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. To one side a women looked at him timidly. She had long brown hair and a look of abject docility. “Lannister’s son. I thought that you were shorter.”
“Lord Frey,” Tyrion replied grandly. “Yes, I am indeed Tyrion Lannister, the son of Lord Lannister, the Lord Paramount of the Westerlands and the Warden of the West.”
Those greedy eyes stared at him. “Big titles,” he muttered. “Your father wasn’t a bad Hand. What did he do to get a son like you though?”
“Speaking for myself, he must have an uncommon amount of luck to get a son as intelligent as me. May I ask why you wanted to see me Lord Frey? Other than to exchange veiled insults that is?”
“Curb your tongue dwarf,” growled a man with a black beard to one side. “Show some respect.”
Walder Frey leant back in his chair and beamed at Tyrion. “My bastard son, Black Walder. He has a temper, little Lannister.”
Tyrion eyed the man scornfully. He seemed to be angry, foolish and prideful. What a combination. “I’m sure he does. Now – what do you wish to talk about my lord?”
“You seek passage over the river to get to Winterfell. Why?”
Tyrion looked at the men through slightly narrowed eyes. Something was going here, there was a current of something else at work. “House Stark seeks information about the Others. About… the past. House Lannister wishes to help. So my father has sent me, with many books and information. We are travelling fast. Is that what you require in terms of information?”
Lord Frey leant forwards again. “No. I like it not when ravens fly for no reason. Something is going on and I do not know what. The Brackens and the Blackwoods have stopped their great feud and sworn a great oath to protect the land against the Others. Which are a myth! There are reports that some great force of men have forded the Green Fork downstream. Which should be impossible. And now you arrive. Many mysteries Lannister. Many mysteries.”
He absorbed the information with a frown. “Blackwoods and Brackens united against a legend? Lord Frey, this is passing odd. I have been at sea these many days. I know little about what has happened of late. However, I can say this much – I am simply on my way to Winterfell with books about legends. No more and no less.”
The glittering eyes assessed him and as before found him wanting. “The smallfolk are abuzz,” Lord Frey grumbled. “Especially those with the blood of the First Men. A lot of idiots are babbling nonsense about the Stark in Winterfell. Brackens and Blackwoods making a pact? Absurd! And now you come. A Lannister. A tiny stunted thing, but still a Lannister. And now the Maesters say that the glass candles can be relit and that magic has returned. Superstitious balderdash.”
Excitement stirred in his mind as he thought about the implications. Magic? This was fascinating. What else had he missed during his travels? What else had happened?
Grumbling from the chair diverted his attention and then he realised that Lord Frey was looking at him. “I see plots, little Lannister. Plots and alarums. All around me. And I do not like it.”
“And yet,” Tyrion said as he clasped his hands behind his back and then sent a glare back at the revolting old man, “All I seek is passage to Winterfell. On a mission from my father. Lord Tywin Lannister.” He thought about adding the words “Who has a very long arm at times” but then decided not to deploy such a phrase.
Lord Frey glared at him again with hooded eyes, thought for a long, long, moment and then shrugged a little as he picked up his wine again and slurped noisily from the goblet. “Send word once you find out what’s going on. Are you married?”
Tyrion blinked at the sudden change of topic and then suppressed his bewilderment. “No, I am not married. Why do you wish to know?”
The Lord of the Twins gestured at the women at the table to his left. “I’ve got a lot of daughters. Always trying to get rid of them by marrying them off. Want to take a look and find yourself a Frey for a wife?”
The various women stirred briefly as a mixture of emotions ran visibly through them, only to meet Lord Frey’s glare and then go silent and still.
Tyrion resisted the temptation to grab a goblet and then drink a lot. “Sadly, and with all due respects to the lovely ladies of your house, I have to leave at once for Winterfell. And I must add that not to consult my father as to my choice of wife would be… unfortunate.” Tysha’s face came to mind for a moment and he suppressed it. However, something of that suppression must have shown in his face for a moment, because Lord Frey paled a little.
“Very well,” the old man grumbled. “Go, dwarf Lannister. Go on your trip to chase myths and legends in Winterfell.”
Tyrion bowed with just enough respect he felt the horrible creature in the chair deserved and then strode out in as fast but dignified a pace as he could manage. This was a place to avoid in the future.
Chapter Text
Theon
His dreams had been unsettled these past days and sleep often did not come easily. When he did sleep he often woke with a start, breathing hard and feeling oppressed and frightened, as if he was in danger. But he couldn’t remember his dreams, other than a general feeling that he was drowning, being pulled downwards by some savage weight.
He blinked at the book in front of him. There was another weight on him. He had been doing a lot more studying about the Iron Islands and he had come to a sudden and terrible conclusion: his father was an idiot.
He didn’t like that conclusion, in fact he hated it. He was Ironborn, a follower of the Drowned God, the only remaining son of Balon Greyjoy. But he had to admit that the Greyjoy Rebellion had been a total disaster from beginning to end. The timing had been more than poor, it had been stupid, it had united the rest of Westeros (except for Dorne) against the Ironborn and it had given King Robert a moment of glory.
All it had gotten the Ironborn had been death and destruction. If his father had wanted an independent Iron Islands again, why not convince old Quellon Greyjoy to declare independence during Robert’s Rebellion? It was senseless.
Theon closed the book slowly and then looked at the window. Something was happening. Lord Stark had been closeted in his solar for more than two days now, apparently talking to someone from the North. Who exactly that person was, well it was a mystery. Lord Umber was rattling around Winterfell being irritated, Robb was in the middle of his own studies and Snow… well, he’d found him in the catacombs the other day, in front of the tomb of Lyanna Stark. He’d been crying.
Normally Theon would have smirked and done his best to say something rude about that sight. But he hadn’t had the heart to do so for some reason. Why? What was wrong with him of late? What was this feeling of pressure, of being pushed and then almost torn in two.
He yawned raggedly. He needed sleep. A lot of sleep. But first some food.
It was a quiet meal. Lady Stark sat next to Robb, due to Lord Stark still being locked in his solar, with Lord Umber next to Robb. He liked the GreatJon, whose booming laugh and quiet wisdom enlivened any room. To one side Bran and young Robert Arryn were busy asking Domeric Bolton a lot of questions (again) about being a knight, whilst Sansa watched them all with a smile. On the other side Arya was busy making faces at Rickon whenever Lady Stark wasn’t looking, making the little boy giggle until he got the hiccups. And then there was Jory Cassel on one of the other tables, making hesitant small talk with the Arryn boy’s nurse. Something was going on there.
After Theon thought about sneaking out and seeing a whore, but he was too tired. His mind was singing with tiredness by now and he waved goodbye to Robb and went to his room, where he undressed and then virtually fell into bed, remembering at the last moment to pull the sheets over him. And then he slept.
It was the smell that bothered him enough to crack an eye open. It was a smell of death, of putrefaction. It was a familiar smell and – he came bolt upright. He was sprawled in the broken remains of the boat from the dream that had left him with that odd wound. The ship had been run ashore – he could hear breakers to either side of him – and the oars were shattered and broken. Where were the rowers? He peered around and then almost voided his stomach. They were scraps of broken bones wrapped in tattered rags, strewn about the place.
The only thing that was intact was the mast and he looked at it fearfully before he climbed shakily to his feet and looked about. He was dressed in shabby, rusty armour, with an empty scabbard hanging to one side from a worn strap that attached it to his belt. Where was he?
And then he saw the shore. It was not sand, it was not rock, it was not earth. It was made from bones. Shattered bones. As far as the eye could see. He looked up. There was no sun, or if there was a sun it was hidden in the twilight all around. Tendrils of fog roiled about, making it hard to see what was there.
Suddenly a hand landed on his shoulder and he was violently thrown onto the shore. He landed in a spray of bone fragments that went everywhere and he cried out in revulsion, before somehow finding his feet shakily and looking about. When he saw the other figure he recoiled. It was Rodrik.
If his brother had looked bad before, he looked far, far, worse now. The black robes were grey and tattered, his skin was black and peeling enough that in places he could see white bone. One arm was a broken stump that ended at the elbow and there seemed to be something wrong with his neck, from the way that he peered at him.
“There… you are… little brother…” Rodrik’s voice was a tired wheeze, as if he was about to collapse. “Finding… you again… was… difficult. As you… can see.”
Theon stared at him in horror. “What are you? What are you really?”
A noise that might have been a lugh came in answer to his question. “Why, your… brother. And… a servant of… the Drowned God. What is.. dead can never… die.”
“Why have you brought me here?” Theon found himself shouting the words. He was angry and afraid and… he stopped breathing for a moment. The shore was familiar. “I told you that I did not want to come here! That I chose the other shore!”
Something that might have been disgust crossed the features that putrefaction had left of Rodrik’s face. “Your choice? It means… NOTHING boy! You are… Ironborn! A Greyjoy! You... must be brought back. It is… your destiny… There is… a fate… that awaits you… The… Drowned God… must have his due… So I… brought you here. Despite the… cost.”
Theon looked around them wildly. “Maron. Where is Maron?”
“Bone and… ash. Cost. As I… said.” The thing that had once been his brother pointed to a spot behind Theon. “Come. We have… someone to meet.”
Theon looked behind him and then felt the blood drain from his face as the fog blew aside just long enough to reveal a distant throne on what looked a mound of white rocks. Wait, no. They were not rocks. They were skulls. And on the throne there was a slumped figure. Who was slowly looking in his direction.
Terror stabbed into his heart and he looked back. “No. I will not.”
The rotted face leant forwards. “You are a… Greyjoy, boy! You serve… the Drowned God.”
A hundred, no a thousand thoughts went through his mind as he stared back at his dead brother. And then he heard the sound of someone far behind him walking on the shore of shattered bones. Walking slowly. Walking towards him.
Theon closed his eyes for a long moment. And then opened them again. And as he did he felt something in his hand. He did not look at it, he had no idea where it had come from, but suddenly he knew instinctively what it was. “No,” he said quietly, “I do not.”
Rodrik’s face twisted into a snarl as his remaining hand came around to slash at him, but before it could start its downwards leap Theon thrust the Weirwood stake that had somehow appeared in his hand into his brother’s chest. Black ichor burst from the wound and a foul stench filled the air, but Theon ignored it all and just pushed that stake all the way into the spot where Rodrik’s heart should have been.
The thing that had been his brother jerked and screamed – and then collapsed, as if all the tendons had been cut and as the body hit the ground it broke apart into a black smear of foul liquid and stained bones. Theon stared down, panting – and then he heard a scream of rage and the slow steps behind him speeded up.
I can’t look at it, I don’t want to look at it, he thought as he bunched his muscles and then ran for the beached boat. The mast. He had to get to the mast. It was important.
Rodrik had thrown him further than he had thought, as his feet slipped and slithered through the bones and the skulls underfoot. He fell not once but twice and he sobbed with terror as he heard the thing behind him start to catch up. And then he was at the boat, leaping over the sides and then hurling himself at the mast.
“Old Gods,” he shouted as he touched it. “Hear me! I choose you! I deny the Drowned God! Hearken to me!”
The mast shuddered as the face of the Heart Tree that he had seen before reappear. Are you sure Theon Greyjoy? This cannot be undone.
The boat rocked as something pulled at it, something with a hideous strength. The air was foul with a stink that he had never even dreamed could ever exist – and something was close enough that he could feel its fetid breath on the back of his neck. He knew that he should not look at it, not if he wanted to retain his sanity.
“I am sure! I choose the way of the Starks! I would lead my people away from death! I choose you! The Old Gods!”
Light exploded from the mast, no – from the tree that was suddenly there. Light that drove out all the shadows, light that drove away the gibbering screams that he heard diminishing behind him.
Theon came awake with a scream – and when he ran his hands over his face the scab from the previous odd wound was gone. And around his neck there was a leather throng that had not been there before, with something metal. He peered at it as he panted. An image of a Heart Tree.
Robb
When the word finally came as they broke their fast that Father was out of his solar and wanted to speak to him, as well as the GreatJon, Domeric and Jon, Robb let out a sigh of relief. He had no idea what had been taking his father so long to plan. According to Mother and Luwin, Father was consulting with an important visitor from the North, or so Father had told them – without divulging a name.
And so he led the little party down the corridor, before pausing. Theon had appeared and was running towards him, looking as if he had either dressed in the dark or in a tearing hurry.
“Robb! I need to talk to your father at once,” Greyjoy panted. There was something different about him. He looked shaken and – wait.
“Your face – that mark from that dream has gone!”
“Aye,” Theon said in as serious a voice as he had ever heard from him. “T’was another dream about the Old Gods. And your father told me to tell him the moment that I had another one.”
“You’re in luck then lad,” GreatJon boomed, “Ned’s finally out of his solar and whatever the hell’s he’s been doing in there. Sent word for us to join him. You’d best come with us.”
“What’s that?” Jon pointed to a leather strap that could be just seen around Theon’s neck, part-hidden by the rumpled shirt he was wearing.
Theon paled a little. “I think that it was a gift from… from the Old Gods.”
Everyone stopped walking for a moment and then stared at Theon Greyjoy.
“The Old Gods?” The GreatJon asked in astonishment. “I thought that you Ironborn followed the Drowned God?”
Theon looked at the tall lord. “This Ironborn is a follower of the Old Gods now,” he said in a low voice. “I deny the Drowned God. His way is a way of death. Death and madness.”
They resumed their walk, only this time in silence and as they walked Robb thought about the change that had come over Theon since he had returned from death. Things were now very different. Was that difference for good or evil – his money was now on good. But the more things changed the less he recognised from the previous time he had lived these days.
One thing was for sure though – he was feeling a pull to the woods again. Stronger than he had felt it before. Something was there and in the next day or so he needed to go there. Go there urgently.
They reached the door to the solar and Robb knocked politely. When he heard the muttered “Come!” he opened the door.
Father was inside, seated at his desk, which was now piled even higher with papers and books. The great map to one side had been moved and was hanging in a different place – and there was something about it that caught his attention. There were marks on it, on places North of the Wall. Wait, in places that he had never seen before?
“Theon, your pardon but I did not summon you,” Father said, puzzledly.
“No, Lord Stark, you did not – but you did say that if I ever dreamt about the Old Gods again I was to come to you at once. Well – I have. Last night. I dreamt… that I was back on the same boat as before, but that it was wrecked upon an island – the island that I was trying to get my brothers to steer away from in the last dream. Lord Stark, it…” His face shuddered in horror. “It was a place built of bones. A place built of death.
“Rodrik was there again, but he was… changed. Rotted further. In tattered clothes. He said that I had been brought back, despite the cost – and then he tried to take me to see that figure on the throne that I told you about. I think it was the Drowned God. It smelt of… death. I fought my way out of it – I stabbed my brother with a piece of wood – Weirwood I think, although I don’t know where it came from – and then I ran to the boat, and to that mast.”
His face was haggard at the memory. “Something was following me, Lord Stark – the thing from the throne. I knew that if I looked at it, it would drive me mad. I knew it, Lord Stark. So… so I called to the Old Gods. And… I said that I chose them. I rejected the Drowned God.”
Tears were rolling down Theon’s face now and Robb reached out and laid a hand on his shoulder, in an effort to comfort him. “You did the right thing,” Robb muttered quietly. “The right thing.”
And then Theon reached to his neck and pulled out a leather throng, with a silver disc attached to it. There was a Heart Tree engraved on it. “I woke up with this, Lord Stark.”
Father stood and peered at it, his face set in lines of shock. Then those lines relaxed a little. “You have been favoured by the Old Gods, Theon. Favoured indeed. Very well – you must stay here and listen. Afterwards you must go to the Godswood with Robb. Robb – you must tell him where you have come back from.”
“Father?” He said the word in shock.
“Theon is not what he was. You must tell him.” Father nodded once and then returned to his desk. “Now – I must introduce someone. A man from further North than we are familiar with.”
Footsteps scuffed in the corridor and then a man with greying hair and dark garments walked in. He looked at them all carefully and then nodded formally before closing the door behind him and then stalking over to a chair and sitting with a sigh.
Father then glared at them all, which was surprising. “This man, by the way, is here under my protection. And his name is Mance Rayder.”
There was a stunned pause – and then just as GreatJon Umber started to gather his legs under him and fumble at the dagger at his belt, Lord Eddard Stark stood abruptly. “Sit DOWN GreatJon! He’s here under guests rights – under my protection! You cannot harm a hair on his head!”
The room rang from the sound of Father’s shout, and GreatJon Umber, Lord of the Last Hearth and the bravest man Robb had ever met, actually quailed at the sound of Lord Stark’s anger. After a moment he tried to find his voice. “But-”
“Guests rights, GreatJon. You don’t harm a hair on his head.” Father glared at them all, before sitting with a sigh of his own and then passing a hand over his weary face. “And besides – he needs our help. His people need our help. Take a look at the map, all of you. Go on – now.”
Frowning, Robb stood up and then walked over to the map, followed by the others. As he approached it his eyes widened. The area North of the Wall had new markings on it, denoting settlements. A lot of markings. And names for entire areas. Thenn was a new one to him. As was Hopemourne.
“Father, what are these places?”
“Wildling settlements.” Father was watching them all carefully. “There are a lot more of them than we all might have thought.”
“How many of the buggers are there?” GreatJon burst out in puzzlement. “I’ve never heard of these places. Well – apart from Hardhome. That’s a place of dark memory according to the Night’s Watch. No-one ever worked out what happened there.”
Father looked at Rayder, who was sipping wine from a goblet and watching them with a wry look on his face. Noticing the sudden attention he placed the goblet on the nearby table and sighed. “I can call on a host of the Free Folk. And when I say ‘host’ I mean at least a hundred thousand people.”
All but Father stared at him as if he was mad and then GreatJon guffawed with laughter. “A hundred thousand people? North of the Wall. Don’t be daft man, that’s far more than live in that icy hell hole. Ned – he’s lying to you!”
But all this got him was a shake of the head. “GreatJon, what do we know of the lands beyond the Wall? Truly know? The Wildlings have been there a long time – since before the Wall was built. And they have long memories and presumably no small amount of skill at surviving in that area. So – no, I don’t think that he’s lying. And take careful note of what he said – that he could call upon a host of that number, not that such a number is the total number of people North of the Wall.”
“Lord Stark is right,” Rayder sighed. “I don’t know what the total number is there. Perhaps twice what I can call upon?”
GreatJon’s amused scorn seemed to be giving way to horror. “By the Gods,” he muttered. “So many…”
“Your pardon Lord Stark,” Domeric Bolton said suddenly, “This place, Hopemourne… why is it the Northernmost location? Is there a reason for that?”
And that seemed to buy him a smile of approval from Father. “A good question Domeric.” The smile fled his face. “That is the fortress of the Others, we think at least. That is where I saw the Night King, in my vision when the Heartstone was returned here by Lord Umber.”
They all stared at that point on the map in some dread. “So that’s where the bastards come from,” GreatJon breathed. “So far North.”
Robb turned and then stared at Rayder who smiled cheerily back at him. “You said you could call upon a host – for what purpose?”
“Is this your son Lord Stark?” Rayder smirked slightly at Father’s nod. “Smart lad. I was going to assemble a host, storm Castle Black, get my people through the wall at the tunnel there, settle the Gift and then knock the heads of the Black Crows together until they realised that the Free Folk would help defend the Wall against the Others.” He then sipped some more wine. “Because the Others are coming. And death marches with them.”
Robb turned to see the blood thunder into the face of GreatJon Umber, before grabbing his arm. “Guests rights GreatJon. Be calm.”
“Besides,” Father sighed. “He’s right. We need to get the Wildlings South of the Wall. It’s imperative.”
The group collectively stared at him.
“Oh, by the Old Gods…” Father stared at the ceiling for a moment. “Think about it for a moment. The Others are coming. The Wildlings know this, the Wildlings have seen them!”
“We have,” Rayder said sombrely. “They strike Southwards with every day that passes, killing the Free Folk and animating their bodies. We are running from them – and we have nowhere else to go but South of the Wall.”
“GreatJon, think about it. Every Wildling that dies to the Others becomes a wight. Every one of them. And if Rayder’s count of the numbers of Wildlings is correct…”
Father’s voice drifted into silence and Robb found himself experiencing the horrible feeling of all the blood apparently draining from his face. “By the Old Gods,” he choked out, “The Others would be able to send scores of thousands of wights South against the Wall, if not hundreds of thousands!”
A deadly silence filled the room for a long moment as each man in there thought about the prospect of such an event. And the face of GreatJon Umber was whiter than parchment as he sank into the nearest chair.
The silence was broken by Father as he stood up, his chair scraping the floor as he pushed it back. “Which is why I have been talking to Rayder. We have been discussing what needs to be done. Winter is indeed coming, a hard and terrible winter – I feel it in my very bones. Perhaps that is why the Others come. A long winter, a long night, a long, terrible, terrible night. We will need every source of strength as we fight that long night. Every sword and every shield.
“The Gift is almost deserted now, for many reasons. I would have it farmed, I would have it settled, I would have it feed the wall. The New Gift too. Winterfell has some measure of control over both and I was considering settling new lords and smallfolk there once the winter was over. But that was before I knew what comes. Before I knew the threat. Well, enough is enough. I will tell the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch that the Stark in Winterfell commands that the Wildlings be allowed South to settle in the abandoned areas of the Gift and New Gift. And I will not take no for an answer.”
There was a silence whilst they all absorbed that, and then a worried GreatJon leant forwards a little. “Ned – many of the other lords of the North won’t like it. Wildlings South of the Wall…”
“Are better than wighted Wildlings North of it, under the control of the Others! There’s a war coming. And they all know that the Others have returned. They have all sent pledges of allegiance and help, they all have the blood of the First Men in them and they all heard the call from the Hearthstone! I will write to them, telling them of my decision. We have a war to fight, a war that our ancestors started and which we very nearly failed to realise was still going on.”
“My father will understand,” Domeric said suddenly. He was still at the map, looking at all the new settlements that it now showed. “Father is… pragmatic.”
Oh, I know he is, Robb thought as he remembered the knife going in and Roose Bolton’s mutter that Jaime Lannister send his regards. But that was then. This is now.
Rayder was looking at Domeric in slight puzzlement, which brought a small guffaw to the lips of GreatJon. “Oh, his father’s a most pragmatic man. This is Domeric Bolton from the Dreadfort. You know, Roose Bolton’s son.”
Father looked over at Rayder, who was looking at Domeric with wide eyes. Oh, he knew of the Boltons alright. Not that Bolton, but he’d heard of the older one. “I am not saying that it will be easy,” Father said softly. “I am not saying that there won’t be a lot of difficulties in places. And I will say that the Wildlings – free folk as they are – will need to swear to stop the raids at once and settle down in the Gift for as long as the coming long winter lasts. No raids, Rayder. No trouble.”
“I cannot promise anything, but I will do my best,” Rayder said with a solemn nod. “The chiefs of the Free Folk know what awaits us if we stay North of the Wall.”
“Can’t you just command them?” Theon asked with a frown. “You are supposed to be the King Beyond The Wall.”
The Wildling who had once been of the Night’s Watch looked Theon up and down. “It’s not that easy lad,” he said eventually. “I am not, ah, a ‘king’ as you might know it. I lead because I am the only one with a plan to save our people from the Others. And once you’ve seen your first White Walker, and felt that chill as they approach, then you’ll understand why they follow me.”
Much to Robb’s surprise Theon did not bristle when he heard the word ‘lad’. Instead he frowned in thought before nodding.
Father looked around the room. “Much still needs to be discussed, so I will not keep you. GreatJon, please stay. We need to discuss matters with Rayder.”
Robb and the others nodded and then walked to the door. Opening it Robb caught Maester Luwin in mid-knock, and the older man jerked back in surprise. “Ah! Your pardon, Robb. Is Lord Stark free?”
“Come in Luwin – what is it?”
Luwin bustled in with what looked like a message. “A raven from Storm’s End, Lord Stark.”
Robb felt his ears prick and he turned back into the room. “From Renly Baratheon?” He asked the question at the same time as his father did.
Luwin’s eyes swivelled slightly and then twinkled a little with amusement, before he sobered. “No, my Lord. From His Grace King Robert.”
Robb looked at Father with a frown. “What’s he doing at Storm’s End?”
Father grasped the message and read it quickly. When he looked up he seemed… nonplussed. And then he looked at it again. “’His Grace King Robert Baratheon, king of the Andals and of the First Men, etc., etc. Ned – I write in haste as I must catch the tide back to King’s Landing. I came here on a whim and I found something long hidden. Stormbreaker has been found again. Ned, a war is coming. I need your counsel – I will write again from King’s Landing. And I am sending my bastard son Edric North to foster with you. Take care of the lad. He is young but I am proud of him. Be well my friend. Robert.’”
He raised both eyebrows. Life was definitely turning from the previous path. And then he wondered how Mother was going to take the arrival of King Robert’s bastard son. Hmmm. This would be something to watch.
Jon Arryn
Gods, but he felt every one of his years today. He paused for a moment and then looked about the Red Keep. He was starting to realise just how much he hated this place. And yet he had to do his duty. Because there was no-one else available.
Sighing, he strode down the stairs to the cells, doing his best to hide how weary he felt. Oh, he was tired. Lysa had reacted to the news of Baelish’s arrest with first shock and then an almost insane anger that had led to a tearful tirade that he was ruining her life by destroying – and then she’d broken off into incoherent mumbling and screeching and pulling at her hair. He’d had to call Pycelle in, who had promptly dosed her with some concoction that had left her grey-faced and asleep.
At some point he’d have to question her about Robert’s medicine. He wasn’t looking forwards to that. He was starting to suspect that the balance of her mind was gone.
Hearing the sound of low voices ahead he peered down the corridor. Bronn was talking to Quill and as he approached they both turned and bowed to him. He acknowledged their respect and then jerked a head at the cells. “He is secure then?”
Quill looked at Bronn, who nodded curtly. “He is, My Lord Hand. We cleared the others out of the cells around him and we’ve been making sure that the guards don’t go near him too often.”
“Oh? Why so?”
“Lord Baelish has been trying to bribe them with large sums of coin that he doesn’t actually have,” Bronn said dryly. “We’ve had to remind people about that point.”
“He keeps trying though, My Lord,” Quill said in an equally dry tone. “And he’s mentioned that he can call on gold from Pentos.”
“The man’s a thieving magpie,” Jon said with a frown. “I wonder what else he’s got hidden away in places… very well. Quill please go back to the Tower of the Hand and arrange to have a raven sent to Pentos.”
The man nodded tersely and then moved off down the corridor. Jon watched him go and then looked back at Bronn. The sellsword looked as serious as he ever had to his knowledge. “My Lord Hand, I need a word with you.”
“On what matter?”
“Baelish.” The sellsword sighed and then glared at the door to the cells. “When is his trial?”
“A good question,” Jon muttered. “Tomorrow. We have enough evidence to have him executed a dozen times over. The Iron Bank wants him dead as well.”
Bronn stared at him in shock. “He crossed the Iron Bank?”
“He, erm, apparently lied to the Iron Bank. And ‘diverted’ part of one of their loans. Which makes him either more stupid than he appears to be, or more arrogant to think that he could get away with it. That said, he was the Master of Coin and had access to all the records he alter. The real books in his possession were quite specific however, and the Iron Bank’s representative here in King’s Landing was most annoyed. He sent a raven to Braavos and I have little doubt that when a response comes it’ll be to demand Baelish’s head. If, that is, there isn’t another message heading to a Faceless Man somewhere in the area.”
Bronn’s eyes widened and then they hardened. “That should solve a few things then. Lord Arryn, that man’s a weasel. Worse, he’s a weasel with a long memory for grudges. Given that I’m the one who captured him I won’t rest easy until he’s dead, because he’ll want to settle accounts with me some day.”
“What kind of grudges?”
The sellsword sighed a little. “I talk to the smallfolk, my Lord. You’d be surprised what they know at times. People notice things around them – things that lords and ladies might ignore. Did you know that Baelish smirks a little whenever he passes the spot where Brandon Stark died in the throne room? He still remembers the man who wounded him and he still smirks at the thought of the way he died. And Brandon Stark died a horrible death.”
Jon thought of all the tales had heard of that terrible day in the throne room, the day that Ned’s father and brother had both died and in the doing had broken the realm by finally proving that Aerys Targaryen was insane beyond words. “And Baelish smirks, still?”
“When he thinks that people aren’t watching him.” Bronn shook his head. “No, to call him a weasel is to be cruel to weasels. Man’s a devious little shit and frankly my Lord Hand, the world will be a better place once Baelish is removed from it.”
Jon nodded shortly. “Keep a close eye out then Bronn. You will be well-rewarded for it.” He paused. “May I ask what your fondest ambition is in life?”
Bronn tilted his head and looked at him, obviously assessing his answer. “My own land,” he said eventually, his voice wistful. “A small place, perhaps a title, a wife, a son and no more sleeping in shithole taverns and risking my life.” Then he smiled bitterly. “Problem with that of course is that I tend to find trouble around every corner.”
Jon smiled back. “You should try being Hand of the King,” he replied in tones as dry as Dornish stone and then chuckled at Bronn’s exaggerated shudder. “It might be that I can help you with your own plot of land. A city filled with Goldcloaks and my own men all searching for Baelish, yet you were the one to find him in a place that no-one thought to look. And you found his books. Yes, you’ll be well-rewarded.”
Bronn nodded respectfully at him and then when Jon turned to the door he reached out and opened it. “Good luck against that one, my Lord.”
He nodded back and then walked through the door and grasped a torch from the wall next to the entrance. “If I need you I’ll call.”
The other cells were all empty. There had been two people in them, a thief who had thought that the Red Keep offered richer pickings than the city and a madman who claimed that the Seven Hells were about to open and then everyone was about to die, hence his need to get to the Iron Throne and then declaim from it. He’d been grabbed before he’d gotten anywhere near the main gates. Both were now in other cells. Petyr Baelish deserved to be alone. The man was also too damn dangerous to have others near him.
Alone, that is, apart from the smell. It was… a presence all of its own. It spoke of rot, of death and excrement. It was a smell that did not waft, it assaulted the nose.
Baelish heard him coming, because he was on his feet by the time that Jon approached the door to his cell and peered through the barred hatch.
“My Lord Hand! Welcome to my new… abode!” Baelish spread his hands to gesture at the expanse of the cell around him, as if he was welcoming him to some sumptuous new quarters. He looked terrible, dressed in rough clothing and with a bruise to the side of his head, but his eyes were still sharp. “What do I owe the pleasure of your company to?”
He looked the man up and down for a long moment, repressing the need to pull out his sword and then finish the job that Brandon Stark had begun. “Your trial will be tomorrow.”
“On what possible charges? Have I not been a loyal subject of good King Robert?” Baelish sounded wounded and almost exaggeratedly offended.
“You stole the King’s coin, you lied to all and sundry, you bought properties in this city and many others with your ill-gotten gains, and you betrayed me. And that,” Jon said between gritted teeth as he glared through the bars, “Is just the beginning of it! You tried to have my son kidnapped Baelish. I will not forget that easily.”
“You wound me, my Lord.” Baelish said the words so lightly, as if he was indeed innocent. “And the proof for all this?”
Ah. Jon narrowed his eyes and then studied the wretched little man. “We have your books.”
“Obviously planted by my enemies.”
“Written in your hand?”
“My enemies have many resources. Which obviously include forgers.”
“And presumably people who look just like you? We have uncovered your network.”
Ah, there it was. The slight uncertainty in the eyes, the quick lick of the lips. He was uncertain.
“Network?”
“From your books,” Jon said with a smile and with hate in his heart. “You should have chosen a better cypher for them. My man cracked them on the third try. We know exactly what you owned here in Kings Landing. And, of course, elsewhere. You don’t seem to have inspired much loyalty from your people. Once they knew that your supply of money was denied to them, they talked.”
And such people! He finally had what he needed to send Janos bloody Slynt to the Wall on charges of bribery, corruption and a host of other things.
“But these people are nothing more but liars, my Lord Hand! Debasing my good name.”
“Your name,” Jon said with a smile. “What name? That of a thief and a scoundrel. A man who owns whorehouses and who gets his whores from some very interesting places. A man who bribes Goldcloaks to look the other way again and again. Well – no more. Your filthy little network is no more.”
Baelish was staring at him now, staring at him as if he wasn’t sure what he was. Time to push one more knife in. “And we have the man you sent to kidnap my son. Mikon, by name.”
“And why,” Baelish said with a slight start, as if he was forcing himself into action, “Would I do that?”
“I don’t know,” Jon admitted. “Why would you? And why was it that my wife was so agitated when I sent young Robert away to Winterfell, but then calmed down after you talked to her? Did you tell her that you planned to snatch my boy? Did you, you whoreson???”
Baelish looked at him for a long moment and then he actually smirked for an instant. “Can I be faulted for wishing to reunite a devoted mother with her only child?”
Jon narrowed his eyes. “Don’t lie to me Baelish. You sent your man to try and get my son on the day that I sent him North. How did you know?”
This time the smirk was an open and wide one. “Why my Lord Hand, how very naïve of you. This is King’s Landing. Everyone can be bought here – for the right price of course. And you’d be surprised what you could find out. Some of the secrets out there are… deliciously surprising.”
A faint warning bell rang at the back of his mind and he looked at the wretched little man again. “Why did you poison my son?”
Something flickered in the eyes of Baelish. “Poison?”
“The medicine that my son had for his so-called shaking sickness. No medicine at all. A slow poison that made him shake more. Where did Lysa get it from?”
“Why, my Lord Hand, if you do not know then-”
“It was you wasn’t it? I know my wife, I know how she dotes on him, I know how she likes to nurse him. Did you recommend the apothecary? To have a hold on her?”
This time the emotion behind the eyes of the other man was more clear. Surprise. And a little fear. “Lady Arryn wanted me to recommend an apothecary. I did so.”
Jon stared at Baelish, who stared back defiantly. There was something about him, something defiant, something almost jubilant. As if Baelish knew something that he did not. “As I said, your trial will be in the morning,” he said eventually. “So I suggest you try and prepare what little defence you have. Oh – and you are no longer Lord of the smallest of the Fingers. You are attainted. You are a lord no more.”
This widened Baelish’s eyes and he took a step forwards with a hiss of hatred. “You cannot!”
“I can. You forget who you are taking to, Baelish. I am not just Hand of the King, but also Warden of the East and Lord Paramount of the Vale. I do not take kindly to being betrayed by one of my bannermen – even from such a pitifully small holdfast. What kind of message would it send if you still had your title at your trial?”
Baelish’s mouth worked for a moment – and then quick look of cunning came over him. “Such a petty revenge. And I wonder what might slip out of my mouth as a consequence during my trial?”
“Yes, I thought that you might play that card. I would advise against it.”
“Why? What if I mention the King’s Great Matter?”
Shock roiled though him and he stared for a moment at a suddenly openly smirking Baelish. “What do you know about that matter?”
“Ha!” Baelish wagged a finger at him. “Why everything, my Lord Hand. It was so amusing – and pitiful – to see you and Stannis Baratheon trying to make your way through the street of Kings Landing as you visited King Robert’s bastard children. All so black of hair, I note, and blue of eye. How odd that the King’s children look nothing like him. How stupid of you all to not see what I saw the moment I laid eyes on them. They are pure Lannister, every one of them.”
There was a gloating note to his voice and Jon thought very fast and very hard. Very well. Littlefinger knew, damn his heart. That was why he was so cheerful, that was why he looked so undefeated. Very well. Time to strike back.
“You will not mention the King’s Great Matter at your trial,” he said flatly. “Not if you wish to live to attend it.”
Baelish smirked slightly again. “Why my Lord Hand, is that a threat? Against a prisoner of the most noble Lord of the Vale?”
“We have your secret records. We have deciphered everything. You look doubtful – but we have even ascertained how you diverted money from the Iron Bank’s loan to the King into your purse. And we have informed a representative of the Iron Bank who happened to be here in King’s Landing. He was… displeased.”
There was just enough light to see the blood drain from the face of Petyr Baelish. “What?”
Now it was Jon’s turn to smile. “I believe that you heard my words correctly. The Iron Bank is – or soon will be, depending on how fast that raven gets there and back – most displeased with you. Whatever made you think that divert those funds and not be eventually found out? Ah… such arrogance Baelish.”
Baelish lunged suddenly for the bars and gripped them, his knuckles almost as white as his face. “You old fool – don’t you know what you’ve done?!? The Iron Bank doesn’t have people ‘passing through’ somewhere like King’s Landing on a whim! Like as not their man here has a Faceless Man somewhere nearby, or knows where one is!”
Jon smiled a small, chill, smile. “I know.”
There was a long pause as Baelish searched his face with wide and hunted eyes. After a long moment he stepped back from the door, his face ashen and suddenly drawn. “Oh, well played Arryn. Well played. Let me guess, you have me guarded by that bright sellsword of yours? And if I agree not to mention your Lannister problem I might just see another dawn and indeed my trial without dying a horrible death thanks to a Faceless Man?”
“I would take your word for it, but I know that to be worthless. So let me tell you this. I will see you tried fairly. I will even allow a trial by combat at the end of it. But one word, one solitary word about the King’s Great Matter and I will have you gagged by your guard and then left on your own in a cell by the quarters occupied by the Iron Bank’s man.”
Baelish nodded slightly. “You have already decided on my guilt.”
“Your guilt is undeniable,” Jon replied in a voice like stone. “But you will have your trial.”
And then he turned and made his way back out, eventually reaching the door where Bronn still was. The sellsword was sitting by the entrance, a pair of pliers in one hand and what appeared to be some nails in the other. He was twisting one against the other to make –
“Caltrops?”
Bronn looked up with the grim smile. “Oh aye. If I’m to keep yon weasel alive, against a possible Faceless Man, then I’ll need every advantage I can get in guarding him.”
“A good notion.” Jon sighed tiredly. “Keep him alive to see his trial. I would give you his holdfast and title as a reward for it, but the smallest of the Fingers of the Vale is… somewhat barren, apart from a crop of rock.”
“My thanks, my Lord Hand, but ‘tis also somewhat remote,” Bronn grinned as he continued to fashion caltrops. “Although ‘tis tempting.”
“I will see you rewarded, Bronn. Land and title. Just keep, ah, ‘yon weasel’, alive.”
The sellsword nodded sharply. “I shall my Lord Hand.”
Jon nodded at him before striding out. The sun was shining and after the darkness of the Black Cells, the contrast made his head hurt for a long moment. And then he saw Quill hurrying towards him. “Quill – what news?”
“His Grace the King is returning my Lord Hand. And the High Septon wishes to see you as soon as possible, at the Great Sept of Baelor. He says that it is very urgent.”
Theon
It took him a little time to pluck up the courage to go into the Godswood. He knew that he had to go there, Lord Stark had told him to. But he had a terrible feeling about what Robb was about to tell him. He had no idea why, he just had a feeling that it would be something terrible.
And so eventually he braced himself and strode into the Godswood. He found Robb there, sitting in front of the Heart Tree, staring at it with intent eyes in an expressionless face. He acknowledged Theon’s arrival with a nod.
“Father said that you need to know what else has happened,” Robb said in a voice that was slow and almost hesitant. “I do not know if you will like much of what I have to tell you. ‘Tis a terrible tale.”
He looked at his old friend for a long moment and then winced slightly. “Can it be any worse than dreaming of being chased by the Drowned God, who had been summoned by the rotting corpse of your own brother?”
Robb seemed to think about this for a long moment. “Yes.” He said the word hesitantly but with an underlying firmness. “Theon, what I have to tell you will… well, it will change you.”
He looked at him, confused. “Change me? Change me how?”
Once again Robb paused, seemingly to gather his thoughts. And then his head came up and he placed a hand on the Heart Tree. “I swear by the Old Gods that this tale is a true one, Theon. I swear it.”
Theon knew that this was not something that Robb would do unless he meant it in every way and he nodded slowly in acknowledgement. Unease roiled through him like a sickening wave.
“I… was touched by the Old Gods. They sent me back.”
“Back from where?” Theon asked blankly.
“Back from the moment… the moment of my death. I died Theon. I died.”
Theon stared at Robb. The heir to Winterfell was white-faced and strained, the skin stretched tightly over his features. He meant what he said. But what he had said was madness. “You… died?”
“I died. It was in the Twins, at the hands of Walder Frey and Roose Bolton.” The names were spat out angrily. But surely this was more madness.
“Why?” He croaked the word, unable to say anything else.
Robb closed his eyes for a long moment and then let out a puff of breath. “There was a war,” he said almost gently. “A very terrible war.”
The unease was joined by a terrible coldness in his guts. He had read so much about war of late. “We fought a war? Who attacked?”
“It’s… complicated,” Robb sighed. “A month or so from now we heard – in the old future that is my past – that Jon Arryn was dead. Aunt Lysa blamed the Lannisters, but, well, it was…”
“Complicated, you said that. What happened next?” Theon sat by the Heart Tree, his mind whirling like a sycamore seed in the wind. This was madness. Wasn’t it?
“The king came to Winterfell. With much of the Court, including the Queen and their children.” There was something odd about the way that Robb said that last word, as if something about it soured his mouth and Theon squinted curiously at him.
Robb caught the look. “I’ll explain in a bit. The king wanted Father to be his new hand. At first Father turned him down. But then Bran had an accident – he fell off a tower that broke his back, he could never walk again – and, well, Father changed his mind.”
Something clicked within Theon’s mind. “That’s why Lord Stark forbade Bran from climbing!”
“Yes. He had to. We never found out how Bran fell – he didn’t remember what happened – but it was odd at the time. I think that he saw something that he shouldn’t have. Anyway, Father agreed to become hand, pledged Sansa’s hand in marriage to Prince Joffrey – something that’ll never happen now, thanks the Gods – and then he, Sansa and Arya went South to King’s Landing.” A complicated look of many different emotions crossed his face, from fondness to fury to deep, deep, grief. “And we never saw them again.”
There was something in the way that he said those last words. Something that terrified Theon. “What… what happened?”
“There was an attempt on Bran’s life. Mother went South to warn Father and learnt that Father was investigating the death of John Arryn. We think that Father learnt the truth about the Queen’s children. Namely that they might the Queen’s children, but they’re not the King’s children.”
Theon stared at Robb as if he was raving mad. “The King’s children… aren’t the King’s?”
“No. That’s what Stannis Baratheon claimed.”
“Then who’s the real father?”
Robb’s face twisted a little. “Stannis Baratheon claims that it’s the Kingslayer. It explains why the children look nothing at all like the King, but instead appear to be all Lannister. Explains why Joffrey is the way that he is too. Too much in-breeding.”
This made no sense. “What’s wrong with Prince Joffrey?”
This time Robb’s face twisted into a snarl. “The boy’s mad. Cruel and mad. When the King was mortally wounded in a hunt by a boar Father was made regent, but after the King died the Queen ordered that Father be arrested and all his men killed. Sansa was made a prisoner and Arya… she vanished. We never found out what happened to her. Father apparently had found out the truth and was going to expose Joffrey for what he was – is. They were going to have Father take the Black and go to the Wall. Instead Joffrey had him beheaded in front of the Sept of Baelor.”
This time horror roiled through Theon and he came close to voiding his guts on the grass. Lord Stark? Dead? He couldn’t imagine that happening, not after everything that had happened in Winterfell the past month. Lord Stark dead? “What happened then?”
A bleak smile lit Robb’s face. “I refused to bend the knee to the little shit who killed my father and instead I called the Banners. And we rode South. With you at my side.”
Pride lifted his heart. Yes, that was something that he could see happening. Riding to war at the side of the man he would be proud to call a brother. “To the Twins then?”
“Eventually. It was… chaos. Stannis Baratheon claimed that he was king. So did his younger brother Renly, with the support of The Reach. My bannermen proclaimed me The King in the North. The Lannisters invaded the Riverlands so we went South to support Grandfather and Uncle Edmure. Aunt Lysa did nothing in the Vale. We fought three great battles. We smashed Lannister armies and captured the Kingslayer. And then…” His voice faded away as he screwed his eyes closed.
“And then?” Theon prompted gently. Was that when Robb died, at the Twins?
“And then you betrayed me.”
This time the horror felt like an almost physical blow as it smashed into him. No. No, it couldn’t be true. He didn’t say a word – he couldn’t – but his face worked as he tried to make his mouth work as his limbs shook.
Robb opened his eyes and then looked at him. “I sent you to broker an alliance with your father and attack the Lannisters,” he said almost gently as he caught sight of the expression on Theon’s face. “But something happened at Pyke. You never returned. Instead you joined your father in his mad plan to invade the North. You led a force that captured Winterfell, because no-one could believe that you would ever turn your back on us. But you did. You even captured Bran and Rickon. But when my men counter-attacked you burnt Winterfell and…. Well they say that you murdered them. You murdered a small boy and a boy who couldn’t even walk.”
The shaking feeling swept him up in a storm, horror and shame and shock roaring through him and he finally leant to one side and voided up his guts. Everything came up and even after there was nothing left he still kept heaving and gasping. No. It couldn’t be true. No. He’d never have done something like that. Kill children? Burn the place that had become his home? No. Never.
When he finally regained control of himself he wiped his mouth and then looked in shame at the pool of vomit next to him. And then he shakily stood and walked a few trembling steps to Robb’s side, before his legs refused to bear his weight again and he fell to the ground.
“Lord… Lord Stark knows this tale?” Robb nodded. “Why did he not kill me?”
“Because you have not done it yet. And Father thinks that you have changed. Changed enough that you will never do it.” Robb said the words almost gently.
Theon bowed his head at this and then the tears finally fell. They were many and he sobbed before the tree for what felt like an age and a half. And they finally ebbed as a fierce flame was kindled deep within him. It had two sources. The first was determination. The second was hate. His father. His fucking father had done this. The man who had done nothing right in his life had done something terribly wrong yet again.
“I will swear an oath to you,” Theon eventually choked out. “An oath to you, or to your father. I can do it now, before the Heart Tree. Here, now, in the place. I will never betray you Robb. Never. This place is my home. Pyke means nothing to me. I will swear to protect Winterfell.”
There was a long pause and then Robb nodded tightly before smiling at him slightly. It wasn’t much, but it raised his spirits for a moment. “Thank you Theon.”
“What happened after… after that?”
A sigh emerged from somewhere very deep in Robb. “I won battle after battle, but I was losing the war,” he said bitterly. “The Lannisters always had a new army somewhere. I promised Walder Frey that I would marry one of his daughters as the price of crossing at the Twins, but then I married someone else – don’t ask, that’s a long story. When we captured the Kingslayer he killed two of Lord Karstark’s sons and I wouldn’t let him take the Kingslayer’s head in revenge. And when you… when Winterfell fell I lost a lot of prestige.
“So Tywin Lannister must have plotted with the Freys and also with Roose Bolton. You know the history we have with them. He wanted to be Lord Paramount of the North. The last words I ever heard in that other future was Roose Bolton telling me that Jaime Lannister sent his regards. Then nothing – before I woke up back here in my bed. When I realised what had happened, that the Old Gods had sent me back – well, I ran straight to the dining hall. I almost cried when I saw Father and Sansa and everyone.”
Memory tickled at him. “I remember that morning! It was the day when you came in and looked as if you were ill. And that look you gave me…” He shivered. “So you died.”
“I died.”
“I wonder what happened to me then?” He caught the uncomfortable look that Robb sent his way. “Did I die too? In the North?”
Robb ran a hand over his chin. “No,” he said eventually. “But I do know that you were captured by the Boltons. In a sense.”
“I don’t understand.”
“In the future I remember Domeric was dead by now. I think that he was poisoned by his half-brother, Lord Bolton’s bastard son Ramsey Snow.”
“Who’s dead now himself. I heard about what happened. Lord Stark was furious.”
“Aye, Father wanted to take care of Ramsey Snow himself. In the future I saw… Ramsey Snow captured you after the burning of Winterfell. And… you know what the banner of House Bolton is.”
“The flayed man,” Theon whispered in horror. “Ramsey Snow flayed me?”
“On the day that I died Roose Bolton gave me a gift. We were at the Twins to witness Uncle Edmure marrying a Frey to make up for my mistake and before we entered, Lord Bolton gave me… well, he said that it was a piece of your skin. And said that you still lived.”
This time there was next to no warning and Theon leant over in an attempt to spew his guts again on the grass. There was nothing left to throw up by now though, so he dry-heaved for several minutes as the tears poured down his face. When he was finally as composed as he was ever going to be he turned back. “Sorry,” he said weakly. Then something occurred to him. “Wait… how could your Father go South to be Hand of the King if he knew that the Others were coming?”
“He didn’t,” Robb said grimly. “That has been a terrible change from my memories. Days after I came back he confronted me here, by the Heart Tree. We both placed a hand on the trunk and… had a vision. Father saw things about my life. And received a warning, from the Old Gods, about the Others. If he hadn’t had that warning then he would never have sent the ravens out asking for information about them, and GreatJon Umber would never have looked at the Hearthstone and then brought it here to Winterfell. We would have had no warning.”
He nodded in response and then ran a shaking hand through his hair. “This is a lot to take in, Robb.”
“I know.” He smiled slightly. “But at least I was able to return from that dark future. Some warning is better than no warning at all.”
Theon nodded slightly and then looked at the Heart Tree. “My father will be annoyed when he learns that I no longer follow the Drowned God. But I don’t give a damn what he thinks about anything.”
“You don’t?”
A bark of laughter forced its way out of him, surprising him a little in the process. “Robb, my father is a fool. So no, I don’t give a damn about him.” He looked at Robb. “I’ve studied the Greyjoy Rebellion. Only a fool willingly starts a war with Robert Baratheon, especially when he had the other six kingdoms united behind him. And from what you said he was an even bigger fool in that dark future that won’t happen. He had a chance to attack the Westerlands from what you said, with their armies in the Riverlands. My father, the man who would love to reave the Westerlands of every piece of gold it has, gave that up just to attack the North? For what? Some kind of revenge against a dead man?” He snorted with anger. “No, the man’s a fool.”
“A hateful fool,” Robb sighed after a long moment. “So – here we are.”
“Here we are.” A silence fell. “Things between us won’t be the same, will they?”
Robb sighed and then squinted at a passing cloud far above them. “No,” he said eventually. “I would like them to – but, no. I have too many dark memories.”
Theon sighed himself and then nodded. “Perhaps we can remake things, after time?”
After a long moment Robb smiled and then nodded. “I would like that. I missed you.”
“As far as I’m aware you were never away.” He paused. “This is very confusing.”
Robb nodded again. Then: “I think we need some ale.”
Jon Arryn
He squinted at the sun as we walked over the cobblestones. Some hours to go until the evening meal. And hours to go until night. He hoped that Bronn had his wits about him. It was going to be a long night, he could feel it. And there was a gnawing worm of unease in his midriff. Too much was happening. Too many things were distracting him. He could feel that his usual duties were being allowed to slip a little and he scowled.
“My Lord Hand,” said a voice to one side and he half-turned to see Stannis Baratheon walking towards him. He looked… well as much as he always did. He supressed the term that Robert often used about Stannis, about the poker up his… well, enough of that. “You look annoyed my Lord Hand.”
He looked about carefully for an instant and was gratified to see that Stannis did the same thing. “I am… worried about this trial tomorrow. Baelish is, in the words of one of my men, a weasel. I do not trust the man. His word is useless. And such a man is therefore undependable.”
Stannis Baratheon nodded shortly. “I was on my way to see you with word of Baelish’s further corruption. Inspection of his books has revealed that there were no fewer than a dozen pursers in the King’s Navy in his pay. A dozen!” The last word was almost spat out in the nearest that Stannis Baratheon ever came to an outright fury.
“This is ill news,” Jon sighed. “So many?”
“So many. All giving short rations or skimming off the top whenever they could when it came to provisions meant for the fleet.”
Something sparked in the back of his mind and he paused and rubbed his chin with a finger. “Could that be classed as treason then?”
Stannis sent a brief smile in his direction. “Aye. It might well. Which is why I wanted to tell you about it.”
“If you might explain as we walk – I have to go to the Sept of Baelor. The High Septon wishes to see me.”
The other man’s eyebrows went up. “About what?”
“He did not say, except that the matter was urgent.”
Stannis frowned for a moment. “Do you think that this relates to Baelish?”
That was a good point. “I know not.”
“Then I shall accompany you, if you do not mind.”
Jon thought about it for a moment as they walked and then nodded. “Please do.”
They found the High Septon waiting for them at the steps of the Great Sept itself and Jon narrowed his eyes a little as he looked at the man. He’d never liked the High Septon. The man was a large, sweaty, obsequious toadie, and that was on a good day. And judging by the way that the men was wringing his hands and shifting from side to side at the very sight of Jon and Stannis, today was not a good day.
“My Lord Hand. Lord Baratheon,” the High Septon said, almost knotting his fingers together. “Thank you for answering my call. There... there is something you need to see inside. Something… strange.”
Despite himself Jon found his eyebrows arcing upwards for a moment. Then he saw the Septons who were waiting at the doors, which were open a crack. The men looked… nervous. So did the Septas that he could see. “Then lead on, High Septon.”
The High Septon nodded jerkily and then led them into the Great Sept. As they all entered the doors boomed shut behind them. The sun was shining through the windows on the far side and as they walked deeper into the Sept Jon could see more and more nervous people watching him. Something was raising his hackles. He could sense fear.
And then they got to the main chamber of the Sept, where Jon and Stannis both stopped dead in shock. The statues. The statues of the Seven were… different. Previously they had been facing inwards in a circle, with the exception of The Stranger. Now they were all facing in the same direction. North? Were they facing North? And there was something else. The statues themselves looked as if some of them had changed. The Warrior now held a bared blade in one hand and held the other out with a palm held outwards in a gesture of warning. The Smith held his hammer in both hands. The Father now held a feather. The Crone’s lantern was now a brand. The Maiden and the Mother both held their hands outstretched in warning. And the Stranger… the stranger was hooded and seemed to have icicles hanging off his outstretched hand.
“What has… has happened here?” Jon stammered the words in shock. “Who has changed the statues of the seven? This… this is blasphemy, is it not?”
The High Septon wrung his hands again. “It… it is… a mystery my Lord Hand. A mystery.”
The air was filled by a snort from Stannis Baratheon, a man that Jon knew was not a particularly devout follower of the Seven. “Mummery! Cant! Someone must have changed them!” Then his eyes narrowed. “When did this happen?”
More hand-wringing. “It was discovered this morning my Lord Hand. At dawn.” And then he flinched violently as both Lords turned on him as one.
“Dawn?” Jon barked, just ahead of Stannis. “This happened at dawn and you have only just called it to my attention? High Septon, you should have told me hours ago!”
The wretched man looked as if he was about to either pass out or piss himself. “My, my Lord Hand, we had to… investigate. I had to inspect this all most closely.” His face was shining with sweat. “I did indeed also think that it was mummery at first, a, a, trick of some sort. But on closer inspection…”
Jon glared at him for a moment and then, with Stannis by his side, he strode over to the statues. The originals must have been replaced with something. Without anyone knowing? “Who guards the Great Sept at night?”
A grey-haired Septon stepped forwards. He appeared to be just as worldly as the High Septon but a lot more competent. “The doors are closed every night, my Lord Hand, and guards set. And there is always a Septon on hand to keep the candles lit.” He was glaring at the High Septon, who was doing his best not to look at him. “And last night a Septon was doing penance in the Great Sept. He… he saw something.”
“This is not right,” Stannis said to one side. “The base of this is… different.”
Everyone looked over at him. Stannis Baratheon was inspecting the base of the nearest statue closely. “I thought that someone had painted this, or wrapped canvas around it. Anything to make it look different. But this is stone. The same stone as the ground under us. And it grips the feet of the statues.” He looked genuinely stunned.
“My Lords,” the grey-haired Septon said quietly. “The statues have not been replaced. I have inspected them most carefully. There are various… marks on them that are the same. And then there is the tale of the Septon.”
“Where is this Septon?” Jon asked as he looked around the Sept and then back at the statues of the Seven.
The various Septons and Septas all stared at the High Septon, who twitched visibly at all the attention. “My Lords,” he said worriedly, “The man is… well, the man is unstable. There is a reason he was doing penance last night.”
“He does have rather… unorthodox beliefs,” the grey-haired Septon admitted. “About the issue of abstinence. Or rather abandoning it. But he was in the Sept. And he saw… something.”
“Where is he?”
The High Septon did his little side-to-side shuffle of nervous unease. It was the grey-haired Septon who nodded at a group of men to one side who nodded back and then vanished off into a side passage. A few moments later they reappeared with a short man with messy dark hair and a look of resigned befuddlement. When he saw everyone staring at him he straightened as much as he could and then shot a nervous look at the statues of the Seven.
“This is Septon Tofflin,” the High Septon said with a sigh. “Septon, this is the Hand of the King and Lord Baratheon. Tell him what you saw at dawn, at the end of your penance.”
Tofflin shot Jon a terrified look and then swallowed. “I… I was coming to the end of my… penance.” He seemed to pause before the last word, as if he was about to say something else but then changed his mind. “And dawn was breaking. I was looking at the Seven and then…” His mouth worked for a moment as if in terror and then he seemed to catch himself. “They woke up.”
A silence fell. The Septons and Septas must have heard this before, because the silence was then broken by muttering and what sounded like quiet prayers. Jon tilted his head from one side to the other, whilst Stannis directed his most piercing stare at the Septon. “What?” Jon said eventually.
Tofflin flailed a hand at the statues of the Seven. “They came awake my Lord! They opened their eyes!”
Jon stared at the statues. Their eyes seemed to be open already and they were all stone. His confusion must have shown in his face, because Tofflin once again flailed his arms in the direction of the Seven. “Their eyes blazed with light my Lord! And such a light! Like the sun at dawn!”
Something very cold and with many, many, legs seemed to slither up and down Jon’s spine for a moment. “Did they look at you?”
Tofflin screwed his eyes shut and then visibly shivered in terror. “Aye,” he said in a very faint voice. “Aye, they did. And then the Warrior seemed to, to shine and shimmer, like a Dornish mirage. And then he was he seems now. And then they all changed! Whilst I watched! And then…” He stumbled to a halt.
“And then? Speak up man!” Stannis barked.
“And then they spoke. As one. In a voice like the breaking of mountains. They told me to watch the North. That death and worse than death walks against the Wall. And then…” His face worked again. “They said that word should pass to watch the East. That the high towers, the five forts, should watch the Grey Wastes. And then… then they all turned to face… where they’re facing right now.”
Everyone turned to look at the statues again. The thing with the legs seemed to do its thing again on his spine.
“My Lord Hand,” the grey-haired Septon said in an urgent low voice. “We need to keep this quiet. Especially there are already… interpretations… of Tofflin’s tale flying around.”
“’Interpretations’?” Jon asked – and then he saw the flush on the face of the High Septon. Ah. This was the cause of the delay. The fools had been busy arguing over if this entire thing had happened and if it meant anything in particular. “What interpretations?”
Various Septons and Septas seemed to glare at others in the hall, many of whom glared back. The High Septon achieved a new colour in his complexion whilst the grey-haired Septon sighed and then winced. “There are those who seem to think that the Seven were warning about the North my Lord Hand. And those that worship the Old Gods.”
Jon stared at the man and then rubbed at his forehead in exasperation. This was why he hated priests. It always came down to one fool trying to reinterpret what someone else had said and in doing so trying to get more influence. And more influence meant more power. Especially with a High Septon as useless as the current one in office.
“I was not aware that the worshippers of the Old Gods in the North were also North of the Wall and that they were in fact ‘death and worse than death’, as Tofflin said.” Stannis pointed this out in a deadpan voice.
“I agree,” Jon said vehemently. Then he paused. No. That was mad. “North of the Wall… would the Seven be warning us about the Wildlings? Or… worse?”
“What could be worse than Wildlings?”
Jon had a sudden nasty feeling that he knew why Ned was asking so many questions about the Others. But that wasn’t possible. They were gone. Weren’t they? This time he ran a weary hand over his eyes. “I think that I must send a raven to Winterfell,” he said tiredly. “This is something that I must discuss with Lord Stark.”
Stannis nodded once and then directed a troubled gaze at the statues again. “And the Great Sept?”
“High Septon, I think that the Great Sept must be closed for what remains of today. We need to discuss how to handle this. If fools are already discussing interpretations that lead to slurs against the believers in the Old Gods of the North then prompt action must be taken against them.” Especially if those who spout such stupidity are secret supporters of the Faith Militant, whose return would be a disaster.
The High Septon nodded jerkily, followed by the grey-haired fellow. He needed to know who he was, the man seemed far better than the idiot in charge here. And all of this took him away from preparing for Baelish’s trial. Well, at least Stannis had given him more arrows to fire at the traitor.
And speaking of the trial… he paused and then gestured to one of his men. “Fetch Grand Maester Pycelle,” he instructed. “We need to find out exactly where these statues are now all facing.” Seeing Stannis raise an eyebrow at him he explained in a low voice: “The Grand Maester may be a fool, but he has one redeeming virtue. He is very good at determining such things.”
“He is?” Stannis said in great surprise.
“Oh yes. He hides such a talent.” He wondered for a moment what else he hid. Then he leant closer to Stannis. “And it will prevent him from attending the trial. You and I must talk about that. I have decided on a few things, so that matters do not become… complicated.”
Stannis nodded and then looked back at the statues of the Seven. “I like this not,” he muttered. “What can this portend? And why does it happen now? Have the Seven truly spoken to us?”
Jon joined him in looking at the silent figures on their pedestals. “I know not. Nor can I tell you what has changed and why. Just that it has. And that it is.”
Kevan
He waited until the bells marking midnight had long since faded before he finally moved. He had returned to his chambers after a cheerless supper with his brother, who either brooded in silence or snapped at servants for not moving fast enough.
And now here he was, dressed in a black robe with soft shoes, slipping through the tunnels and passageways of Casterly Rock as if he was an elderly and incompetent faceless man. Well. Perhaps not that elderly. But at least he was dressed in black.
Getting to the North Passage would not be a problem. He had grown up here at Casterly Rock and he knew every inch of it, every flagstone, every brick, every stone in the walls. And, of course, every secret by-way and abandoned passageway. Even a few secret ones. He was quite proud of how well he knew the Rock. He’d spent a lot of his childhood years with thoroughly scraped knees and elbows from his explorations. He smiled sadly for a moment. Those had been good days. They were too young then to realise the mess that Father was making of things. Too young to notice the gloating smiles on the faces of the Reynes. Well… Tywin was starting to notice.
And then there were his younger accomplices in their explorations. Tygett. Gone these many years. And Gerion. Who had vanished on yet another quest to find Brightroar. He sighed to himself. Where had Gerion died? Tywin had tracked his ship to Volantis, where he had apparently then been planning to sail into the Smoking Sea. If he had, then he had never sailed out of it again.
This would not do. He was wool-gathering again. No, it really would not do. He slipped around a corner and then squinted ahead. Yes, the room should be just down here. The door was closed, but it was never locked and always swung shut. He slipped in and then placed the lantern that he had brought onto one of the barrels in the room. Lighting it carefully he then lifted it into the air and looked at the far corner of the room. Yes, the old wooden chest was still there. He pulled it out carefully with the handle facing him, to reveal the hole in the wall behind it.
It took some wiggling and a fair bit of puffing – when had he last done this and when had he put so much weight on? – but he finally squeezed himself through the hole, going feet first and then bending to get rest of himself through, as well as the lantern. Heh, he remembered the first time that Gerion had found this place. He had been totally unable to keep the secret.
Kevan reached back through the hole, pulled the chest back to hide it, more out of habit than need and then turned and slid down the short passage that then led to a hole in a wall of another passage, this one being tall enough to walk along. He had often wondered who had made the hole, and why. Well, not much point worrying about it now.
He strode carefully down the passage, ignoring the dust by pressing his cloak against his nose and mouth. This place had long been deserted. It was arrow-straight and was well-constructed. He paused for a moment and then looked at the walls for the first time since… well, he couldn’t recall. They were smooth and well-carved. How odd. There were no chisel marks whatsoever.
This was interesting, but he had more important things to do and he strode on. Down the passageway, turning right into another, up a tight spiral of stairs and then up to the door. It opened with something of a groan but that didn’t matter. He was in the North Passage and the far end had been sealed by Tywin years ago, so no-one would hear the noise.
He set his shoulders and took a deep breath. Yes, the pull was still there. It was maddening, this vague indefinable sense that he had to be somewhere else. It was, if anything, stronger here. Near the room that had so fascinated his father. Poor, weak-willed Father. Always so ready to believe the best in everyone. Always so willing to believe promises made by people. And always so fascinated by this damn room. By the past.
He knew that the very memory of Tytos Lannister infuriated his brother. But he had been their father. He had been a good man. True, he had been a fool at times, but he had always been fascinated by the history of Casterly Rock. Of the Lannisters and where they had come from.
Once, when he had been far younger, he had asked Father why he was so fascinated by the North Passage. “Holes in our past,” Father had said. “The Lannister family history has too many gaps. I would fill them in! And those runes might just do that!”
And so Father had spent a little too much time trying to decipher them. Even though, as Father had said, along with various Maesters, the runes made no sense whatsoever. So why was he here? What in the name of whatever hells existed was he playing at?
He didn’t know. And that frightened him, in a deep part of his mind that he didn’t know even existed.
He sighed and then started up the passageway. And as he drew closer to the door he frowned. He could see light there. Yes, there was a bar of light under the bottom of the door. He slowed to a halt and then peered at it. Someone was in there. But who?
“I knew that you’d come.”
The voice made his heart stop for a second and he wheeled around, shining the thin beam from the lantern in all directions. Eventually he caught sight of his brother’s face, albeit at a place that was lower than he expected. Tywin Lannister was also dressed in black and was sitting with his back against the wall. He had a smear of dirt on one cheek and he looked… shaken. Well, as shaken as Tywin ever looked.
Various replies flitted through his mind, until he finally settled on one. “I had to come here.”
“Even though I had forbade it?”
“The pull was too strong.” He paused and decided to risk an impertinence. “I see that you felt it too.”
Tywin worked his lower jaw for a long moment as his eyes smouldered – and then ran a hand over his eyes. “I did. I tried to resist this… strange pull here. I could not even sleep a wink. So I came here.” A tiny, wintry, smile crossed his face. “Did you use that secret passage as well? The one that we discovered when we were children?”
Kevan nodded slowly. “I did. I take it that you did too?”
“I did.”
Another nod. Then he looked at his brother in puzzlement. “Why are you out here in the dark? Why did you leave your lantern inside the room?”
And then Tywin sighed. “I did not leave my lantern inside.” He reached down and then opened up the latch on the lantern that Kevan had not known was even there. He peered at it. It was surprisingly stealthy for the Lord of Casterly Rock. Then he looked back at the door. “Then who is in the room?”
“No-one.” Tywin almost whispered the word, and there was something in his voice that sent a shiver down Kevan’s back. “See for yourself.”
He went to the door slowly and then opened it. The light inside wasn’t coming from a lantern. Or a candle or anything like that. No, it was coming from the walls. From the runes themselves. They were shining, as bright as the sun at sunset. He… well, he gaped at the sight. Then he caught himself and snapped his jaws closed. He’d always known that there were runes here. They were faint in places, hard to make out. And impossible to read. Father had tried again and again, but apparently the runes had always been illegible. Now… well, he could see every stroke. Every rune.
Kevan backed slowly out of the room and then slowly closed the door. When he turned back to his brother he could see that Tywin was watching him with a certain amount of wintry amusement in his eyes. It was disconcerting. And then the amusement flickered and died as Tywin looked at the door again.
“We… we need to get the Maester. To read the runes.” Kevan stammered the words and then stopped when Tywin shook his head.
“No. There’s no need. I know what they say.” He caught Kevan’s incredulous gaze. “What, you didn’t think that I wasn’t interested in succeeding where our unlamented father failed? I taught myself when I was young. The room was still illegible to me, but it came in useful when I was Hand of the King to Aerys. All those compacts and contracts between the major families, especially those with the blood of the First Men, often recorded in some of the earliest records – and in runes of course.”
“But you can read them now?”
“As clear as day. Would that I could not.”
He waited for a moment. Finally Kevan prompted: “So? What do they say?”
“They tell of… of Lann the Clever. And they state a warning.”
“Lann the Clever?”
“Yes. You remember how Father always wondered how the Lannisters took Casterly Rock from the Casterlys?”
He nodded. “I’ve wondered that myself.”
“As have I on occasion. The answer is a simple one. He inherited it. He was a Casterly himself.”
Kevan stared at him again. “What? I thought that he was supposed to be an outsider who tricked his way into getting Casterly Rock from Lord Casterly? And you always tell me that you think he was an Andal who arrived centuries before the Andal invasion.”
“I was wrong,” Tywin said bleakly. “We were all wrong. And having read the runes I know why the family has tried to suppress the truth. Lann was the second son of Lord Casterly. When word went out from Winterfell, from the Stark in Winterfell, that help was needed in a campaign against the Others… well, Lord Casterly refused to go. He stayed on the Rock. Said that his men were needed here. His eldest son agreed.
“Only…. Lann disagreed. He went North with every man who would listen to him. He went North to Winterfell. To fight the Others! And grumpkins and snarks and everything else. He was a hero. And then when he returned to Casterly Rock his father ordered his execution, for disobeying him, for stripping men away from Casterly Rock and… for not being a coward, although he might not have put in those words. But not a man would draw a sword on Lann. Not on Lann the Clever. Not on Lann the Brave. Not on Lann the Loyal.”
Confused, Keven looked at him. “Loyal?” There had been something odd in the way that Tywin had said that last word.
“Loyal. Oh, not to his father. To the Stark in Winterfell. Who had saved Lann’s life in battle against the Others.”
Ah. That was it. A debt had been owed to the Starks. His brother disliked such a thing, even though it had been from so long ago. “And what happened?”
Tywin curled a lip. “Lann defied his father. And his brother. He took control of the Rock and he exiled them. And he refused to use his family name. Refused to be called a Casterly. After a time people simply called him The Lann. And then they’d point to him as the ‘Lann is there’. And so after time, and after his own son Lann was born, it became ‘Lannister’. So there you have it brother. The true history of our family. Courtesy of these Gods-bedamnned runes.”
They sat there in silence for a long time as Kevan absorbed the information and then pondered on his brother and his prickly honour. Tywin was always keen on making sure that people feared House Lannister. Feared and respected them. Well, Castamere had gone a long way towards that. What was he mulling over now? Did the story of Lann add much to the lustre of House Lannister? Yes – and no. A cowardly forebear who was replaced by a brave son. And that son had been called to Winterfell. Oh, Kevan could think of any number of reasons why Tywin would not want this news to be widespread.
“You mentioned a warning,” he said eventually. “What was it?”
Tywin stirred. “The runes themselves. The fact that they glow. They say that if they glow then… then the Others have returned. That Winterfell must be warned. That the call must go out.”
Once again Kevan found himself staring at his brother in some shock. The call? Did that mean that voice that had spoken to him? “The runes say that?”
“They do,” Tywin replied curtly. “And now…” His voice trailed off.
“And now?” Kevan prompted gently.
“And now I must confess that I know not what to do. The fact that the runes glow seems, well, to confirm what the Maesters say. That magic has indeed returned. I cannot explain it otherwise.”
Another silence fell. “Will you send word to Winterfell?” Kevan asked eventually.
“I do not know,” Tywin whispered. “This is… unexpected. I might send word to Tyrion, telling him to ask most closely about the Others and to send ravens at once with Stark’s replies. As for this room… well, I will transcribe the runes by myself, as I can read them. I do not trust anyone else.”
There was something else though, judging by his voice. Something that was still disturbing him. “Tywin – what are you not telling me?”
A flicker of the eyes in his direction, proof that Tywin Lannister was rattled. “Two other things. First that the runes say who carved them. ‘Twas Lann himself. Second that… that Lann said that should the call to Winterfell come and the men of Casterly Rock not heed it, that… that doom would follow.” And then he pulled a face of angry stubbornness.
Jon Arryn
Bronn’s eyes were like red coals in his face as he approached at the head of his men. The man looked as if he hadn’t slept even a wink. Good. This was a valuable man, a reliable man. As long as he was paid that is. And perhaps, once he had land and a title, that could be built upon? He needed to find somewhere in the Vale for Bronn. Some old holdfast that would suit him. He had a few ideas.
Jon nodded at the sellsword, who looked at him intently and then nodded back. “My Lord Hand.”
“Bronn. Please collect the prisoner and escort him to his trial.”
A small amount of tension seemed to leave Bronn and then he bowed slightly and vanished into the tunnel. A door creaked open, footsteps diminished, another door – and then a rumble of voices, more footsteps and then finally two figures emerged.
If Bronn had looked exhausted after being up all night guarding the prisoner then Baelish looked far, far worse. His eyes were red and flickered around them all, as if he was watching small flying things that no-one else could see. And the look on his face was… interesting. The man looked stressed beyond belief, like a veteran warrior pushed to the very edge of his sanity in battle. Only this was of course a different kind of battle. A mental one. And a terrible one.
“Come.” Jon snapped the word and then led them all down the corridor, along a passageway and then quickly across the courtyard. Dawn was breaking and he watched every shadow with care. He was getting paranoid. But then it could never hurt to be too careful.
When they got to the doorway he hurried everyone through and then nodded at Quill to close and lock the door. And then they all passed down the corridor to the main doors of the room that he had picked out for this moment. It was a room deep in the Red Keep, beneath the throne room. Small. Controllable. Perfect.
As they entered he saw that everything was ready. The table. The chairs. The evidence. And Stannis Baratheon. Bealish looked around in confusion for a moment and then Jon nodded to Bronn, who led him to the chair before the desk and then pulled him down onto it. He then nodded at Jon shortly and left, closing the heavy door behind him.
Baelish looked around the room again, before licking what looked like very dry lips. “So this is where we wait, ahead of my trial? How… cosy.” He sounded as if he was starting to regain his balance. Jon smiled thinly.
“No. This is your trial.”
Baelish stared at him. “What?”
“I am not in the habit of repeating myself.”
“But… I am a noble of Westeros. I am entitled to a public trial. In the Red Keep!”
“You are in the Red Keep, but you are no longer a noble. You are just a traitor and a thief. Besides the other members of the Small Council are not here. Pycelle is investigating another matter at the Great Sept of Baelor, Varys is trying to get more intelligence about matters in Essos and the King and Lord Renley are not yet back. It is just myself and Lord Stannis Baratheon. I promised you a trial, Baelish. I just did not promise you a public trial.”
Baelish went red. “Ah,” he spat. “The much-vaunted honour of the Arryns. And the Baratheons. I wish to be tried in front of my peers.”
“Sadly, weasels cannot speak and therefore cannot attend trials.” Jon stared at Stannis. A joke? No, a witticism? From Stannis Baratheon? Would wonders never cease? Then he thought about the statues in the Sept and his eyes hardened as he looked at Baelish.
The wretched man was looking about him intently and when he finished staring into the shadows in the corners of the room he smirked for a fraction of a second. “Ah,” he said with a smile. “Do you really think that we’re alone here? The Spider has eyes and ears everywhere. And I would bet my last and most tarnished copper coin that he knows all about the King’s Great Matter.”
“I did tell you what would happen if you mentioned that,” Jon scowled.
“I merely mentioned it. I didn’t say what it was. Even though we all know the truth.”
“Let us look at another truth,” Stannis barked out as he placed a hand on the mound of documents in front of him. “You are a thief. You have been stealing from the Realm for years.”
Baelish spread his hands expressively. “I have been managing its finances.”
“By stealing. From the Realm, from the Vale, from the Iron Bank… and also from the Free Cities, or at least those that trade with us. You have diverted taxes, paid bribes, subverted agents of the Crown and undermined the defence of the Realm.” Stannis was bellowing the words by the end, the veins standing out on his forehead and his neck. “The fleet is weaker because of you! The Realm is weaker because of you!”
“You spread your net very wide,” Jon said as he stared at him. “Properties all over the Seven Kingdoms. Bribes as well. We are still pulling the threads that lead from your books. The Realm is still in debt, but by no means by as much as you had told us. Why?”
Baelish smiled broadly. “Why what?”
“Why did you do it? Why steal so much? Why lie so much?”
The accused man leant back in his seat and curled his lip. “Why? Because I could. Because it was easy. You highborn Lords with your disdain for anyone beneath you. You take coin from merchants, but you act as if merely talking about their trade dirties you. You rule over smallfolk but you don’t understand their lives. Why should you? You’re nobles. You rule! Or rather – you misrule. You so-called honourable fools, with your battles within battles, your feuds and your stupidities.
“Look at you, Baratheon. I can hear your teeth grinding from here! The brother of our fool of a king, who spends his time drinking and eating and whoring! He gave you Dragonstone, the seat of the Targaryen heirs, made you Master of Ships! And all you ever do is complain and obsess about imagined slights! You place your pride first, before anyone and everything else. What’s worse – the fact that I stole from the Realm, or the fact that I bribed men in your fleet?”
And then he looked at Jon. “And you! The Hand of the King, who can’t even control him! This Great Matter you’re so worried about – it happened right under your nose. Doesn’t that make you proud? The Hand of the King is supposed to ferret out problems before they grow into crises. You failed in that matter, Lord Arryn. You failed utterly. Three children, all blonde and blue-eyed. And you never saw it. Never saw the threat.”
Baelish smiled at them both. It was more of a rictus than a real smile and his eyes were cold and distant, like a man who knew that the Stranger was in the room. Stannis glared at him with a gaze that would have reduced lesser man to puddles, whilst Jon himself glared at the prisoner with contempt. Oh what a foul little man.
“Then you have admitted to stealing from the Realm,” Jon forced himself to say. “And your guilt is proven. All of this – all of these documents – proclaim your guilt. It is undeniable. Not that you have even tried to deny it.”
“Why would I?” Baelish sounded broken and bitter now. This was the true man now, this was the man that existed beneath that smooth and suave exterior. “You have my ledgers. You have my records. I am a dead man who still walks. Tell me, has a raven arrived yet from Casterly Rock, demanding my head? I stole from the gold lent by Tywin Lannister as well. Not even he suspects a thing.” And as he spat that last sentence his eyes glittered maliciously again.
Jon looked at him. Time to bring this to an end. Baelish was dangerous. He did not care about what happened to him now and his ranks at Stannis and himself showed that he did not care about everything else. This was a man who would burn down the building around him if he could and then dance on the ashes.
He opened his mouth to proclaim sentence, but Baelish beat him to it. “You’ve been creeping about, trying to keep the King’s Great Matter secret. You can’t. It’s impossible. The truth will out. How many people know it already do you think? Do you really trust Varys? The man is an enigma. And – do you really think that Pycelle is the doddering old fool you believe him to be? You both disappoint me.”
Baelish flourished his hands in front of their faces. “Welcome to King’s Landing, my high-born and foolish friends! No-one here is as they seem! Everyone has a price. Everyone. There’s no such thing as a secret, not here. Truth will out. And plots are everywhere. Including things that are right under your noses! I took your wife’s maidenhood, Lord Arryn, did you know that? And that of her sister! Is your son really yours? Are you sure?
“And you, the high and mighty Lord Stannis Baratheon. Did you know that your wife has been toying with foolish religions from Essos? Did you? Of course not. You sleep with her once a year and yet you wonder why it is that you only have the one child? Did your Maester really not tell you where babies come from? Such a shame about your daughter and her greyscale. I met a man once who told me that the fabric that infected her came via Dorne.”
“ENOUGH!” Jon bellowed the word so loudly that the room rang with it, making Baelish rock back in his chair with a startled look. Gripping the pommel of his dagger in his right hand so hard that his fist hurt Jon stood and then peered at the former Master of Coin. “You are sentenced to trial by combat, as the law dictates in this circumstance. You will not be able to select a champion. You will fight a combatant of my choosing. And may the Seven be merciful on your shrivelled little soul.”
Baelish glared at him for a moment and as he did Jon wondered if the fool was going to spring up from his chair and try and attack him. The same thought occurred to Stannis, who stood up grimly with a hand on his own dagger. From the way that his eyes were glittering he wanted to speak more about Baelish’s words about his daughter.
His eyes still on Baelish, Jon walked to the door and then thumped three times with his fist. After a moment it opened to reveal Bronn. “Take him to his new cell. Gag him if he tries to say a word.”
The sellsword looked at Jon with narrowed eyes and then nodded and went over to Baelish, who stood up as if he was in charge and had been interrogating them. “Farewell my Lord Hand. Lord Baratheon. And Varys’s little birds of course.” Then he bowed mockingly and allowed himself to be led away.
After the door closed Jon returned to the table and sat. He felt old and drained. He had an unpleasant feeling that things were starting to spiral out of his control. How long at Baelish known about the truth about Cersei’s children? And who else knew?
“I’ll fight him myself!” Stannis finally ground out from between gritted teeth. “I’ll finish the job that Brandon Stark started so many years ago! I’ll gut him like the filthy fish that he is!”
“No,” said Jon wearily. “I have another in mind. A more… fitting opponent. Baelish must die though. He knows too much and he does not care who he tells. There are times when honour must give way to… expediency.”
Stannis looked mulish at this before – eventually – nodding. “Very well. I like it not, but very well.” He paused. “Do you believe what he said? About Shireen and the Dornish?”
Jon leant back. “I believe that Baelish can lie with every breath he takes. And that he mixes truth with lies, for maximum effect. He is a dangerous man, Stannis. He would set fire to the world, if it would advance him. And even for spite. I see that now. I should have seen it sooner. I wanted to believe otherwise.”
“He implied that your son… is not yours.” Stannis said the words heavily and reluctantly.
“He lied in that. Robert looks too much like an Arryn. He reminds me of Denys, when he was young. No, we must be careful with every word that Baelish says. We must sift what he says for truth and for lies.”
There was a rap on the door and as they both looked over Quill hurried in. “My Lord Hand, Lord Baratheon – a message from the Vale.”
Jon accepted the proffered piece of paper and then frowned. “Odd.”
“What is?” Stannis asked.
“The Blackfish, Ser Brynden Tully, has resigned as Knight of the Gate. He says that he is pulled West. Peculiar.”
Stannis snorted. “Peculiar indeed. Robert will be back in King’s Landing on the morning tide, two days from now. When will Baelish go to meet the Stranger?”
Jon smiled grimly. “Tomorrow morning. At high tide.”
Chapter Text
Tyrion
Not everyone woke up at dawn. Most of the dead were those who had been wounded. A few were those who had surrendered to despair after being… touched. He didn’t need to issue the order to burn them. The men knew what to do automatically now. They knew the dangers of not burning the dead.
Tyrion looked up at the dark and cloudy skies and then nodded. “Break the camp down. We march in an hour.” The assembled men nodded and then quickly started the process of packing up. It was faster than it had been a few months earlier. They knew how little time they had.
As Tyrion mounted he pulled out the map and peered down at it. South to the next waypoint and more supplies. Thank the Gods that Willas Tyrell was Lord of Highgarden now and not his fool of a father. A wry smile lifted his lips for a moment, before vanishing. Ah, the sins of their fathers.
A presence to one side caught his attention and he looked over to see Sandor Clegane approach on foot. “I’ve sent the boy on ahead with his nursemaids.”
“Good.” He winced a little at the thought of his nephew. “How is he this morning?”
“No change. Still as a statue and about as useful.”
Another wince. He had never liked the brat, but no-one deserved what had happened to him. “We do what we can for family, Clegane.”
A savage smile was sent his way. “Don’t I know it. Best day of my life when I burnt what was left of my brother’s body.”
The wind shifted briefly and Clegane sniffed – and then stiffened. “We need to get moving. They’re coming.”
“The colder it gets the bolder they become. The Gods alone know what it’s like in the North now.”
“They’ll hold out. The Stark’s are too fucking stubborn to give in.”
“Aye, well, the North has been outflanked well and truly.”
Clegane nodded reluctantly and then paused. “Riders coming up from the South.”
Tyrion looked over at the little body of mounted men approaching. They bore tattered banners, but he recognised the two leading them. Ah, the last Lords of the Iron Islands. Such irony. “Lord Greyjoy. Lord Harlaw. What news from the South?”
“Little and mixed,” Theon Greyjoy told him. “Lord Lannister. The wind is getting colder.”
“The wind is always getting colder. We will be on the road shortly. What news?”
“The fleet made it to Oldtown. The dead were all burnt.”
“Good. And the bad news?”
“No help will come from Dorne. The Bone Road is closed. Not a man will march to help us. And there is no word from the Crownlands or anywhere East. Not since the King vanished into the Riverlands, trying to break in to relieve the North.”
Tyrion shook his head. “King Robert continues to think of the Others as an enemy who responds to the usual threats and military conventions. They are not. If he keeps campaigning as normal then he will die. Along with all his men. Folly! Folly piled upon folly!”
“There’s been enough of that here to go around,” Theon Greyjoy muttered, his voice heavy with grief. “If only people had listened to the Starks.”
Tyrion fixed the young man with a gimlet eye. “If only your father had been less fixated by revenge and my own father less puffed up with pride to listen to the Starks you mean.” He sighed. Well, there was more than enough blame to go around. Father’s pride, Cersei’s stupidity, Jaime’s arrogance, Joffrey’s insanity…
The wind picked up again – and then he smelt it. Smelt them. “Set more fires. They march on us. We must run.”
“Aye,” said Lord Harlaw. “They march from the charnel house that was the Rock. We brought more dragonglass for your rearguard.”
“We will need it,” Clegane said stonily. “You were right - they are here.”
Tyrion turned to see the figures on the horizon and felt that now-familiar terror grip his heart. “Men of Westeros! We march!”
He came awake with a cry of alarm, the sheet partly entangled around him. His forehead was damp with sweat and he felt his heart pound under his ribs. Terror? From a dream? And what had that dream been about? He shivered a little at the fading memories that seemed to fade like smoke in the wind, before concentrating hard on them. What a dream. He had been… Lord of Casterly Rock? Father had died. Well, a dream where that happened had to be a good one. Cersei had died as well. Then he shivered again. Jaime had died, and Uncle Kevan.
Everyone had died. Apart from a few.
He looked down at the book that now lay on the floor. Aha. He’d been reading about the Others again and the tails of the North. No wonder he’d had that dream. Wincing slightly he scrubbed at his face with hands and then looked at the window. Dawn. He thought about snatching a tad more sleep but then shook his head. No, they had to get on the road as soon as possible. He had no idea why he felt that he needed to be in Winterfell as soon as possible, he just felt it. He’d been feeling this pull along the road for more than three days now.
As he dressed quickly he thought about it. Well, part of the pull had to be the need to get away from The Twins as soon as possible. Walder Frey’s poisonous resentment and anger at any perceived insult had unsettled him. But what else was it? What else could it be? And just what was going on?
Moat Cailin had been a shock. The fortress had obviously fallen on hard times, given the fact that the Starks were no longer the Kings of the North. He had seen at once that the fortress was not just manned but being slowly repaired, with large parts – the parts with the most easily repaired roofs and walls – being restored by a group of grim-faced men under a banner of a black lizard-lion on a green field. House Reed. It had been Lord Howland Reed who had sent them, the leader of the men had said. The fortress would be needed as a waypoint. And it had to be protected.
Protected from whom? Tyrion had asked. The man – Mat by name – had looked grim and then admitted that a great number of unknown people had passed through the Neck along an old, in fact ancient, way. “Old path,” Mat had grumbled. “Not used for many long years as we found newer, shorter paths. So how did they know? Lord Reed is worried – he left for Winterfell long before you arrived my Lord. And he left word to repair as much as we could with the tools we had available.”
They had left them there. Emmon and the others had picked up on his worry and had watched the sides of the road even harder than before. And the further North they came the more worried he became. People were clearing more land for planting than he thought possible. Copses and woods seemed to have a constant trickle of people going in and out with as much wood as possible. “Winters comes,” one man had called out to them. “The Long Winter.”
The crowd in the inn that they had stayed the night in had agreed. It was a sturdy place that was becoming sturdier apparently by the day. There had been much talk about how the Stark needed aid, about how the Stark had the right of things and that the Stark was due their loyalty. The parties of men working on the King’s Road confirmed that. The road, it was said, was in the best shape that it had ever been in since people could remember.
Tyrion gathered the last of his things and then stumped out of his room and down the stairs. The landlord was quietly talking to Emmon about the road ahead and they both paused and nodded respectfully at him as he approached. “Landlord, my thanks for the hot water for the bath last night. A little something extra for your trouble.” And he passed over a little pouch of silver.
The landlord beamed in delight and then nodded again. “My thanks, my Lord. I was telling your man here that the next inn is about a day’s ride from here and is about three days from Winterfell. Be warned though – I have heard that the inn has changed hands this past year and is now run by… well, ‘tis said that he’s something of a neer-do-well. Count the iron nails on the shoes of your horses before you get there.”
“We shall indeed,” smiled Tyrion and then he nodded and waddled out to where his men were making ready. Once Emmon joined them and they all mounted he looked about, saw the nods of acknowledgement and then raised a hand.
They made good time on that good road. That repaired road – it was obvious where the repairs had been made. That was something else that had struck him. Lord Stark knew about the importance of such things.
Tyrion nodded to himself as they rode on. He would send word to Father about this as soon as they reached Winterfell. If the North was starting to prepare now for not just winter but a long and terrible winter then the Westerlands needed to start to get ready as well.
They ate their luncheon – wine or beer from flasks, with whatever food the inn had provided them with – near a great crag and as he ate Tyrion looked at that crag with questioning eyes. At some point in the past someone had carved a path in the side of it, leading upwards. That path was shattered and worn in places, but he found himself wondering what it had been used for. He had seen a few other places like it since that they had passed North of the Neck, into the North itself. This was a place filled with many such old remnants. They all fascinated him. Many were in sight of each other and he wondered if perhaps they had once held signals or beacons, or just been a chain of… what?
It was an interesting thought and he looked forwards to looking through the books again when they reached the next inn. And when they did he remembered the words of the landlord of the last inn, because the man had been absolutely right. The place looked as if it had seen better days, not through ill-use but rather through incompetence and deliberate neglect. For one thing the sign with its name had fallen off and not been repaired.
The stable looked bad and Emmon took one look at it and promptly had the rest of the men start to clean out the section that the apathetic ostler had found for them. Fouled bedding was forked out, clean water was provided and the dung was shovelled out. In fact they actually shamed the ostler into action in the other areas, including the spot where a rather thin mare was stabled. Tyrion cast a pitying eye on her and then fed her a handful of oats, which she ate with gusto.
And the inside of the inn was just as bad. The landlord of this place was apparently named Edwyn Dickon. He was a large unshaven shambling man who exuded the smell of damp sweat and bad sanitation of his lower regions, not that Tyrion wanted to think about that.
The people within the inn looked like a combination of people who were merely passing though, as fast as they could, and the kind of scum that floated to the top of the waters of any sewer. The latter seemed to be mostly from the Riverlands, although there were a few Northmen there as well.
The place actually fell silent as Tyrion and his men strode in and he could see that the sluggish thoughts in the minds of the slowest men were dragging their way towards ‘japes’ about the evening’s juggling entertainment having arrived. The fact that Emmon placed a hand on his sword and glared around the room with the look of a homicidal maniac meant that no-one actually said a word.
Normally Tyrion would have smiled and made a few pleasant remarks, as he had in the last inn. This was not the place to do that. Instead he glared around himself, noted a free spot by the fire and then strode over to it, pulling off his gauntlets as he went. “Your best food and wine landlord. Fit for a Lannister.”
“A Lannister?” someone murmured and then there was a laugh – until Emmon glared around again.
“Tyrion Lannister, son of Tywin Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock, etc, etc, etc. Heading to Winterfell in case anyone asks, to see Lord Stark.” As he said those last words Tyrion could see a figure in the shadows turn his head sharply to stare at him.
When the food eventually turned up he had to force it down. If this was the best that the inn could do then he would have hated to see its worst. The meat was possibly badly abused mutton. The stew that it sat in was fatty. And the wine was barely drinkable. From the grimace that came from Emmon and his men, the ale was just as bad.
“We are staying here for as little time as possible,” Tyrion muttered in Emmon’s ear. “If the food and drink are this bad I fear that the bedding will give us fleabites at the very least.”
“Aye, and I’ll set guards on the horses and the rooms we sleep in tonight,” Emmon replied. “Old Hackett was right at the Inn of the Red Fire – we should check the number of nails in the shoes of our horses when we leave.”
“An excellent point,” Tyrion replied, before encountering what felt like a piece of pure gristle in the stew. “Urgh.” He finished what he could and then pushed the plate away.
The light from the main fire was just enough to read by and he pulled out a small book and opened it, something that seemed to flabbergast many in the room. Oh look, illiterates. Sadly something all too common these days. Then he looked out of the corner of his eye. The figure that had been staring at him earlier was now staring even harder.
Grumbling a little the landlord – Dickon by name, which seemed to suit him down to the ground – put some more wood on the fire after someone complained and as the light penetrated the fug of a miasma of sweaty bodies and dripping noses he could see the person who was staring at him a little better.
Much to his surprise he was a she. She was a woman of about his age, maybe a little younger, wrapped in a cloak. She was thin, as if she had been ill and she was… well she was not ugly, but neither was she beautiful. She was, in a word, striking. Forceful even. She had a nose that was a little prominent and a chin that was square. And above all a look of angry despair.
This was interesting. As he read he heard Emmon quietly mutter instructions to the others about setting guards and about the fact they were amongst a pack of neer-do-wells, as they had been warned. Oh and no-one should even think about a woman here. There was probably pox all over the place. Which was sadly a good point and he resigned himself to a few more nights of celibacy. Winterfell would have some good places, of that he had been assured.
Some of the men left to take their places and as they did Tyrion became aware that the landlord was having some kind of gloating argument with the woman in the cloak, who was glaring at the fat oaf with enough hatred to have reduced a less observant man to a pile of smoking ash.
“Emmon,” he said quietly, “That woman has been staring at me. Would you be so kind as to find out, discreetly, why she is arguing with our greasy host?”
The man nodded shortly and then wandered over, clearing a way with his own magnificently contemptuous glare. He was gone for no small amount of time as he talked quietly to a few people and when he returned his face was grim.
“She is Dacey Surestone, only child of Lord Surestone, who was the lord of a keep about five days hard ride West of here, my lord.”
“Surestone… not a name I am familiar with.”
“They say that it’s an old house my Lord. Old, proud and poor – and distant cousins to the Starks. Anyway, Lord Surestone lost his wife many years ago – dead in childbirth with a son who died the same day – and never remarried, so he brought the girl up almost as his heir. Problem was that he had a male heir in the guise of a son of a cousin of his.”
“By what name?”
“Ser Willem Bootle.”
“Bootle. What a wonderful name. Wait… I have heard of him. Isn’t he that idiot from the Riverlands who alienated all his neighbours?”
“Aye, that’s the man. But there may be more to him than that. He was visiting Surestone when the old lord died, sudden-like. He immediately dismissed the Maester, told everyone that he had sent a raven to Winterfell himself with the news of Lord Surestone’s death, effectively drove out the girl after she told him that she’d marry a sheep before she married him and then more or less looted the place before having it all locked up so that he could bugger off back to the Riverlands with his ‘inheritance’.”
Tyrion stared at Emmon and then back at the girl. This Dacey Surestone had now stopped arguing with whatisname and was now staring at the fire with what seemed like unshed tears in her eyes. “A sad tale. And a convenient death. So what’s she doing here?”
“Apparently she is desperate to get to Winterfell and talk to Lord Stark. But only her old nursemaid and one man at arms went with her from Surestone and they were both elderly. The one died before they reached here and then the other whilst she was here – and the road is no place for a sole woman. The bandits would take her and rape her at the very least. And… she is fast running out of coin. The landlord claims that medicine for her last servant was rare and costly and that she owes him for it.”
Tyrion experienced a sinking sensation. “Let me guess – the medicine was not expensive, the man died of neglect and Lardarse there seeks to gain a hold on her and use her as a whore?”
A sad smile answered his question. He sat there for a long moment and resisted the all too urgent temptation to think about Tysha. No-one deserved that. No-one. Taking a deep breath he squinted at the woman as she stared at the fire. And then he made a decision. “Emmon?”
“My Lord?”
“Find out – quietly – how much she owes the landlord here. What she really owes, not the inflated figure that that greedy idiot will pull out of the air and then probably double when he hears that the coin is coming from me. Then pay it. Tell me if you need more coin. And then ask Lady Surestone if I can talk to her.”
Emmon nodded and then looked to one side. “I can do the first easily my lord. I don’t need to do the second part because she is making her way over to you.” And then he stood and sidled off.
Much to his surprise Emmon was right. Lord Surestone’s daughter was slowly making her way over to his table, with many a suspicious look at everyone and everything, including him. When she eventually reached his table she fixed him with an even more suspicious look, as if that was even possible. “You are Lord Lannister?”
“I am the son of Lord Lannister. Tyrion Lannister, at your service. And you are?”
“Dacey Surestone, daughter to… to the late Lord Surestone. I overheard you say that you are going to Winterfell?” There was something in her voice, something that combined suspicion and hope.
“I am indeed. I have been tasked by my father with going to Winterfell with certain… objects.” Given by the number of faces that suddenly turned towards him that had been the wrong thing to say. “A number of books.” Aha. The clarification led to those same faces losing interest and turning away. Except for one.
“You are taking books to Winterfell?” There was a look on the face of Dacey Surestone that was different from her previous facial expression. Cautious excitement. She looked about her carefully but not overtly and then she leant forwards a little. “I too am seeking to travel to Winterfell with a book.”
And this pricked his interest enormously. He closed his book and then leant forwards a little himself. “What kind of book?”
Her eyes narrowed with suspicion again. “A book of history. It needs to be in the hands of Lord Stark. My distant cousin.”
He looked at her. “We bear many books to Winterfell. If yours is about the Others then you are welcome to join us, my Lady.”
Her gaze sharpened for a moment and then dropped to her lap. “I am no lady. I am just the only child of Lord Surestone.”
“I have heard. My condolences on the death of your father.”
She looked up again and something crackled deep within her eyes. Grief. And something more. Fury? Rage?
“I need to get to Winterfell – for many reasons.” Then she drew herself up proudly. “I can pay my way to Winterfell once I get there. I have some coin here but-”
“But you have been fleeced by the landlord here. I heard that too.”
The proud look weakened a little. “My old nursemaid and my old friend Will… they both died. And the landlord says I owe him coin and he hints and insinuates as to ways I can pay him back and-”
He forestalled the gathering angry tears in her eyes by raising his hand. “My lady – you can travel with us. I know that Lord Stark will pay me back. I have shall arrange matters, fear not. There is only one condition I would ask of you.”
She stared him with a complicated array of emotions flashing over her face. Shock. Surprise. Happiness. Suspicion. The last one was the greatest. “What condition?”
“Why, I would like to read your book when we reach Winterfell.”
She seemed to think hard – and then she nodded. At which point they both heard the sound of a fist hitting a jaw and breaking it in the process. Whereupon the inn descended rapidly into chaos.
Jorah
They had travelled a little further than he had hoped that day, Jorah mused as he looked into the crackling fire. He’d been lucky – there had been a party of merchants in Myr bound for Pentos that needed skilled warriors to guard it and he’d been able to join the party. Leera had indeed come with him and had revealed herself to be a surprising skilled cook, which had added to their popularity.
The surprise however had come when the leader of the guards, who had been off scouting ahead along the road, had rejoined them. The others had simply referred to him as ‘Ironhand’ and there had been something about the title that had tickled the back of his mind. Seeing the lanky man on the horse, with his reins partly held in an artificial right hand that was more of an iron hook than anything else had been a pleasant surprise. Loros himself.
The exiled Dothraki had greeted him with a smile and a left-handed wristclap, followed by a clap on the shoulder that made him hide a wince, but they had then fallen into a long conversation about what the road ahead was like and what the potential difficulties were. They hadn’t had a chance to talk about anything else that day.
Until now. A shape loomed out of the darkness, revealing itself to be Loros with a bowl of stew in his good hand and of all things a spoon now in place of the metal claw on his right hand. He smiled and then sat next to Jorah, before eating about half of the stew in a few swallows and slurps. Yes, he was still the same as ever.
“It’s good. Your woman’s a good cook,” Loros said through a full mouth. “You done that foolish ceremony with her yet?”
Foolish ceremony… ah. “We’re not married.”
An amused look, followed by more slurping as the rest of the stew vanished. “Ah, that’s was good. You will be. That one’s got her eye on you. I can tell. Better than that she-goat I last saw you with.”
He thought back. Oh. Her. “She had her advantages. Found herself a rich merchant eventually.”
“Don’t they all?” Loros quipped and then belched. Placing the bowl down he peered at the spoon attachment and then unhooked it, before fumbling in a pouch to one side and then pulling out a metal hand, which fitted onto his stump with a click.
“Where did you get your new hands from?”
“Heh. I saved a party of merchants from some bandits. Fools hadn’t scouted the road ahead properly, or given thought to the fact that not everyone uses the road. Bandits had cloth ears and never heard me and my men until we were on them, by which time it was all over. Leader of the merchants was most grateful – had a Maester in Myr fashion me a new hand with lots of attachments.”
Jorah nodded and then a companionable silence fell as they both digested their meals and stared into the fire. After a while Loros stirred slightly. “You look strained my old friend,” he said in Dothraki. Seeing Jorah’s look of surprise he smiled grimly. “I know that I am too. And I would have no-one else listen to us.”
“Exile… rests heavily on me at the moment,” Jorah replied in the same language. “And I know not why, but I am pulled home. Pulled North.”
Loros looked at him with a frown and then looked back at the fire for a long moment. “You too then? I am also pulled away. Pulled East. Pulled home.”
Jorah winced. “We both face the same fate if we return home, old friend. In my case a headsman’s axe. In your case…”
“In my case far worse than that if my dear brother gets hold of me. Fah. No-ones lives for ever my friend. And besides, the Sea is huge and I am but a speck in it.”
Jorah raised his eyebrows and then looked pointedly at the metal hand. “A speck with one hand, my friend. You are a distinctive speck.”
But Loros just smiled. “If I wish to ride by myself I can be a mote of dust on the wind. And besides – this pull is for a place further East than the Sea. Far further. The Grey Wastes call me. What calls you?”
Jorah looked back at the fire and then shivered a little. “The North. And the Wall. Not to serve there – not to take the Black. But to defend it. I feel it Loros. I feel that I have to be there. And I too cannot explain it.”
The other man nodded. And then he rubbed at his nose. “We are not the only ones my friend. Why do you think that the Dothraki are moving Eastwards? As I said, I would be a mote of dust within a cloud of dust. And then there are the… others.”
Jorah looked sharply at him. “Others?”
This got him a wry smile of apology. “Not the Others of which your legend speak! I mean… I met a man on the road three days ago. He said that the Company of the Rose are also heading to Pentos. They too are being called home.”
Shock roiled through him. And then a deep and bitter envy. “The Company of the Rose? But they exiled themselves. Swore a great oath on it too.”
“And now they go home. They’ll be in Pentos by the time we reach there. Perhaps you should ask them what would be greater than such an oath?”
The fire drew his gaze again. And then the sight of Leera going into their tent caught his eye. He sat there for a moment and then sighed. He could sit there and stare at the fire and feel angry and envious and baffled or he could try to kindle a flame inside him for a bit. To try and fend off the emptiness for a bit longer. So he nodded at Loros – who grinned at him once he also saw Leera – and then stood up and strode over to the tent. Because a little something was better than nothing.
Jory
The boy who was now asleep in the bed of the guest quarters of Winterfell was not the boy that he had first seen in the Red Keep. That boy had been pale, with dark shadows under his eyes. Not very bright either.
This boy was very different. He had grown in so many ways. He was a fount of questions about everything now, he read books voraciously and yet he also wanted to find out more and more about the kind of things that his mother prevented him from seeing – like anything to do with horses, dogs, trees, archery, sword-fighting and anything that any of the Starks – particularly Bran and Arya – were doing.
He smiled a little and then schooled his features as Annah emerged from the room and closed the door carefully. She turned to face the corridor – and then she stopped at the sight of him. “Jory Cassel,” she said with a slight smile. “How fare you?”
A wittier, brighter man might have made a quip then on the lines that his day was all the brighter for seeing her. But he knew that he was not such a man and so he merely nodded carefully. “Well. And you?”
She smoothed down the front of her dress a little as she walked up to draw level with him. “Tired. ‘Tis been a hectic day. Thank you for explaining to his young lordship about the making of arrows.”
He chuckled a little. “Think nothing of it. He asked the questions that I would have at his age. He’s a clever lad.”
“Aye,” she replied, smiling. Then her countenance shifted to a more hawkish aspect. “Aye – he is now.”
Jory looked at her, concerned. “You said earlier that the Maester had inspected him.”
“Indeed, Maester Luwin did. I like that man very much, he speaks nothing but sense. He said that he would tell Lord and Lady Stark that young Robert Arryn was now free of the poison. As we can both see with our own two eyes.”
There was something in her tone in those last words that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. The problem was that he had no idea why. He contented himself instead with escorting her down the corridor and then along to the next. Then he finally made a connection as a number of comments that she had said in the past suddenly seemed to make sense.
“You suspected that the medicine was bad for the boy, didn’t you?”
She shot him a quick look from suddenly narrowed eyes. After a long moment she finally nodded slightly. “I suspected. But that is not the same as knowing. I knew in White Harbour.”
“Did Ser Davos’s guard knock the jar over, or did you have a hand in it?”
This time the look had a little approval. “I might have had something of a hand in it. How did you know?”
“I suspected. But now I know.” He licked his lips nervously, before looking at her. “You are a remarkable woman Annah.” Damn it, he was making a mess of this.
Oddly enough she blushed a little at this. “I am just myself,” she said, knotting the fingers of both hands together just under her breasts. He forced himself not to look at them – both of them – but to look at her face instead.
“And yet you have… affected so much.” Damn it! It was all coming out wrong. “I am glad that you are here,” he gabbled. “To see what the lad is now. And… so I can show you my home.”
She looked at him again, with eyes that were suddenly so bright. “Your home is a wonderful place. There is so much here and…” She knotted her fingers again. “Lord and Lady Stark have been very kind to me and I-”
“I would like to show you so much more of the North.” He flushed. “Your pardon, I did not mean to speak over you, I am just keen to…” he stuttered to a pause as his mind went blank and ran out of words.
“Keen to…?” Annah prompted as she took a hesitant step forwards.
He wanted to take her in his arms and then kiss her thoroughly, even though it might get him slapped, but suddenly they both heard the sound of footsteps. Jory cursed internally as he saw a familiar figure appear at the end of the corridor, turn slowly in their direction and then walk towards them with slow and measured steps. Wait. T’was Lord Stark. Who was walking with his eyes closed?
“M’Lord?” Jory asked hesitantly. “Are you well?”
And then the world turned sideways and seemed to upend itself, because Lord Stark opened his eyes – which were orbs of red fire, or so it seemed. He stared in shock and no little horror, as Annah gasped. He looked at her quickly, but she rallied. She was made of strong stuff, the lady from the Vale.
Lord Stark seemed to stare that them both for a long moment and then directed that red gaze at him. “Jory Cassel.” His voice was odd, as if he was speaking at the mouth of a long passageway or tunnel, his words almost echoing. He sounded as if someone was speaking through him, if that was possible. “Saddle Lord Stark’s horse.”
He stared at the Lord of Winterfell, his mind filled with questions and then nodded abruptly. “Ah – aye my Lord.”
Lord Stark turned and then walked away. Jory stared after him and then looked at Annah, who had both hands over her mouth and was quivering with emotion. “I must see to his horse,” Jory said hoarsely. “Would you-”
“Fetch Lady Stark? Aye, I will – and right fast.” And then she gathered her skirts in one hand, lifted them a little and ran off, showing no small display of speed.
By the time that Jory had finished arranging for the saddling of Lord Stark’s horse – and several others, including his own to be on the safe side – Winterfell was starting to stir with urgent activity. Especially when Lord Stark emerged from a doorway from the crypts and startled the life out of anyone who caught sight of his eyes. Jory quickly strode over to join him. What was going on, what magic was at work here? “Your horse is saddled my Lord.”
Lord Stark nodded. Then he turned and strode over to the building that housed the kennels, with Jory nervously following. As they entered he noticed that every one of the dogs stared at Lord Stark as if he was the most important think in the world, bar none. The Houndsmaster merely stared at Lord Stark in what looked like awe and shocked fearfulness.
“The last pen is to be restored to how it once was,” Lord Stark boomed as he pointed at the pen facing the doors. “Tear down the wooden partitions. Bring in straw. This place was built to house larger creatures. It shall house them again.” And then he turned on his heel and left.
The Houndsmaster stared after him in bafflement. “They’ve always been t’same size. Same layout. Stone walls wi’ wooden partitions in them. Have been for as long as I can remember.”
Jory looked at the stalls thoughtfully. “Then why wooden partitions inside stone walls? M’Lord Stark is right. These were built for larger creatures. Bigger mastiffs perhaps? Anyway – do as his Lordship said.”
As he darted out to find Lord Stark he could see that the gathering crowd of man and woman had been joined by some important additions. Lady Stark looked as if she had hurriedly dressed and was standing there with her hands clutching each other under her breasts. Her hair was undone and she looked terrified. Next to her stood Annah, who looked at him with what looked like relief. And then to Lady Starks’ right was young Robb Stark. He looked as if he had dressed in a hurry and was watching his father with worry. Theon Greyjoy was to one side, as was Jon Snow and as Jory looked at them he could see Domeric Bolton and Maester Luwin join the party.
As for Lord Stark – well, he was just standing there, that strange red fire glowing in his eyes. As he seemed to catch sight of the others he turned to them. “Worry not,” he said in that strange voice. “We mean no harm. But the compact must be made again, the old alliance must be reforged. And you know naught about it.” Whereupon he strode to his horse and mounted it.
Jory ran to his own horse and clambered into the saddle. He could see his uncle striding towards him clutching a burning brand and he waved at him. “Uncle! Give me your brand!”
Ser Rodrik, who looked as if his sideburns were standing on end, nodded at him and then passed the brand over. “Jory, what in the name of the Old Gods is going on?”
“I think Ser Rodrik that the Old Gods are speaking through my father,” said a voice to one side and he both looked to see that Robb Stark had followed their lead and mounted a horse. “Brands! We need brands!”
As flaming brands were brought Jory looked over the group. Lord Stark was sitting there in his saddle, motionless. Robb Stark and Jon Snow were talking quietly to Theon Greyjoy, their horses close together and then Domeric Bolton danced his horse skilfully up to them and join the conversation. All nodded once and then took brands themselves, as did three guards.
Feeling a hand on his knee he looked down and to his right to see that Annah was there. “Jory Cassel, where are you going?”
“I must follow Lord Stark.”
“Then do so. But bring yourself back safely Jory Cassel.” She licked her lips nervously. “We have a conversation to complete.”
Jory looked at her and then nodded with a smile – and then he heard Lord Stark bellow a single word. “RIDE!” And then they were off, trotting through the gates and out into the dark.
The moon was starting to rise and that as well as their brands gave just enough light to ride by. Just. Jory squinted at the road ahead of them and then wondered what they were doing out here, in the dead of night.
To make matters worse after a while Lord Stark turned off the road and started riding towards the Wolfswood. He led them all and he had no brand at all – but he seemed to know exactly where they were going. How he was controlling his horse in such darkness Jory had not the least idea.
When they entered the trees he started to really worry. There were branches all over the place and all it would have taken would be one in the wrong place, at the wrong time, to hurt someone or even knock them out of their saddle. But Lord Stark seemed to know every twist and turn of their route, seemed to know exactly what was in front of them.
On they rode and after a while Jory started to notice something. They were riding on an old road. It was a badly overgrown one that had not seen a hoof for many a long century, but there was just enough light to see that it had been a road once. But to where?
He had his answer when eventually Lord Stark slowed and then raised a hand in the old gesture to stop. Jory thanked the Old Gods as he dismounted, before detailing two of the guards to hold the reins of the others as they also dismounted.
When he looked back at Lord Stark he could see that he was standing by his motionless horse. Young Lord Robb was worriedly staring at him and swapped a concerned look with Jory.
“It’s a Godswood!” The words came from Theon Greyjoy of all people, who was staring into the darkness ahead of them. He had extinguished his brand and was peering ahead at the dark void in front of them all.
Lord Stark walked forwards slowly into the clearing and as the others walked with him Jory saw that the Squidling was right. It was a Godswood. And unless he missed his guess an ancient one even by the standards of Winterfell. The Heart Tree was a huge and gnarled – not misshapen, just vast and strong. And there was a moss-covered boulder in front of it, about as high as his waist and two arm-lengths long, with what looked like something carved on its side.
“I’ve hunted in these woods all my life,” he heard Robb Stark say in a shocked voice. “But never have I ever seen any sign of this place.”
“You would not,” Lord Stark said, still in that terrible voice. “This place is a special one.” He walked towards the boulder and then stood between it and the Heart Tree, before turning and placing a hand on both. “We are Starks,” he said in a suddenly intent voice. “WE have come again. To honour the pact and forge it anew. Come. You are summoned.”
The words made him want to run in whatever direction Lord Stark commanded, to ride against whatever foes. He could see that the words had the same effect on the others. Young Lord Robb seemed to stand taller, with his hand on the pommel of his sword, as did Jon Snow and Domeric Bolton. Theon Greyjoy looked as if he was quivering with anticipation.
They stood there in the clearing for a long moment – and then he heard the sound of the undergrowth being pushed to one side and the whisper of old dead leaves being trodden on. What was coming?
After a moment he got his answer. A massive form emerged from the undergrowth, almost the size of a small pony but far more furry. A direwolf. It was a direwolf. Jory fought down the urge to piss himself in terror. But… this was a direwolf that just stood there and stared at Lord Stark for a long moment, before padding over to then stand by him. This was not what he had heard that they did. And there was something about the girth of the beast that puzzled him – until he realised that it was a bitch heavy with pups. This was a direwolf that would soon need a midwife, so to speak.
Lord Stark was staring at the direwolf, which was in turn staring back. And then he raised the hand that had been on the Heart Tree and placed it gently on the forehead of the direwolf. “The pact is renewed,” Lord Stark said in that intent voice again. “Protection for protection. As it was in the old days. Because of the old days. No Stark shall ever harm a direwolf. It is sworn.”
For a moment, a heartbeat, Jory could have sworn that red light flared between Lord Stark’s fingers, but then it was gone, if it had ever existed. And then he turned and faced his son. “Robert Stark – this must be done when the time is right. You will know. We must ride now. To Winterfell.”
As he strode off to his horse the direwolf followed him and much to Jory’s astonishment the horses did not instantly panic as the creature approached. As they mounted the direwolf moved to the side of Lord Stark’s horse and then as they trotted off back the way that they had came the creature stayed there, loping along by the side of the remarkably unconcerned horse.
By the time that they finally broke out of the forest and up towards the road that led back to Winterfell he could see the first tell-tale streaks of light that meant that dawn was not too far away and he stifled a yawn. And then a realisation struck him, not long before they reached the road.
“Lord Robb – permission to ride ahead and tell the guards not to loose arrows at the direwolf?”
There was a slightly startled pause and then a shouted response. “Do so, Jory – ride!”
He kicked at the ribs of his horse with both heels and then galloped ahead of the others, taking advantage of the growing light. Yes, dawn was coming and he could soon see the towers of Winterfell. As he approached the Westgate he heard the calls of the guards and he waved a hand at them as the gates groaned open.
“Lord Stark approaches,” he bellowed as he reined in his horse in the courtyard beyond the gates. “And his party includes a direwolf. Do not attack it! Send word to all the guards – do not attack the direwolf!”
Various confused mutterings greeted this, but men trotted off to the walls and into the gatehouse. Jory dismounted and then looked around. He could see Lady Stark and a group of others approaching him. Annah was one of them, along with a rather bleary-eyed young Bran Stark. Not far behind them was a scurrying and equally bleary-eyed Sansa Stark. And there was also the huge bulk of GreatJon Umber. who looked highly annoyed at not having gone along with them.
“Jory Cassel, where is my husband and my son?” Lady Stark called out with fear in her voice.
“They are all coming, M’Lady – I rode on ahead to tell the guards not to panic at the sight of their new companion.”
“What companion?” Bran Stark piped up, looking intrigued.
Jory hesitated and then said: “A direwolf M’Lady.”
Something happened to Lady Stark’s face at that word. Shock came first, and then fear, as if this was something that she knew might happen but had hoped would not. And then something else. Calculation.
Hearing the sound of horses they all turned to face the gateway and as Lord Stark rode through a great mutter went up from the assembled men and women as they saw the huge form of the direwolf. It wasn’t until the others also then rode through that Lady Stark’s face seemed to lose some of its rictus of fear.
“By all the Gods,” she muttered. “That animal is huge. Is it safe?”
Lord Stark seemed to hear and then turned his head towards her. “It is safe. It is protected here. The old alliance is renewed, the Pact reforged. There must always be a direwolf in the home of any Stark. You have forgotten much, all of you.”
Bran had turned white at the sight of the red fire in his father’s eyes, but then seemed to rally. He tilted his head to one side. “Who are you?”
Lord Stark regarded him gravely. “Your ancestor, boy. I was called Edric, in a time long past.”
“Where is Father?”
“He is here still. He did not know about this. The Old Gods woke me for this task and soon I will sleep again.” He turned to the direwolf and then gestured at the building that held the kennels. “Go. Sleep. Prepare.”
The direwolf huffed at this and then licked his extended hand, before turning and padding through the door. Gazing in Jory could see that it was circling about in the straw, pressing it down, before slumping down and then appearing to go to sleep.
Lord Stark seemed to look about Winterfell one more time and then he turned to Robb Stark. “The tower must be made ready,” he said. “They move in the North. All of them.” And then the red fire in his eyes went out, as if it had been snuffed out.
There was a pause whilst everyone stared at Lord Stark, who was rubbing at his eyes tiredly – and then he stopped and looked about, as startled as Jory had ever seen him look. “What are you all looking at?” Then he looked down at his clothes. “And how did I get here?”
Jory winced a little. This would take some explaining.
Petyr
They came for him at dawn. Not that he could tell what hour it was from his black cell. Instead he just saw the bright lights of the burning brands they bore.
He had not slept much the previous night. Part of that was down to the thought that there was every chance that he would die that day, which was not something that he had been planning at all. “Die” had not been on his schedule at all for the year. It was all most inconvenient and he giggled to himself a little as he thought of that. The anger was the other part of why he had not slept. Those sanctimonious, hypocritical bastards. High-born scum. What did they know of the world – the real world, the world that produced their food and their clothes and their coin? Nothing, that was what.
He stood as the guards approached and then unlocked the door. “Out,” the leading one grunted. “Move.” So he did, passing down the dark corridor and as he went he wondered what lay ahead of him.
He had to admit that there was a tiny part of him that still had hope. He had no intention of fighting like a knight or a lord. If he had to kick his opponent in the balls or throw his knife in in their eye to win then he would do so in a heartbeat. A fair fight was for fools and he was no fool. He was Petyr fucking Baelish and if he had to he’d beat a man to death with his own severed arm if it meant that he would live to see another day.
When they came out into the sunlight it was enough to almost blind him and he paused and put his hand over his eyes before squinting horribly through almost screwed-shut eyes. After a moment a barked “Move!” got him stumbling forwards again and as he walked he looked around a little. The courtyard was empty. Arryn and Baratheon were taking no chances. Was he really that dangerous? The thought brought a mirthless smile to his face.
They passed through a doorway and then down a staircase. Down eh? Where to? After a while they reached the bottom of the stairs and as they did another door creaked open in front of them. Oh. It was an armoury. Or at least a place that contained armour. No weapons. Or at leasr that was what they thought.
“Equip yourself,” the leading guard said and then strode out, leaving him alone in the room as the door slammed shut. Well now, that was a bad idea and he quickly looked about the place. No window, that was bad. There was the door he had entered by and another door opposite it. Locked, naturally. Anything else? Any crevices, old blocked-up doorways, stairs or holes? Damn it, nothing.
He looked at the armour. There was a good selection and he nodded. Right then. If he was going to do this then he needed every advantage. And so he collected the best selection he could find and then started to equip himself. Greaves for his legs. A breastplate – a good one too. The buckles were a little tricky to do on his own, but he managed it. Bracers for his forearms and then gauntlets for his hands. Oh and then there was the heavy buckler that he strapped onto his left arm. Excellent. This was a weapon. Smash someone in the face with it and then kick them while they were down. Finally he chose a helmet with a noseguard and cheekguards.
And then he waited. The room was lit by a lantern or three and he looked at them consideringly. One way to escape might be to set a fire. However, there was no guarantee that they’d rescue him and he had no intention of dying from a lungful of smoke whilst being cooked alive in his armour.
That thought made him shudder a little – and then he thought of the moment that he had read about the death of Brandon Stark and he felt a smirk creep over his face. That one had gotten what had been coming to him. It had been a shame that he had not been there, but he had gleaned every last detail about what had happened out of people. What the light had been like in the throne room. Even what the smell had been like.
The other opened suddenly and he looked up. The sellsword, Bronn, was standing there, a crossbow in his hands. “You done then?”
“The room lacks any weapons,” he replied dryly. “So I am armoured but not yet armed.”
“That’ll be provided. Off we go.” The sellsword sounded offensively bright and cheerful for someone who looked so tired and Petyr wondered what else had been happening. They passed down another corridor and then out a door and into a dark staircase lit only by the brands of the men behind him. It went down – a long way down and he felt his arm start to ache from the weight of the shield after a while. He thought about running for it a number of times, but given the darkness below that would be a bad idea. He didn’t want to trip and break his neck. No, he had to bide his time.
When they got to the bottom of the staircase a door creaked open in front of him and then they were out into the bright sunlight again and once more he screwed his eyes against the light. He could feel his feet crunch against sand on flagstones and he staggered a little as he walked forwards. But then his eyes adjusted and his stance changed a little and he kept walking. He could see wooden planks ahead now and then his feet boomed as he walked over the new surface.
He could see the sea to one side now and then the group of men ahead. Ah. Arryn. And Baratheon. And a few others. Guards. No crowd. Yes, he was indeed that dangerous to them. For a moment he wanted to weep – but then he pulled himself together and thought about the letter. Yes, that should have arrived by now. He had written it weeks ago and then placed it with a man who had been paid to send it on when he had word to. Well, he had sent word just before his attempted escape.
Arryn would pay for this. The letter would see to that.
As he approached Arryn he heard the guards halt behind him and he halted himself and glared into the eyes of Arryn, who was looking at him with hooded eyes. He had one hand on his own sword – and an axe in the other.
“Well now my Lord Hand,” Petyr said in poisonously sweet tones. “Here I am. Are you my opponent?”
Arryn’s eyes narrowed. There was something about the man that made him uneasy for once, as if the Hand of the King had something flickering behind his eyes. Hate perhaps? “No,” the old man said after a moment. “I am not your opponent. I have selected a worthy one for you though.” His eyes flickered over Petyr’s armour. “You seem very well equipped. Good heavy armour.” There was something in his voice that Petyr couldn’t put his finger on, a tone that sounded slightly gleeful, slightly guilty and slightly determined. It was an odd combination.
“I am fighting for my life Arryn,” he spat. “Of course I am. Will I be allowed to choose a weapon?”
“No,” said Arryn coldly and then he held the axe out, handle first. “You will use this.”
He reached out and took it, feeling the weight. A good heavy axe. He placed his hand inside the leather loops that were at the end of it, wrapped them around his wrist to get a good purchase and then hefted it again. “A weapon I am unfamiliar with. Well played my Lord Hand.”
Arryn stared at him for a long moment and then stepped back formally, three measured steps. “Petyr Baelish,” he said in a harsh voice, “You are sentenced to trial by combat. May the Seven have mercy on your soul.”
This was odd. He turned his head swiftly. Everyone was backing away from him. Where was his opponent? “Who do I fight? Who, damn you?”
“My champion,” Arryn said with a savage smile. “The sea.”
And with no other warning than that there was a creak and then the sound of wood moving fast and Petyr had just enough time to swear before a hatch beneath his feet opened and he plummeted down into the water below him.
The shock was horrible as he cleaved the water and he opened his mouth to scream, before closing it quickly. The water of Blackwater Bay thundered around him, filled with scraps of objects that had not been scoured out yet by the tide and down he plunged. When he hit the bottom, miraculously still upright, he could see his feet enter the sand. He flailed his hands and then tried to kick upwards – but he stayed exactly where he was.
The weight. He had to get rid of everything. He tore at his right hand and the axe eventually fell to the sand, and then after a long moment of struggle the shield joined it. His lungs were burning, but still he clawed at the armour. The helmet joined the weapons and then he kicked up again, only to sink down. The breastplate, he… needed to get… rid of… it and… his fingers spasmed and then he… pawed at the… buckles. It, it was… so dark… now and… his lungs were… fiery and…
Jon Arryn
When the last of the bubbles stopped rising to the surface of the water below him he leaned over a little. There was a dark and motionless shape in the water. After a long moment he became aware that Bronn was also peering into the water.
“You know, my Lord Hand,” the sellsword said musingly after another long moment, “He could be trying to lull us into a false sense of security.”
This was a good point and he nodded a little. “Very true, very true.” They waited a bit longer. “Perhaps we should drop something on his head and see if he reacts?”
“Good idea my Lord,” Bronn said brightly, as he removed the quarrel from the crossbow he was carrying and then gently relaxed the drawstring with a handy hook. “Give me a moment.”
The sellsword vanished off to one side, leaving him alone with Stannis Baratheon, who was staring at a sheaf of notes that he had pulled out of his pocket. After a moment he caught Jon’s eye. “I’m looking at replacements for the men that Baelish corrupted.”
Jon nodded sombrely and then looked back at the motionless shape under the water. After a moment Bronn reappeared clutching a piece of chain that looked extremely heavy. He raised an eyebrow at Jon and then, after receiving a nod, he leant over and dropped it straight at Baelish’s head. It vanished with a mighty splash and they watched it fall.
“My,” said Bronn as they watched the red cloud around the head of Petyr Baelish form and then disperse. “I think that he’s dead my Lord Hand.” And then something seemed to leave him, a tension that Jon knew that he felt.
“You too were keen to see him dead then?”
“My Lord Hand,” Bronn said seriously, “The man was a weasel, as I said. And a man who bore grudges. It was in my best interest to see him dead. If he had lived I have no doubt he’d want to see me dead, for catching him. Revenge is something he believed in a lot.”
“And now he’s dead.” Stannis said the words with great satisfaction – by his standards anyway. He looked at Jon. “When you are done here I must talk to you.” And then he walked off.
“What are your orders my Lord?” Bronn asked.
“Stay here until low tide and then retrieve the body. His head is to go on a spike over the main gate of the Red Keep. Quill will deal with that.”
Bronn nodded. “And the rest of him?”
“Quill has orders to send his bones back to his keep. He was a good man once Bronn. As was his father.” He looked at the sellsword. “Now, as to you – you will have your full payment for his capture and for your duties since then.”
“My thanks, my Lord Hand,” Bronn said, obviously highly pleased.
“And I have a proposal for you. You did not want Lord Baelish’s hold. ‘Tis somewhat barren, as you said. But have you heard of a place called Foxhold?”
Bronn frowned in thought for a long moment. “It’s in The Vale I think my Lord Hand. Near the High Road, due North of Saltpans in the Riverlands.”
“Aye. It’s not a large town, but it has a castle and a great deal of potential. Sadly old Lord Cawlish, who held it was… well, a traditional man, content to do things as his forefathers did. He died six months ago with no issue and no family to inherit. I have been trying to think of a suitable and trustworthy man to be lord of it. I would grant you the title. If you want it.”
Bronn had turned pale with emotion. “Why me?” he said faintly.
“You caught Baelish and you found his account books. The Realm owes you more than coin Bronn. At the very least I was going to have the King knight you.”
“Ser Bronn,” the sellsword said softly. “It does sound good.” Then he looked at Jon. “Why me? I’m just a sellsword.”
“You are more than that. You are a good fighter, you are cunning and you are intelligent. I need men like you. There are drawbacks of course. You would be a sworn bannerman to the Eyrie. If I call your swords, you must come. A sellsword no longer. You would be a lord, with land. And with land comes people and obligations to those people.”
Bronn’s eyes searched his face for a long moment – and then they dropped. “My Lord Hand, I am not nobly born and-”
“Piss on that.” Jon said the words roughly and felt a little surprised by his vehemence. “Baelish was right about one thing. I know nothing about what the smallfolk think. That is a mistake. I would have it corrected, I would have you tell me what people are thinking in The Vale. And every noble started out as a man who killed other men to control an area. Noble born… is not something that should count when a good man deserves a prize.”
“My Lord Hand,” Bronn said with an odd look on his face, “Having been a sellsword has made me a killer, a cynic, a thief at times and a man with no morals.”
“I know,” Jon replied, taking a roll of parchment out of a pouch in his belt. “But as a Lord you will learn other attributes. You see things clearly. And you learn equally quickly. It is yours for the taking.”
Bronn drew his brows down in thought for a long moment. And then he took a deep breath. “My Lord Hand,” he said in a voice that started shaky but became firmer with every word. “I will take it. I do not know what good I can do, but I will take it. And if you ever call your banners again, I will come. I swear it.” And then he took the parchment.
Ned
The direwolf was still asleep when he looked into the kennels. The other occupants were very quiet indeed – not cowed, more in awe of the giant creature. He looked at it in some bemusement. The previous night had been odd. He remembered it but vaguely, as if it had all been a dream. He had felt like a puppet, made to dance at the whim of another. Well, ‘whim’ was the wrong word. Intent was the right word. He had felt the grim intent behind the thoughts of the dead man who had possessed him. He just couldn’t work out what had triggered it. Had it been one of the artefacts in that maddeningly confusing secret room in his solar? Had it been something else? In which case what?
He sighed and then turned away. The arrival of the direwolf was a worrying sign. The fact that he had been possessed by one of his ancestors was even more worrying. Why had it happened? For what reason? Was it that the Old Gods were forcing matters somewhat? If so then why? He remembered that Robb had told him that originally the mother direwolf had been killed by a stag antler in the neck. The symbolism of that troubled him. Yet here she was, alive and unharmed. And dangerous. What would she be like when she woke up?
And despite that why was he not afraid of her? Because the fact was that he was not. Why? He did not know.
Hearing the sound of approaching feet – and heavy feet at that – he looked over. GreatJon Umber was approaching and he looked a little wary. Not that Ned could blame him. His old friend had been rather disturbed to see that red fire in his eyes. And also awed. Everyone in Winterfell who had laid eyes on him during his possession still looked at him with the same kind of awe.
It was all a bit much, frankly. Still, if the worst came to the worst and the Wall fell and he had to order his people North to meet the Others, he had little doubt that they would heed his call.
“Morning Ned,” the GreatJon boomed. “So, how is she?”
Ned quirked an eyebrow at the sleeping direwolf. “Asleep.”
The Lord of the Last Hearth peered at the creature. “I heard that someone was saying that your kennels were originally built to house direwolfs. They look big enough.”
“Aye,” Ned said thoughtfully. “Luwin’s very excited and is going through the records again. And Robb’s looking at the objects in my solar. I wonder when my ancestors lost the link to the animals?”
The GreatJon frowned in thought. “Maybe the same time that you forgot that that Godswood was in the Wolfswood. Maybe when direwolfs no longer came South of the Wall, or were hunted instead being tamed. Maybe someone died too young or too unexpectedly, before they could pass the secret on.” He winced a little. “I bloody near wet meself when I saw your eyes Ned.”
He eyed his old friend. “Glad you didn’t. Might have been messy.”
This got him a guffaw, which was interrupted by the sound of a horn being blown from outside the gate, answered by a horn from the gatehouse. They both turned to face in that direction and after a moment Rodrik Cassel puffed his way towards them. “Beg pardon my lords, but there is a party of men approaching. They bear the banner of House Reed.”
“Howland Reed, at last,” Ned grunted. “Admit them at once.” As the older Cassel walked off he stroked his chin and then looked at the GreatJon. “He said that he was on his way here, but I expected him a day or so earlier.”
The gates creaked open and a party of men rode through, with the leading pair of riders bearing the banner of House Reed, the black lizard-lion on a green field. Behind them rode a small man dressed in green clothing, who looked about the courtyard as soon as he entered. As soon as he caught sight of Ned he waved and then dismounted rapidly, before handing the reins to one of his men and then walking swiftly over to the Lord of Winterfell. He was followed by a boy and a girl, both in their teens with brown, almost red, hair and both also clad in green. He could tell at a glance that they were related to Howland.
The Lord of Greywater Watch strode up to Ned and the GreatJon and then, much to Ned’s surprise, he formally went to one knee, followed by the two children and then the rest of the Crannogmen behind us. “Lord Stark, the Stark in Winterfell, House Reed had obeyed your summons,” his old friend said in a formal voice. “Command us and we will obey.”
Ned looked down at Howland. “Stand, Howland, I would never have you kneel to me,” he protested. “And welcome to Winterfell, you and your men.”
Howland stood and then stepped to one side and gestured at the two children. “My son Jojen and my daughter Meera. Children – Lord Eddard Stark.”
The two stood and then bowed formally and Ned looked at them carefully. Meera was the elder and had what looked like a cheerful face that seemed to be unnaturally solemn at the moment. Jojen… well the boy looked as if he had once been blind but now could see for the first time, judging by the way that he was blinking at things.
“Ned,” Howland said quietly, “I must talk to you at once. The moment that I heard the call from Winterfell – a call that rang through Greywater Watch as nothing has for a thousand years – I knew that I had to see you. My children too. Especially Jojen – as he is a Greenseer.”
Ned stared at the boy, who shifted a little under his gaze and then looked back at Howland. “A… a Greenseer?”
“Aye,” Howland said quietly. “His dreams come true.”
“Although, Lord Stark – your pardon father – of late they have changed,” the boy piped up suddenly. And then he paled. “I see that you have Fr… your direwolf already.”
All three crannogmen were staring over his shoulder and Ned looked behind him. To his astonishment the direwolf was sitting at the entrance to the kennels and was looking at them all intently. When she saw him looking at her she tilted her head and then blinked and it was at that moment that he realised that the fur above her eyes had changed colour a little. It almost looked like the shape of a hand.
“’Tis a long story,” Ned said wryly. “Very well – let us go to my solar and discuss this.”
Robb
Grey Wind was in Winterfell. Well, he was in his mother, who was in Winterfell, but at least he was here. And he was safe. He thought about the day that he first met Grey Wind, the day that the Night’s Watch deserter had been executed. The day that they’d found the she-direwolf dead with a stag’s antlers in her throat. That had been a day of portents. Worse – clear portents.
How had they missed it at the time? How could they have failed to see the connection?
He sighed and then moved on from where he had been staring out at the Wolfswood. What else had been lost, or forgotten?
Sensing movement to one side he saw Maester Luwin walking towards him, or at least in his general direction as he had his nose in a large book. Walking and reading was not a good idea, as was proved when the Maester almost fell over the hem of his robes.
“Careful there, Maester Luwin!” Robb said with a smile as he reached out with a hand and steadied him.
The older man looked up. “Ah – Lord Robb! I’ve been going through the histories again and I think that I have found some references to the Godswood where your lord father met the direwolf!”
This was interesting. “What references?”
“See, here. The histories make a reference to ‘Yr place of ye Oaths’ and ‘ye olde Godswood.’ Now, I always thought that those were references to the Godswood here in Winterfell, but there are other references to ‘Yr Starke ryding to yr Oathplace’. And then apparently riding back with a wolf companion. It’s unclear why the link was broken though.”
Robb looked over the faded, spidery hand on the page and found himself nodding. “Perhaps someone died early, before the knowledge could be passed on. Or the direwolves stopped coming South of the Wall. That’s the first one that we’ve known of in years. There might be more information in the room in Father’s solar.”
“That was what I thought to. Your lord father is there now, talking to Lord Reed and his children though.”
Howland Reed, Jojen and Meera. That was another change from the past that he remembered. The Reed children had been sent to him to pledge the loyalty of their house after he was proclaimed the King in the North. But Lord Reed had stayed in the Neck, and he remembered that the GreatJon had told him that Howland Reed had not left the Neck since he returned from Robert’s Rebellion. There was a tale in there somewhere and he needed to talk to Father about it.
“Then we shall talk to Father about this when he is free.”
Dany
It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining but it wasn’t too hot. Today the wind was blowing softly from the West, enough to cool and also to fill the air with the smell of the herbs that grew not too far away. She loved days like today. Well, she usually did.
She was starting to worry about her brother. Viserys had always worried her more than a bit – he always took things passionately, sometimes to the point of anger – or even fury. When ‘the dragon’ was roused then Viserys could be vicious – and violent. More violent of late than usual. Their descent in penury had come as a shock. Hearing Viserys being called ‘The Beggar King’ had been a shock. Seeing his reaction once he properly heard what was being called out – that still made her flinch.
And now he had his dragon egg. Magister Mopatis had given it to him two nights previously, a large egg that was so black that it seemed to be almost another colour. Viserys had been more than delighted, he had been enraptured and had instantly dismissed the Magister’s gift to her of three far smaller dragon eggs.
In fact he was still as enraptured now over his large egg as he had been before Possible even more. He spent hours every day stroking the egg and whispering to it.
“I shall call him Balerion the Greater Black Dread, because he will be greater and more dreadful than the dragon flown by our ancestors,” he had told her in a gloating voice. “And when has hatched and grown enough I shall fly him on black wings. First to Storm’s End and burn out the fortress of the Usurper. And then on to Casterley Rock, to find and eat the traitor Lannister. The Eyrie next, to snuff out the Arryns and then the hovel that is Winterfell, killing all the barbarian Starks. Only then shall I fly on wings of vengeance to Kings Landing – and then I’ll hunt the usurper through the halls of our ancestors and find him and have Balerion the Greater Black Dread eat him!”
She shivered a little at the memory of the sound of his voice. There had been something… wrong with the timbre of it. A sick fascination. Yes, she was worried about him.
Hearing voices to one side she pressed a little deeper into the alcove by the side of the balcony overlooking the main square of Pentos. She loved this view, but it could be infuriating to be so near but so far to the life and energy of the city.
Especially as she had heard so much about the newest people to enter the city. They were the Company of the Rose and they sounded, well, romantic to her when she had heard about them. The problem was that Viserys had also heard about them, but had had a different reaction. He had insisted that he lead a party down to the city to recruit them. “They claim to be of the North, from Westeros,” he had proclaimed self-importantly. “I am their rightful king, therefore they should be fighting for me. Especially as those Dothraki savages have all vanished Eastwards.”
That had not been a tactful thing to say to the Magister, although he had admittedly looked puzzled whenever any mention was made of the Dothraki, who behaviour had apparently baffled everyone. That said, his response to Viserys and his comments had been rather firm.
“That would not be a good idea my king. You must remember that this… rather bizarre company of sellswords are exiles from the North for a reason. They refused to bend the knee to your illustrious ancestor Aegon the Conqueror. And despite the fact that that was centuries ago they still, I am told, do not love Targaryens. They would not follow you my king. They might even wish you violence.”
Which had eventually – after some muttering – shut her brother up.
The sound of voices receded but then she heard the sound of horns in the distance and she craned her neck as she peered down. Far below she could see horsemen entering a square with what looked like furled banners. And then she wondered if she could get down there and see what was going on.
But perhaps she first needed to find a cloak and a cowl?
Ned
When they entered his solar Ned noticed that Howland stopped and stared the moment that he saw all the books – and then again at the map. He had ordered a new one to be drawn up, showing the settlements that he now knew existed North of the Wall, but for the meantime he had the old one, albeit annotated and in a more prominent position. And Howland stared at it in astonishment.
“What are those… places in the lands beyond the Wall Ned?”
“Wildling settlements,” Ned said tersely as he poured some wine for his friend and some watered wine for the Reed children. “Mance Rayder was here a matter of days ago.”
“The Wildling King Beyond the Wall?” And then Howland stared at his son, who looked a little startled. “The king with no crown who kneeled to the wolf?”
“Aye father,” Jojen Reed said in an emotion-choked voice. “As I described it.”
This made Ned stop and pause, before waving at them all to be seated. “You dreamt it?”
“I did Lord Stark.”
Ned stroked his chin and then looked at Howland. “The legends of the Greensight are true then. And if those are true I wonder what else is?”
“Your pardon Ned, but you do not seem too surprised by this.” Howland pointed this out with an odd, unreadable expression. “But then we did all hear the Call to Winterfell. It fair made Greywater Watch shake as nothing else has for a thousand years or more.”
“You sound as if you knew what it was.”
“Ned, we Crannogmen… we do not forget. We are of the North and we have never been conquered. And we remember the things that others might forget. There are tales of objects in Winterfell, things owned by your ancestors. Things made by your ancestors. You must have had good reason to send out that call.”
Ah. Time for a little candour. “Howland,” he said with more than a little weariness, “I did not know that I was doing it at that time. But it had to be done. The Others have returned, Howland. The Long Night comes. We must prepare. I thank the Old Gods that they allowed me to see what must be done, especially as I knew nothing of anything.”
Howland paled a little at this. “You… knew nothing of what?”
“Brandon was the heir. Father must have told him of what might happen if the Others came again. I knew not. I do not even know how much my father told Brandon. All I know is that… for various reasons that I shall you about later, GreatJon Umber came to Winterfell with the Hearthstone that his family have protected for many long years. And it gave me a vision.”
Ned stood and walked over to the map and then pointed at Hopemourne. And then, as he opened his mouth, Jojen Reed broke in. “The home of the enemy. The place that knows no hope. The long mountain with the old prison and the gate that was broken open.” The boy was white as a sheet and shaking. “I have seen it in my dreams Lord Stark. And other things.”
This was important, he could feel it and he sat quickly before the boy even as Howland pulled his own chair closer and Meera peered at him worriedly. “Go on lad. What else have you seen?”
“My dreams… have changed. I once dreamt that the sea came to Winterfell, drawn there by an empty man who belonged to both.” Theon, thought Ned with a shock. “But then that changed. The sea piled up into a great wave along the coasts of the North, but then it did not move – instead it froze. I could see men within that frozen wave, hammering at the ice. And then it went South. And as it moved a wolf made from seawater howled at it and snarled at it.”
Theon again? Ned thought, confused. But a different Theon perhaps? How much has he changed these past months? “What else?”
“A stag shed its horns as it found a great sword. Found a purpose too. I dreamt a small man became a great one, helped by a man who rose from the dead who had never been dead. And I dreamt of an empty lion with broken sword who stood on a precipice with death on one side and heroism on the other. And… last night I dreamt of a sword of light, from the stars. It drove back the shadows – but it wasn’t enough. It needed more.” He sank back in his seat and then rubbed at his forehead. “Your pardon Lord Stark. Father. Dark have been my dreams of late. And… I cannot see it anymore.”
Ned looked at the boy, confused. He noted that Howland looked shocked and Meera looked a little smug. “It?” He prompted.
The boy looked back at him levelly. “The moment of my death. I have known it for some time my Lord. Or I did. I cannot see it now.”
Ned leant back in his chair and then looked at all three of the Reeds in turn. “You children look tired – I think you should join my family as they break their fast. Jojen, should you see anything else, please let me know at once. Howland – please stay. I’ll have food brought up. There are things that you should know and other things that you need to see.”
When the children left Ned made sure that the door of his solar was locked before he turned back to his friend with a smile. “I thought that you would never leave the Neck again! ‘Tis good to see you old friend.”
“Aye, Ned, you too. But first you need to know something. I left Greywater Watch not just because of Jojen’s dreams. Something else has happened. We found signs that a great body of people had crossed into the North.”
He stared at Howland. “What? When?”
“We do not know exactly. They passed by an old path in the Neck. That’s what concerns me Ned. ‘Tis a very old path. Old enough that it is almost never used by Crannogmen these days. So whoever they are we don’t know exactly when they passed through the Neck. But not more than a month ago.”
He thought furiously for a long moment. No word had reached him yet about any violence from the area, so whoever they were they were keeping a low profile. But who were they?
“Any idea of their numbers?”
“Hard to tell due to the nature of the ground. At least a thousand though. As soon as I heard I ordered that Moat Cailin be reinforced at once, and restored as much as possible. I beg your pardon if I overstepped my bounds but-”
“Howland, you did the right thing, think nothing on it.” He paused. “I will send a raven to King’s Landing at once on this. Whoever these people are they must have come from somewhere.”
The Lord of Greywater Watch nodded shortly. Then he looked at Ned. “I stayed in the Neck to protect the secret. Does the boy know yet?”
“He does,” Ned said softly. “I had to tell him. Fortunately Maester Aemon was here at the time.”
Howland’s forehead wrinkled. “Maester Aemon? From Castle Black?”
“Aye. His nearest relative.”
The eyes of the Crannogman widened for a moment – and then narrowed a little. “Ah. Of course. I had forgot his full name. What will the boy do?”
“The world knows him as my son. I have written to Robert to ask him to legitimise him.” He pulled a slight face. “I did not think about the pain he feels when people call him a bastard, even though it is of no fault of his own. He will be a Stark and if need be he will have a hold of his own somewhere. And if, one day, it’s necessary for the truth to come out then… well, we shall deal with that path if and when we come to it. He’s all I have left of Lyanna. Would that she had never met… him.”
A short silence fell. Howland Reed finally broke it. “For what it’s worth, Ned, at Harrenhall, all those long years ago, I once saw a look on his face. It was just after the tourney. T’was the look of a doomed man. A trapped man. I know not what he was thinking. I just know that he did not look like a man who thought that he liked what he was doing.”
Harrenhall. The tourney there had been a lifetime ago. So much had changed since then. Brandon had been alive and was due to marry Cat, Father was still managing things from this very room and Lyanna had been her usual fiery self. Arya reminded him so much of his sister.
And then there had been the others. The Knight of the Laughing Tree, who had whipped the Mad King into a fever of paranoia. Robert, still young, still fit and still without the cares of the throne. Rhaegar, whose actions had started the landslide that had obliterated the Targaryens. And Ashara.
“Too many secrets,” he muttered. “Always too many secrets.” Then he stood and walked over to the tapestry, where he pulled it back to reveal the door to a surprised Howland. “This was my father’s secret. He told Brandon, we think, but not me. Come. I need to show you some things. If the Crannogmen remember then perhaps you know what some of the things within are.”
Tyrion
It was a glorious morning. Albeit a morning that had consisted of him sneezing a great deal early on due to the cloud of dust that was now rising from the inn, but a glorious morning nevertheless. He looked at the inn as it slowly receded into the distance and then looked ahead again and preened more than a little.
The inn was now under new management, although that wasn’t really his fault. No, it was instead the fault of the former landlord, a man who it seemed had been incapable of dealing honestly with anyone at all at any time. Short weight, bad food, non-payment… it was a long list.
And it had therefore been a bad idea to try and cheat one of the merchants who sold food to the inn, still less the formidable wife of that merchant. Especially to then double the folly by leering at her and then suggesting that he ‘comfort’ her.
The result had been her fist slamming into his jaw and breaking it, sending him insensible to the floor, his head entering the slops bucket as his body came to rest. The resulting fight with his people had been short and curtailed by Emmon, who arrived on the scene and knocked the landlord’s chief flunkey out with one punch of his own.
As things quietened down it was discovered that the landlord, full name one Edwyn Dickon, had his head in a full slops bucket and had apparently drowned. Which was such a tragedy. Well, everyone had had a moment of silence for him that might have been a heartbeat long, before proceeding to celebrate a great deal.
Anyway, given that the merchant and wife had been owed a great deal of coin by the late landlord, then that made them the new owners of the inn. Which they promptly took control of (as Tyrion and his party watched with great glee) and then started to clean up. Along the way, as things were cleaned, various things were discovered that showed that the late and increasingly unlamented landlord had also been a thief. In fact he had stolen quite a few things, given the cries of furious anger that had risen from various people.
Various other people had been grabbed and forcibly searched before being ejected – and yet more things had been found. Including some of the money that Dacey Surestone had brought.
Saying that she had been angry about this had been like saying that water was damp. A massive understatement. She had raged around the inn before vanishing. He eventually found her in the stables, feeding the thin mare that it turned out was hers.
“I can feed Wanderer more oats now,” she had grumped when she saw him. “I have the coin that that thieving bag of pus stole from me.”
He had winced a little at the description before bowing and leaving her to it. He had ordered fresh bedding for all his men and wonder of wonders he had not been bitten by anything when he woke up the next morning.
And now they were on their way again, on the road North to Winterfell. Dacey Surestone rode with them, clutching at what looking like a small chest covered in oilskin and glaring at anyone who got too close. Including him. So he had decided to charm her a little.
To tell the truth it was proving to be… interesting. She did not regard him as a freak at all. Instead she seemed to regard him as being something of a fellow scholar, to be regarded from a cautious distance due to academic rivalries. It was most odd.
It wasn’t until they stopped for some food at noon that he finally got a decent conversation out of her. Once again there had been a hill nearby with a ruin of some kind at the top and he had finally given in to his curiosity and stumped his way up to look at it.
It seemed to be the remains of a building of some kind, built in stone. He looked around it and then tried to imagine what it had been. It was then that he heard the sound of footsteps and he turned to see Dacey Surestone looking at the ruins. “I was wondering what this place was,” he called out to her. “I have seen many places like this on the road North.”
A small smile quirked her face for a moment. “’Tis a place for a signal fire Lord Lannister.”
“Call me Tyrion, please Lady Surestone. And Lord Lannister is my father.” He looked at the stones again. “A signal fire?”
“Lord Tyrion then,” she conceded. Then she gestured at the stones again. “We have not always had maesters and ravens here in the North, Lord Tyrion. There was once need for a chain of signal fires for ordinary messages. This would be…” She orientated herself as she looked at the horizon. “Red Hill. That’s Broken Crag to the North and Crow’s Claw to the South. And then… Surestone Peak beyond that.” Her voice wobbled as she said those last few words.
Tyrion did his best not to look at her, knowing that she would not like to be reminded of any such weakness. He could tell that she liked to think of herself as a strong Northern woman. Then he frowned a little. "But surely I have seen more crags and other places then would be needed for a signal network?"
She looked at him and then smiled a little. "Ah. The Elder Crags, as the histories call them. They are places best defensible against the Others. Before the Wall was built this was a place of war in Winter, Lord Tyrion. The First Men had to defend themselves. Many skirmishes were fought here in the Long Winters of old."
Ah. "The Others," he said carefully. "Surely they are naught but legends?"
This bought him a snort. "Then why build the Wall? To defend against Wildlings? I think not."
"But the Others have not been seen for thousands of years."
"Lord Tyrion," she said caustically, "Evidence of absence is not evidence of non-existence."
And this shook him. "You have read the works of Toron of Myr then?"
"Him and many others. My father would have been a Maester if he had not met my mother. He liked to read a lot. He taught me much." Her slight smile faded. "And who is to say that the Others have not returned? Not me. Nor anyone with the blood of the First Men in their veins. The Call has gone out Lord Tyrion. You will hear of it in Winterfell."
There was something about her voice that spoke to him of a terrible surety. An absolute certainty even. "The Call? And what was that you said about ordinary messages being sent? Have there ever been any extraordinary ones?"
She just looked at him, something burning in her gaze. "There have indeed. One was sent this past month. The Others come. The Stark calls for aid. You are needed." She spoke the words as if they were burnt into her heart.
And then he remembered that the same words had been spoken by that captain on the sea and that he had heard similar words said by others on the road. That the Stark called for aid. That the Others came. A river of frozen water slid up and down his back for a moment.
For a moment he recalled his dream. And also the moment that he had come awake in his bunk, at sea, at the start of this long journey of his. And the words... they blazed a trail in his mind. A trail of memory.
After a long moment he licked what were suddenly very dry lips. "My lady, will you ride with me? I feel the sudden need to hear more on this matter."
Ned
The selection of items in the secret room within his solar had long defeated him. So many odd things, little but every one of them had been of importance to his ancestors and therefore had to be of interest to him now.
He looked to one side and smiled a little. Howland Reed's reaction had been one of absolute shock at the sight of the room, followed by intense concentration. He had first looked at the little green figure, which he had then tilted his head at.
"I have heard of this," he said slowly, "I think that it is a key. But a key to what - I know not." Then he turned his attention to the bronze mirror. "And this... well, again, I have heard of things like these. Mirrors were said to be able to talk to one another. As long as you knew who held the other mirror you wished to talk to, that is. And when, that was another factor I believe. And I think that there are more of these around. But the strength depends on a few things - like the strength of magic."
That made him smile a little. "Luwin asked the Citadel about that. He was fascinated to learn that the glass candles can be relit. That magic has returned."
Howland nodded slowly at that. "I am not surprised at all by that. I did suspect it - especially after hearing the Call." And then he looked at the little cage with the hand - and he paled more than a little, before rallying. "We have one of these at Greywater Watch. But an empty one. Ned, do you know what you have there?"
"I have not the slightest idea."
"'Tis the hand of a wight. Well - a very dead hand."
Ned stared at the skeletal hand and then shuddered away from it. "Are you sure Howland?"
"Aye." He reached out and then brushed the dust from the front of the cage, revealing some writing in the form of runes. "See?"
Ned peered at the runes carefully. The runes were now clear and he frowned a little as he recalled his runelore. "Cage- erm, firm?"
His old friend smiled at him. "Almost. Cageproof. An old term. But one that is apt for this. The cage is said to slow down the process of rot. A part of a wight is placed in it, like a hand or a foot, and the cage's magic preserves it, so that it can be passed to the South, to prove that the Others have returned, that the wights exist."
Ned stared at the cage. His ancestors, he thought, were smarter than he had first thought. Then he set his face and pulled out his dagger and jabbed at the bones in the cage. They did not move at all. "Dead then. I will give orders to burn the bones."
"As you need to. The legends say that any part of a wight must always be burnt, even after it has rotted down into immobility. Or, in this case, bones."
He nodded. "A shame. I have sent Benjen North of the Wall to get the hand of a wight, so that proof could be obtained."
Howland stared at him in some surprise. "Surely Castle Black has one such cage, or knows of it?"
"Castle Black," he said sadly, "Has forgot many things, I fear.”
Another long stare from Howland. “Forgot such things as?”
“The reason why the Wildlings are as they are. I think that originally that acted as scouts for the Wall. But when the Others vanished then the Night’s Watch forgot the link. Perhaps the Wildlings did in part as well. And we know from some of the records that the Night’s Watch seems to have forgotten what kind of weapons were – are – needed to fight the Others. We know that obsidian, or dragonglass, is a weapon against them. And we need a weapon. Legends say that the weapons of the Others would shatter steel as if it was made of glass.”
Howland nodded slowly. “I see.” Then he paused. “I take it that fire would work against them then, as some of the legends say.”
“Aye,” Ned replied. He leant back in his chair again. “I have done much thinking about that. We know that the Others have returned, so at some point I will have to call the banners against them and help man the Wall. We will need all we have against the Others. Obsidian, fire…but what else? What else can we use? I have pondered much on this.”
A silence fell, as they both thought and then Howland broke it. “There is a reference in the records of Greywater Watch,” he said almost reluctantly, “A record that is a fragment of a fragment. And it mentions ‘swyrds mayde from ye fyre, ye fyre of heavens and of ye fire-wyrms’. I have no idea what that means. Yet it meant something to our ancestors and so it must have been important.”
Something tickled at the back of his brain and he pulled at his nose with his finger and thumb as he thought about it. But then it was gone. “Something to think about and to consider,” he said eventually. “In the meantime there is much for us to discuss. But perhaps later – you look about to drop old friend.”
Howland smiled tiredly. “I am a little weary,” he said in that flat voice that he could put on when he was dissembling a little. “Perhaps a little food as well?”
“I think that could be arranged,” Ned replied with a smile. “And you haven’t met Cat for a long time, still less some of my children. Come, let us eat.”
Jorah
The difference between the statue of a young Illyrio Mopatis and the man who now sat opposite him was quite astonishing, he thought as he sipped his wine politely. The wine was superb. The conversation was not. Mopatis was calm on the face of it, but he could tell that there was something else broiling below the surface. Worry? Anger? A combination of the two?
“Varys told me that you were coming to Pentos,” Mopatis said eventually, narrowing his eyes at him. “To follow the Targaryens I believe?”
Jorah sipped a little more of the wine and then nodded slightly. “The more information I send to Kings Landing of their movements, the greater the chance of my pardon.”
“Yes, I heard of your crime. You sold free men to slavers.” The words still made his stomach turn over, but he had long practice now in keeping his face still.
“Something that I have long regretted.”
“How is your wife?” More words that made him feel as if there was a cold knife in his guts.
“I have nothing more to do with her. She lives in Lys”
“Ah yes, the lover of Tregar Ormollen. I hear that she has expensive tastes. And that she is feared by his wife.”
The cold knife transformed itself into sour vinegar. “I no longer have anything to do with her. Now – may I ask what you need from me?”
The Magister leant back a little and looked at him through hooded eyes. “You have certain unique skills. You speak Dothraki and you have ridden with the savages. And you are of the North and for the most part understand their peculiar system of honour.”
It was the ‘for the most part’ that rankled, but he nodded slightly again. “What do you need those skills for?”
Mopatis narrowed his eyes again briefly and then ran a hand over his chin. “I require your assistance on two riddles. The first is to find out why the Dothraki are all moving East.”
This surprised him. “I thought that you had your own sources of information on the Dothraki.”
The fat man fidgeted in his seat a little. “I thought I had too,” he said eventually. “But it seems that my sources amidst the Dothraki were not sufficiently adequate to the task of finding out where they were going. And then I remembered that you have friends amongst the Dothraki. Including one Loros I believe?”
“Loros Onehand. Or perhaps Loros Silverhand as he will now call himself. A master in Myr made him an artificial hand with many implements. I met him on the road to Pentos.”
“I know that you did,” Mopatis grunted. “I would very much like to know if he told you anything about why the Dothraki are heading East.”
Jorah sipped his wine again as he thought very, very hard and very, very fast. The truth might well be the best way to play this. “They are not so much heading East as being drawn there, or so Loros told me,” he said eventually. “He said that he could not explain it, but that despite the threat of being executed if his brother found him, he was still pulled East.”
“To the Dothraki Sea? Vaes Dothrak?”
“Beyond that,” he said and he saw how Mopatis started a little in surprise at that. “To the Grey Waste.”
The Magister sipped some of his own wine as his forehead creased in thought. “The Grey Waste? That makes little sense. Horses die like flies there.”
He shrugged. “That was what Loros told me. He could not explain it. But he said that the Dothraki all feel what he felt.”
A short silence fell as Mopatis absorbed this. Finally he nodded sharply. “Very well. My thanks. There is something else that I want you to discover. The Company of the Rose is here in Pentos.”
“I had noticed,” Jorah replied dryly. “They seem to be trickling in.”
“They have arrived in groups,” Mopatis scowled. “And seek passage to White Harbour. They say that their time of exile is over. I would have you find out why. Why now and not when the Targaryens were killed or driven into exile? I want you to find out for me, Jorah Mormont. For me and for Varys – and your king.”
He mulled this for a long moment. “I shall,” he said eventually. “Payment must be progress towards my pardon. I too want to go home.” And with that he drained his goblet, nodded politely and took his leave.
A servant escorted him out and he noted that there seemed to be a guard – one of the Unsullied no less! – behind him at all times. He understood when he passed a window into a courtyard and spotted a young man with hair so blonde that it was silver sitting on a bench and crooning over something large and black on the bench next to him. It looked like a large stone, but any further perusal was cut short by the sound of the guard advancing menacingly – so he smiled and walked on.
Leera was waiting for him at the doors when he passed through them and she stopped looking worried the moment that she saw him.
“I was concerned about you,” she said quietly as they walked down the hill and into Pentos. “That man has a reputation. And an increasingly bad one. He likes to make men and women dance like puppets. And he likes being rich to the point where he will do anything to stay rich.”
That fitted in perfectly with his own impressions and he smiled at her. “Fear not. I already had part of what he wanted to know. The other half involves a talk with some people from the Company of the Rose. I need to ask some questions that I was already going to ask to be honest.”
She peered at him. “You want to know why they are going home?”
Slightly surprised he nodded.
“Jorah, you can be a very unsubtle man at times. You have been wondering the same thing yourself.”
He laughed softly and then they both wandered down the hill. As they walked he pondered. “Perhaps you could come with me? Four ears are always better then two.”
“She looked at him and then smiled. “Whatever I can do to help you, I will.”
They heard the crowd long before they reached it. The square was largely taken up by a great assemblage of people and horses and as they passed along the edges of it Jorah felt a great pang of homesickness. It was soon evident that not only had the Company of the Rose kept as much as possible to the clothing of the North – adapted for warmer climes, obviously – but they had also kept their accents. He had no idea how they had managed that – perhaps persistent contact with the North in terms of messengers and merchants – but he was unprepared for how the sound of so many people speaking in the accent of home would affect him.
He came very close to crying at one point, but repressed it by blowing his nose and then pretending that the sun had been in his eyes. Not that he had fooled Leera, who had called his attention to a small plant growing out of a nearby wall that had also allowed him to turn away from everyone and pull himself together.
When he turned back he shot a wry smile at her and then they both moved on into the crowd. And as they went the more and more puzzled he became. The Company of the Rose was made up, it seemed, of very sensible people who knew that the North would be nothing like Essos. Far colder for a start. They did not seem to know where they would all live. Nor did they know how they would live, at first anyway.
But they were all sure that they had to go home. It was perplexing. They seemed to trust their leader however. The Stone, they called him. And some even extended that a little to call him Krats the Stone. Which confused him, because Krats was not a Northern name. There many in the crowd who had Northern names – Jory, Benjen, Brandon, Brann, Jeor, Domeric, Roose, Theon, Rodrik, Rickard, Torrhen – but Krats was an odd one. Perhaps something inspired by Essos? But that also made no sense. The Company of the Rose seemed to stick to the old ways and the old names. The Old Gods too, by the way that some of them spoke.
Naturally he got drawn into a few conversations here and there – his accent was enough to make people realise that he had been to the North recently – and he was able to pass on a few pieces of advice here and there. The weather. The feel of snow. How important it was to talk to people about when Winter arrived. The need for good salt in Winter. Little things, but cumulatively important.
And they all seemed to agree on one thing. That they were going home for a reason so obvious that they did not need to talk about it.
It was all most perplexing and even Leera, he could see, was doing her best not to show her puzzlement at the entire thing.
Eventually she wandered off to get some food for them both and as she did Jorah strode off to one side to view the entire assemblage. It wasn’t a company of the size of others. The Gold Company were far larger and also far richer. The Second Sons were less rich than the Gold Company and larger than the Company of the Rose again. They were also currently very badly led.
There could be no comparison with the Bloody Mummers as the latter were composed of the scum of the earth. Especially the number of women and children circulating the square. The Bloody Mummers’ attitude to women and children could be… vile.
Then he paused and stared a little harder at the square. Oh. The reports were true. There were women in mail in places and he could see two women mock-fighting with wooden swords. Interesting.
“You seem very interested in our company.” He looked over and saw a man dressed in brown breeches with a white shirt watching him. He had dark hair and grey eyes and he reminded him of someone that he could not put his finger on.
“I have never seen the Company of the Rose before. I have seen many other sellsword companies but never this one. Especially as I am from the North myself.”
The other man crossed his arms and stared at him. “I know that you are. You are Jorah Mormont. Once of Bear Island.”
A chill went through him for a moment. “You are very well informed.”
“I am the leader of the Company of the Rose. It is my business to be very well informed. The lives of the men and women in the Company depend on it.”
He eyed the other man carefully. “You are the Stone. Also known as the Krats.”
The other man pulled a slight face. “One is a name that became a title. The other… will soon be lost.”
This was odd and he must have shown this on his face, because the Stone laughed softly. “Everything will change when we go home.” He peered at Jorah again. “I have often wondered what to say if you had sought us out before this day. If you had asked to serve with us. Before our return I would have said no.”
For a moment Jorah felt that chill again. “For what reason?”
“Your crime. You sold free men of the North into slavery. I cannot even describe the magnitude of such a thing. As you know full well.”
He stared at the sea on the horizon bleakly. “Love makes sane men mad. I was in love. I was desperate. I was insane. I committed a terrible crime. I did not come to my senses until afterwards.” He remembered that day. Well, bits of it. He had gotten so drunk that Lynesse had been hysterical with fear that he was going to die.
The Stone narrowed his eyes. “You regret what you did then?”
“I do.” And that was true.
“Ah, but because it was wrong, or because you were discovered in your crime?”
That was good question and he looked at the Stone sadly. “Would it be wrong of me to say both?”
The other man looked at him closely and then smiled slightly. “It would be human of you. None of us are what might wish to be. And your actions since coming to Essos have shown your regret. You have not served with the more… revolting, to be honest, sellsword companies. Which would have been a problem for many here.”
Jorah suddenly felt as if he was walking on thin ice all of a sudden. “A problem?”
“Your cousins would have been very angry with you.”
And this baffled him. “Cousins?”
The Stone pointed at the two women who had been mock fighting earlier and who were now waving mugs of what looked like ale at the grinning children around them. “The Terrible Two. Lyra and Alyse Mormont.”
Tiny ants seemed to climb up and down his spine. “I have cousins here?”
The Stone seemed to find that very amusing, given his grin. “Oh yes. Most of the houses of the North have cousins here. Did you forget why we were founded?”
Why had his father not told him of this? “Which houses?”
The Stone stared out at the crowd. “House Mormont, as you know now. House Umber are the tall group over there. House Karstark. Somewhere in here is a thin-faced man who tells terrible jokes who is a cousin to that cold streak of piss Roose Bolton.”
Jorah stared at them all, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. Two questions were on his mind. He voiced them both, the first one the most important. “Why are you going back to the North?”
“Because we have to. We are drawn there. Did you not hear the Call?”
“The Call?”
“Ah. The distance is great and some heard it louder than others. It woke me from my sleep and alarmed my wife and children in the process. Others… just felt the need to be elsewhere. In the North. It calls to us all. It overrides all other things, all other oaths.”
The tiny ants on his spine were suddenly joined by a great host. “The pull home. The need to be back in the North. I feel it too.”
“Ha. I did wonder. But you did not hear the words then?”
“Words?”
The other man leant forwards a little and his voice became urgent and fierce. “’The Others come. The Stark calls for aid. You are needed.’”
Shock roiled through him. The Others? Stark called for aid? “How is this possible?”
The other man shrugged. “He is the Stark in Winterfell. There must be ways of telling these things. It has been a long summer – a very long summer. Winter is coming.”
Jorah ran a hand over his chin and then finally asked the second question. “So what house are you?” And suddenly he feared the answer.
“The Stone is my title. My forefathers have led this Company from the start. We were the lodestone for the company. And that became shortened to just ‘The Stone’. And as for my name…” He looked at Jorah again, his eyes blazing. “My first name is Edric. My second name for the time being is Krats. When I return home everything will change back to what it was. Think on that for a moment.”
He did. And then he looked back at the man, his eyes very wide. “You are-”
And then Leera suddenly arrived, panting from running. “Jorah!” When she saw The Stone she paused, rocking on her feet. “Your pardon.” She strode up to Jorah and then hissed into his ear: “I think that Daenerys Targaryen is in the crowd – if she is discovered there will be trouble!”
Jorah sighed. Life had suddenly become a lot more complicated.
Jaime
Petyr Baelish looked… well, as if he was concentrating on something. His eyes were open and fixed on something. Jaime couldn’t tell what. Not that it mattered. The birds would soon take those eyes. He smirked a little. Baelish had always thought of himself as such a clever fellow. The fact that he had been outsmarted by the likes of Jon Arryn must have smarted a lot.
He rode down the hill towards the docks. His Fatness was coming back after his unexpected trip to Storm’s End. He’d asked Cersei why her husband had taken himself off there and he been answered with a baffled shrug. “He woke up shouting something. He was probably drunk.” And that had been it.
But there had been more to it, he could tell. He could feel something in the air, something that he did not understand and therefore did not like. The Small Council was busy with so many odd things, ranging from the bizarre (the disappearance of the Mountain Clans and the word that the Company of the Rose was returning from their long exile) to the amusing (the fall of Baelish).
It was good that Baelish was dead. Father would probably have had something unpleasant in mind for him had he lived. Trying to cheat a Lannister was unwise. Trying to cheat Father was a death sentence.
As he reached the docks he took a deep breath. Ah. Dead fish. And sweaty people. Oh, and sewage. The tide must not have turned yet. He sighed, dismounted and then looked about. He was here to check on the wharf where His Fatness was due to dock, whenever he turned up. Catching sight of the Royal Wharf – or whatever sufficed at the moment - he tied up his horse, gave it a mouthful of oats from a saddlebag and then wandered along the wooden planks. Yes, it was standing. Seemed serviceable. Didn’t appear to have been sabotaged. And wasn’t surrounded by a mob of neer-do-wells. Just sailors. Speaking of which – he narrowed his eyes a little and then smiled as he saw a familiar face talking to another man.
“Ah,” he called. “The most noble Knight of Onions! Diligent as ever I see!”
Davos Seaworth looked at him for a moment, before finishing his conversation and then turning to face him. “Ser Jaime.” He spoke flatly and Jaime had to admit that the man might be base-born but he did not seem to be overawed by nobility. He almost liked Seaworth. The man was disgustingly competent. Plus his father and Cersei both despised the man, showing that they didn’t know everything. “What brings you down here?”
“I am a Knight of the Kingsguard, Ser, and I never cease to worry about the safety of the king. I’m here to check on the dock where he will dock later. At some point. Whenever that is.”
Seaworth looked at the dock and then stamped on it. “Seems stable.”
“As I shall report.” Jaime smirked a little and then paused as a bell on the nearby headland clanged three times in the distance. When he looked at Seaworth again he could see that he was staring out to sea with a frown whilst gesturing to one side. “Devan – spyglass, as quick as you can!”
“Aye father,” the young man called as he scurried off, before returning with the device. “Here you are.”
“Something wrong?” Jaime asked. He could see a ship approaching in the distance. Was that the King already?
“Yon ship – the lookout signalled that it bears signal flags.” He focussed the spyglass. “And indeed it does, To dock immediately and that a Maester is needed.”
Unease prickled at his scalp for a moment. “The crew is ill?”
“Nay, the port orders are very clear on that. A yellow flag is to be flown for pestilence. That ship bears none such flag.” He peered again. “Hmph. ‘Tis a Dornishman.”
That intrigued him. “How can you tell?”
Seaworth handed over the spyglass. “The foremast is stepped more rakishly and the sails are a little differently rigged. ‘Tis as clear as day.”
Jaime peered through the spyglass and then handed it back with a grin. “I bow to your greater experience on such matters.” He thought about leaving but then decided to stay. This seemed intriguing.
“Lucky, too,” Seaworth muttered. “Wind is set just right for the ship to approach.” He paused and stared again. “And he’s in a right tearing hurry as well. Devan?”
“Father?”
“Get Maester Dyren. And then send word to the Harbour Master that I shall deal with this matter. My thumbs are pricking.”
Whoever was handling the ship seemed, in Jaimes’s admittedly limited experience, to know what they were doing, because the ship approached in a hurry and then slowed in an equal hurry, as the crew reefed various sails at just the right time and then relied on the impetus as well as a few smaller jib sails to carry them into the dock, where various lines were thrown.
“Well-handled, so very well-handled indeed – for a Dornishman,” Seaworth muttered, before he strode along the dock. Jaime followed him curiously.
There was a tall, dark-haired man on the quarterdeck who was staring out over King’s Landing. The moment he saw them he started a little and then picked up a speaking trumpet. “Ho there! Is that the cloak of a Kingsguard I see?” He sounded Dornish.
Seaworth glanced at Jaime a moment before filling his lungs and bellowing: “Yes, he is. Why?”
“Thank the Gods,” the man bellowed back, before turning to his men on the main deck. “Get that fucking gangplank rigged at once!” Then he turned back to them. “We need a Maester at once! There is a dying man on board!”
Seaworth pulled a slight face and then barked at his own men to assist the crew of the ship as a gangplank was hurriedly rigged to the now stationary ship, followed by a guide rail. “We have sent for one.” The captain, if a captain he was, was now on the main deck and there was no need to shout.
The dark haired man – a Dornishman in every appearance as Jaime saw him more closely – hurried down the wooden surface and then nodded at them both. “Myras, captain of the Seahorse.”
“I am Ser Davos Seaworth,” the Onion Knight said gruffly. “And this is Ser Jaime Lannister of the Kingsguard.”
“Sers,” the captain said quickly, “I need witnesses as well as a Maester, hence my relief at seeing you Ser Jaime. I have a dying man aboard who needs to see his son here at King’s Landing and who requires witnesses for the handing over of his ancestral sword.”
Jaime found his eyebrows arching upwards. This all sounded very bizarre. “Who is the man?”
The captain paused, licked his lips and then said: “Lord Alster Dayne.”
There was a short, incredulous, pause. “Lord Alster Dayne of Starfall?” Jaime said the words in some disbelief.
“Aye Ser.”
This was baffling. “I thought that he had confined himself to his castle, that he was in fact dying.”
“He is desperate to see his son. So he booked passage with us – but did not mention at that he was even ill.” The Dornishman looked as if he was about to weep. “His son is fostered here – his only child. Edric Dayne?”
Seaworth scowled a little. “Why didn’t you dock at Dragonstone, or anywhere closer that had a Maester?”
“I asked Lord Dayne, but he insisted that we press on to King’s Landing. Truly Sers, he was driven to come here.”
Seaworth and Jaime shared a troubled look. And then the Onion Knight nodded tersely and started to snap out orders that made Jaime wonder if Father had briefly possessed the man. A nearby inn had a bedroom requisitioned; men were to find a litter for Lord Dayne; word was to be passed at once to Lord Stannis Baratheon, who wasn’t too far away.
Seaworth then looked at the Red Keep and then back at Jaime. “Ser Jaime, where might Edric Dayne be found?”
He thought a moment. “He is squire to Lord Beric Dondarrion I believe. He can be found at the Red Keep.” He looked at the small crowd behind him that always seemed to grow from nothing at the drop of a gauntlet. And then he saw the familiar colours of a Lannister guardsman. “You! Do you recognise me?”
“You are Ser Jaime Lannister.” The guard looked a little bewildered but seemed to have a few wits about him.
“My horse is over yonder. Ride up to the Red Keep at once and find Edric Dayne, squire to Lord Dondarrion, the Lightning Lord. He is to come here immediately – his father, Lord Alster Dayne, is here and is very ill. Any questions?”
“None, Ser Jaime,” the guardsman said, looking a little pale. “I will go at once.” And off he went.
By the time that the litter arrived and Lord Dayne finally emerged from his cabin upon it the crowd was larger. And the moment that he saw Dayne’s face he knew that the captain had been right. The Lord of Starfall was pale, almost white. His cheeks were pinched and his eyes sunken. He seemed to be asleep, his chest barely rising and falling.
As the litter came down the gangplank Dayne stirred a little and opened his eyes. “Who is there?” His voice was thin and reedy.
“You are in King’s Landing, Lord Dayne,” Seaworth said quickly. “We are moving you to the shore. Worry not – your son has been sent for.”
“My… my thanks. Who are… you, ser?”
“Ser Davos Seaworth, Lord Dayne. I sail under Lord Stannis Baratheon, the Master of Ships. And this is Ser Jaime Lannister, of the Kingsguard.”
“I an honoured... to meet you both.” Then he paused and his face worked. “Dawn. Where is Dawn?”
Seaworth looked puzzled at this, but Jaime understood. And was also stunned. “The sword Dawn, Lord Dayne? You brought it with you?”
“I did. Where… is it? I must have it! It must be… passed to Edric!”
Jaime looked at Myras, who pointed at the ship. “It must be in his cabin Sers. He would not let anyone touch it on the voyage.”
Seaworth looked at Jaime, who nodded. “I will get it. I know what it looks like.” And he turned and trotted up the gangplank, turned to watch the little party move through the gathering crowd and into the inn, before entering the nearby cabin.
The cabin smelt musty, with a hint of herbs. He looked about – and then he saw the sword propped in the corner against a bulkhead. It was the same as he remembered it, when it had been carried by Ser Arthur Dayne. He had been a skilled swordsman, Ser Arthur. He had died in Dorne, at the Tower of Joy. That mysterious place that Ned Stark never talked about, other than to set his jaw and look even grimmer than usual.
He also remembered that Ser Arthur had been very particular – almost peculiar – about the sword. Only he could touch it. Not that it ever needed sharpening. He’s once asked Ser Arthur if it was Valyrian Steel – but he had just smiled slightly and shaken his head. “So very different,” he had said. “Dawn is… special.”
Jaime shrugged and then reached out to pick up the sword by its red leather scabbard. As he did his fingers touched the hilt – and the sword seemed to shudder and turn in his grip, as if it was a live snake. He dropped it with a stifled oath and then stared at the thing. What had that been? How could a sword shudder like that?
He took a deep and ragged breath and then looked about the cabin. He could see a cloak in the colours of House Dayne to one side and he grabbed it and then carefully wrapped the sword in it, being careful not to touch it with his bare hands. And then he picked it up and carried off the ship and into the inn.
As he entered he looked about and then noticed Devan Seaworth on the stairs, who caught his eye and then allowed him passage upwards. “I brought the Maester, Ser Jaime. He is with Lord Dayne now.”
He nodded and then saw the elder Seaworth standing by the door to a room. “You have it then?”
“I have it. May I enter?”
“Maester Dyren is in with him and-”
The door opened suddenly to reveal a short Maester with a grumpy expression. “Is that bloody sword here? Lord Dayne is restless without it.”
“I have it,” Jaime said, holding it up. “Shall I bring it in?”
“Please do so,” The Maester barked and then vanished within. Jaime crooked an eyebrow and then passed inside.
Lord Dayne was laid out on a bed his clothes rumpled and a look of stoic misery on his face as the Maester poked and prodded at him. He looked tiredly at Jaime, who unwrapped the sword and then laid it next to him.
“Dawn!” Lord Dayne cried weakly. “My thanks… Ser Jaime. Dawn has been… restless of late.”
The Maester looked up at this, his eyebrows waggling like caterpillars, before looking back down at his patient. As for Jaime, well he mumbled something polite and then fled the room, closing the door behind him. He hated seeing a man laid so low. And the sword disturbed him.
The two men waited outside the room for a short time, with Jaime trying to think of other things. And then the door opened and the Maester came out, his face set and grim. “A word Sers.” They both approached him and he jerked a thumb at the room. “He will not see the sun set. I am heartily sorry. But I am also astonished that he lasted as long as he has. A lesser man would be dead. He is a man driven.”
Seaworth pulled a face. “He is here to pass the sword on to his son. He thinks of it as his solemn duty. Apparently his son will be the new Sword of the Morning, whatever that means?”
Jaime stared at the open door, astonished. “’Tis a title borne by members of the Dayne family, those deemed worthy to wield Dawn. And those are few enough at times. The last Sword of the Morning was Ser Arthur Dayne. There has not been one since he died, at the end of the Rebellion.” A memory came to him, of the last time he had seen Ser Arthur Dayne. He had been riding in the retinue of Rhaegar Targaryen and had looked troubled, like a man with a great deal on his mind. And also on his conscience. He often thought about that moment. The Dornishman had seemed like a man repressing tears.
“Duty can be a terrible master at times,” Seaworth rumbled thoughtfully. “Lord Dayne needs to see his son very badly.”
Dyren grunted with agreement. “The mind, Sers, can be a strange and terrible thing. I think that you are right – his duty is keeping him alive. Once he passes his sword on I do not think that he will live long.”
Boots sounded on the stairs and Jaime looked over to see Stannis Baratheon arrive, with Lord Arryn behind him. He narrowed his eyes for a moment. Those two seemed to be as thick as thieves these days.
“Ser Davos,” Stannis the Brooding Baratheon acknowledged. “Ser Jaime. We received your message.”
“Is Lord Dayne really here?” The Hand of the King looked at them and then his eyebrows flew up at their nods. “Is he well?”
“He is dying my Lord,” The Maester said sadly but firmly. “He has a malady of the blood that is fatal. It cannot be treated. And as I told the good Sers here, I am amazed that Lord Dayne has lived as long as he has. He is driven my Lords, by his need to pass his sword on to his son.”
The Hand of the King’s eyes widened. “He brought Dawn here? To his son?” He ran a hand over his chin. “Then his son must be the new Sword of the Morning.”
“Perhaps so,” Jaime conceded before cocking an eyebrow at them. “He has requested witnesses.”
Arryn set his jaw and nodded. “Then we must honour his request.” He walked into the room, followed by the others and with Jaime bringing up the rear. Once inside he suspiciously eyed the sword that Lord Dayne was clutching. There was something about it that he almost feared.
“Who… is there?” Dayne had his eyes closed as if in pain. Slowly he opened them. “Ah. Lord…. Arryn. Lord Baratheon. I am sorry that…. I cannot stand to… greet you.”
Arryn smiled slightly and then gently clasped hands with the dying man. “’Tis no matter. Ser Davos and Ser Jaime said that you requested witnesses. We would be honoured to be amongst them.”
“My thanks,” Dayne said. His breathing seemed a little more laboured now. “Edric. Is he… here?”
“Not yet,” Stannis Baratheon said in a surprisingly gentle voice. “Word has been sent to him.”
Jaime tilted his head for a moment. He could hear the sound of a galloping horse outside, followed by shouts. After a moment more boots clattered on the stairs and Edric Dayne appeared at the doorway. He was a young man with pale blonde hair and eyes that were so blue that they were almost purple. Jaime did not know him well, but had heard that the boy was shy but clever. Brave too. He proved that now. He took in the sight of the men in the room and then bowed quickly.
“My Lord Hand. Lord Baratheon. Sers.” Then he darted forwards to stand by the bed. “Father.”
“Edric!” Dayne said with an attempt at a smile. “Thank the Gods you… are here. I am sorry… that I look so ill. You… must be… brave my boy. You will… soon be the Dayne in Starfall.”
The younger Dayne turned white with shock. “Father – no!”
He shook his head. “I am sorry… it cannot… be helped. But I… had to see you. To explain. And to… pass this to you.”
Only then did Edric Dayne seem to notice Dawn and to Jaime’s bemusement he seemed to go even paler, if such a thing was possible. “Is that… Dawn, father?”
“It is.” The elder Dayne seemed to rally for a moment. “My Lords – Sers. I ask you to… witness this moment. Who here will witness it?”
Arryn stepped forwards. “I, John Arryn, Lord of the Eyrie, Defender of the Vale, Warden of the East and Hand of the King do witness this.”
The grumpiest Baratheon cleared his throat. “As do I, Lord Stannis Baratheon, Lord of Dragonstone and Master of ships.”
Everyone looked at Jaime next and he stepped forwards. “I, Ser Jaime Lannister, Knight of the Kingsguard, do witness this.”
“And I, Ser Davos Seaworth, do also witness this.” Seaworth completed the quartet and Alster Dayne smiled a little.
“I, Lord Alster Dayne, do pass… on the sword Dawn to… you, Edric Dayne. This is the… sword from the stars, a star… that fell to earth. It was… found by your ancestors and forged… into a blade with one purpose – to fight back the night. To fight… the Others. This is… the sword of the First Men.” He reached out and grasped his son’s hand before placing it on the hilt.
Edric Dayne stood there, not moving an inch, his eyes very wide and then he slowly looked down at the sword. When he looked up again his eyes were bright with unshed tears. “I accept this sword,” he said in a low voice. “And the duty that comes with it.”
“Good,” said his father weakly. “You are… worthy of it. I know this. The previous… wielder, my own… brother, was not. Which is why… at the end… it failed him. You have… a great deal to do. But I… know that you… can do it. Ned – I am… so very proud of you. Always… remember that. But… there is… more. You… must go to a Godswood. This evening. At sunset. There is a pact. Must… be renewed.” His face worked and tears spilt down his face.
“It… isn’t fair. There is… so much I need to…. tell you. But I have… no time left.” He fumbled weakly in his coat pocket and pulled out a small leather-bound book and a key. “The key… is to my… solar. There are… things there… you will need. One day… at least. But the book… I have… written the most… important things down… for you. About Dawn. About… what needs to… be done. I cannot… see far. But the Call must… be answered. You must go… to Winterfell. At once. The Others… come.”
Everyone stared at the man. Was he raving? But he seemed to be very serious as he gripped his son’s arms with thin fingers. “Promise… me. You must… go to Winterfell.”
“I promise, Father. I promise. But why?”
“The Godswood. The book. And… the sword. They will… tell you.” He paused. “Does night… fall already? The shadows fall. I can… barely see you…”
The younger Dayne took his father’s hand gently as his own tears trickled down his face. “Night falls, father.”
“Then… there is the last thing. You must know this.” And then he pulled his son’s head down and he whispered into his ear. Jaime couldn’t hear what he said in that long, long minute, but he saw the impact it had on young Ned. He stared in utter shock at whatever it was and then almost jerked back from his father, only for the older man to take him in an iron grip and then complete whatever he was telling him. Only then did he relax that grip and release his son.
“I… am sorry… that I did… not tell… you… sooner.” He smiled weakly, his strength visibly ebbing from him. “I… failed you… in that. But… as I… said… I am so… very… proud of... you.” He peered around thorough dull eyes. “Is… Lord Dondarrion… here?”
“I am here,” said a sorrowful voice from the doorway and Jaime started a little as he realised that he had missed the arrival of the Stormlord. “Young Ned here galloped ahead of us.”
“Thank you… for your… letters… about Ned’s progress. And that… you feel he… has such… potential. Thank you… for training… him.”
“It has been a pleasure. And an honour to finally meet you,” Beric Dondarrion said gently. “Ned has come far and learnt much.”
“Will you… please… teach him… what else he… needs?”
“I shall. I do swear it.”
Alster Dayne smiled once more and then peered back at his son. “Ned? I can’t… see you.”
“I am here, Father.” Ned Dayne held his father’s hand. “I am here. And I am so proud to be your son.” He looked at his father and then raised his voice again. “Lord Arryn?”
“What do you need Edric Dayne?”
“My father has stood his watch as the Dayne of Starfall. Is he relieved?”
Arryn stepped forwards, formally. “He stands relieved. His duty is done.”
“Thank… you…” And with those words Alster Dayne sighed and then his chest stopped moving. After a long moment his son reached out and with a trembling hand closed the lifeless eyes.
Davos Seaworth cleared his throat and then jerked his head towards the door. “My Lords,” he said in a low voice, “We must give the lad a moment.”
The others nodded and they filed out as quietly as possible, leaving the boy alone in the room with his dead father.
Myras, who had been hovering in the background nodded at them all. “My Lords, good Sers, my thanks. Lord Dayne was a good man. Sunspear will mourn him. I shall take the news myself to Prince Doran.”
Arryn nodded in recognition and then scratched his head in thought. “Signs and portents,” he muttered after a long moment. “I like this not. What with everything else… I shall write to Ned about this.”
This surprised Jaime. “My Lord? Surely Lord Dayne was not… well… when he claimed that the Others had returned.” Raving mad with fever-dreams was the phrase that he wanted to use, but was not tactless enough to say.
The Hand of the King looked at him with tired eyes that seemed to burn for a moment. “Ser Jaime, things are happening elsewhere in Westeros that make me… worried.”
The old man was losing his mind as well. Ah well. And then Ned Dayne came out of the room, holding Dawn. Tears stained his cheeks but there was a look of such resolve on his face that Jaime straightened as he beheld it.
“Lord Dayne,” Arryn said gravely. “How can we help?”
“My…” His face worked for a moment and then he sighed and looked resolute again. “My father’s body must be returned to Starfall, to rest in the caves with his ancestors.”
“I am Myras, captain of the ship that brought your Lord father here,” the captain said quietly. “It will be my very great honour to take his bones home.”
“Thank you Captain Myras. Please do so, with my thanks.” He seemed to brace himself. “And I must go to Winterfell, as my father asked me to. Lord Dondarrion?”
“Yes, Lord Dayne?”
“I have learnt much. But as my father said there is more I need to know. Will you teach me a little longer?”
“As long as you need.”
“Thank you,” he said softly. Then he placed his hand on the hilt of Dawn again. “We are needed.”
Chapter Text
Arya
Something was going on with Jon, she could feel it. True, there were all the other things, like GreatJon Umber being in Winterfell, whom she liked very much, especially when he told rude jokes without thinking and made Mother close her eyes in despair whenever she saw Arya taking notes on them.
And then there had been Father the other night, who had apparently rode out in the middle of the night with his eyes on fire. When he had come back the next day his eyes then returned normal but there had been a direwolf by his side. A direwolf! It was all so exciting!
She paused as she crossed the courtyard that led to the crypts. No, Mother was nowhere to be seen, which was good. She didn’t want to be told how to embroider bits of cloth, she wanted to be out with Bran and Domeric, learning how to ride. A scowl crossed her face. She almost liked Domeric. He may be someone who played the harp a lot, but he was also someone who could ride a horse like a hero of legend and also use a sword.
No-one in sight, still, so she darted across the courtyard and into the doorway that led to the stairs down.
No, everyone was being odd these days. Everyone apart from her of course. And Rickon.
Robb spent half his time muttering over books and the other half drilling in fighting techniques like a veteran. Something had changed in him, he seemed harder in some ways. Theon was gaunt-eyed and seemed to have changed in other ways. He seemed less prickly and proud and more helpful. He certainly seemed to like helping with the archery lessons.
Sansa – she rolled her eyes and almost lost her footing as she went down the steps – well she was busy mooning over Domeric. And Bran was still sulking more than a bit over not being allowed to climb the wall of Winterfell. Father had made him swear not to. Had made him swear in Ice, which was odd.
And then there was Jon. Who seemed burdened by something, something that he wasn’t telling anyone. Not even her! And who often disappeared into the crypts when he thought that no-one was watching. Like now. She came to the end of the stairs, orientated herself and then padded along as quietly as she could. There were torches up ahead and she kept to the shadows.
There he was. He was placing flowers at the foot of one of the statues. And then he sat down and stared up at the face of the statue and she heard him mutter something too softly for her to make out. Wait, she knew that statue. It was Aunt Lyanna, who had died long before she’d been born.
She scowled again. Time for some answers. “Why are you here?”
Jon actually started with surprise and she smirked a little at her skills at creeping. “Arya?”
“Jon.” She walked up to him and then crossed her arms and directed her best glare at him. “In the crypts again, I see.”
He eyed her a little warily. “Very observant of you.”
“Why are you down here? What’s wrong?” She put all of her annoyance and frustration into her voice. “You’re not brooding again are you? I thought Mother was being nicer to you these days?”
He just looked at her and then smiled a little. “Brooding a little, perhaps.”
Horror roiled her. No. There could be only one reason for his brooding and Mother cheering up. “No,” she said fiercely, “You’re not going to! I say so, so there!”
He blinked at her. “Not going to what?”
“Leave Winterfell and join the Night’s Watch! I… I… forbid it!” And she stamped her foot to show her resolve.
When Jon just smiled at her this made her even more bewildered – and angry. “Jon Snow-”
“Peace!” Jon said as he threw up his hand in surrender. “I am not joining the Night’s Watch, I swear it on our ancestors.” And then something odd happened to his face, a mixture of emotions washing over it. “And soon my name will not be Jon Snow anymore.”
She stared at him as if he was mad. “What?”
He looked around and then finally back at her. “Keep this to yourself, Arya, but Father has written to King Robert about me.”
Puzzled she sat down by him and crossed her legs. “About what?”
“About my name,” Jon said gently. “Father has asked that I be legitimised.”
She stared at him, hope warring with bafflement. “You mean… you would be…”
“Jon Stark.” He said the words with a smile, but there was something in his eyes that she did not understand. “I will be a Stark of Winterfell.”
Arya rolled her eyes at him. “Silly. You’ve always been a Stark.”
That odd look came into his eyes again. “Some would disagree,” he said bitterly.
“Mother’s wrong about that,” she replied carefully. Then she scowled. “And about me and embroidery. Stupid thing. I’d much rather learn to ride with Bran and use the bow.”
“I know you would,” Jon said with a grin. “You’re a better archer than Bran is already.” He shook his head. “The Old Gods help the man you marry.”
She stuck her tongue out at him. “Long time ahead of me before that,” she muttered. “And besides, who says that I have to marry?”
“You’re a Stark of Winterfell,” Jon reminded her gently. “Father might allow you to choose, but you will have to marry eventually.” And then he looked back at the statue of Aunt Lyanna. “Although Fate takes us along odd paths.”
She nodded a little and then frowned. “Why are you here again? And why the flowers?”
He gestured at the statue. “It’s her birthday,” he said quietly. “Did you know that?”
Arya looked at the statue to Father’s only and beloved sister. She’d heard the tales, listened to the stories, felt the sadness in Father’s voice when he spoke of his sister and his eldest brother and his own father, none of whom she had ever met. Heard the tale of the Great Rebellion that resulted from the actions of the Mad King and his mad son. And she knew that Father had loved Aunt Lyanna very much.
“I didn’t know that,” she told him with some sorrow in her voice. “I really didn’t.”
“I thought that someone should remember,” Jon replied. “Father comes here on the anniversary of when she died. But not, I think, on her birthday. I think that it pains him a great deal to think of her.”
They sat there in the crypts for a long moment, before Arya finally nodded and stood up. “I’m hungry, and it must be almost noon. You’ll come up, won’t you?”
“I will, little sister.”
She looked at him again, her head tilted slightly to one side. “You haven’t called me that in weeks.”
That thoughtful, almost booding look came and went on his face for a moment. “I had a lot on my mind.” And then he smiled a smile that didn’t completely reach his eyes.
She smiled back and then walked back towards the stairs. Her brother was keeping a secret. She liked a challenge.
But then, as she walked along she saw a door where there had never been one before. “Jon?”
“What is it?”
“Where does this door go? I’ve never seen it before.”
“What door?” He stood and paced over to her, before staring in bafflement at the door. It was made from stone, or so it looked like, and it was open the merest crack. Arya walked over to it hesitantly and then peered at the surface of it. Reaching out she brushed a thick layer of dust off it, to reveal a carving of a direwolf superimposed on a man’s face.
“We need to tell Father,” they both whispered at the same time in awe.
Daenerys
It was all so exciting. So many people who spoke as they did in Westeros! So many beautiful horses! So many women and children! She felt as if she was in a small corner of the land she was exiled from.
She didn’t remember Dragonstone, she’d been just a baby when she had been spirited away from the island with Viserys. But she remembered dear old Ser Willem Darry, with his accent. The men and women around her had a similar accent – not exactly the same, but like enough to make her think that if she closed her eyes a moment she might be back across the Narrow Sea. It was almost intoxicating.
She’d bound her hair back and found a cloak with a cowl. It was a bit too large for her and some might find it a bit too hot in the sun, but not her. She was too excited.
They were going home and she envied them a little. The more she thought about it the more she did not know – not truly know – where she would call home. She missed the house with the red door of her youth. Unlike Viserys she did not miss King’s Landing, because she had never been there.
Neither had most of the Company of the Rose – to Westeros that is – and yet they were so keen to go home. The more she thought about the less that she understand it. Mind you, she didn’t understand some of the food either. She was staring at some now. It looked like a cooked tube of pastry the length of her hand with minced pork and green flecks in it.
“It’s a sausage roll,” said a voice to one side and she looked over to see a tall man with thinning hair looking at her. He was dressed like many of the men around them, like a man of Westeros, but whereas there was excitement in their eyes there was a tiredness in his, leavened with a look of distracted thought. “They tend to vary in quality, but that one looks quite tasty.”
“Ah,” she said cautiously. Then she pointed at a different food, a pastry half-moon with the round edges crimped. “And that?”
“A pasty. It’s a Northern delicacy.”
“Why is one side crimped like that?”
“It was made for miners and those that work on buildings. They often had dirty hands and needed something that could eat that had a rim – they’d eat the main part but not the rim.”
“I see,” she said and then looked about the square again.
She could tell that the other man was looking at her carefully and had now joined her in looking about. A moment later she heard a woman’s voice call out gaily: “There you are!”, and then a woman with dark hair and laughing eyes, dressed like an Essosi, strode up to her with a basket filled with food. “I wondered where you had got to. You shouldn’t stray too far, the Maester said that you are still recovering! Now then, Ser Jorah and I will take you back up the hill to the Magister’s place. You’ve had quite the visit, little sister, we can’t risk you getting any sicker.”
She opened her mouth to protest that she had no idea what the woman was talking about, when all of a sudden the woman linked her arm through hers with a deft speed and then half-pulled, half-encouraged her along. As she did she babbled endlessly about the pretty dress that she had seen, about how the Company of the Rose was going home, about how pale she was after being so ill and how the Maester had said that her hair would soon return to its natural blonde colour. The man who had talked to her – Ser Jorah – walked next to them.
She could see that she was being led along the road that indeed led to the Magister’s mansion and she wanted to protest again that she did not know them, but some instinct was suddenly screaming in her ears that she should go with them, that she was not safe. Ser Jorah would occasionally make a comment and once said that he had spoken to Lord Krats and that the leader of the Company of the Rose had agreed that he should escort her back up the hill.
Only then did she see the men who stopped following them abruptly, hands on daggers and suspicion in their eyes. They all looked at one man, who shook his head, and then they dispersed.
Once they were far enough away from the square and the crowd only then did the woman gently unhook their arms and smile at her a little more coolly.
“That might have been eventful,” Ser Jorah rumbled as they strode up the hill. “Daenerys Targaryen I presume? You were being followed by men who suspected that you were not what you seemed.”
She looked at the two with some suspicion of her own. “How did you know who I am?”
“You should have tied your hair back with a better tie,” the woman said, and she realised that some of her hair had indeed escaped its bond and was peeking out from the hood. “And the cloak you are wearing is of very rich material. Too expensive for anyone but a noble. The more you walked about the more that you were suspected.”
She found herself drooping a little. “My thanks, I thought that I had been so careful. And you are?”
“Leera of Myr. This is Ser Jorah Mormont.”
“Mormont… you serve with the Company of the Rose?”
He smiled a little and then shook his head. “Nay. I am of the North but not of the Company there. I was trying to find out why they are being drawn home.”
“Why are they going home?”
He paused a moment. “’Tis a complicated story to explain. Let me just say that they have good reason. A call has gone out. The North pulls the First Men.”
She stared at him a moment. “A pull to the North? A slight tug?”
He looked at her oddly. “In my case a violent yank, but how should you… ah. Of course. You have Blackwood blood in you. You feel it a little.”
“Why did you go there?” Leera broke in. “That was dangerous for you!”
Dany shrugged a little. “I wanted to talk to people who were from Westeros. See what they sounded like, looked like. I know that that they are exiles, but so am I and I… don’t remember home.” She was babbling and then she straightened up. “I was not in any danger, not really.”
The other two stared at her and then at each other. “Lady Daenerys-”
“Princess Daenerys.”
“…You were in danger. The men of the North – even those far removed from it – do not love Targaryens. The Company of the Rose came to Essos because they would not bend the knee to Aegon Targaryen. And these days they hate them even more. Especially since the Mad King killed the Starks in his throne room.”
She stared at him. “I do not know what you are talking about. What ‘Mad King’? Which Starks?”
This time the other two stopped in their tracks and stared at her, before exchanging a long gaze. “Does she jest?” Leera asked with what sounded like astonishment in her voice.
“Jest about what?” She was in danger of losing her temper. “Tell me – what ‘Mad King’?”
“Your father.” Ser Jorah said the words and as he did a chill of shock went through her. “In his last months all of Westeros called him the Mad King. For his crimes.”
“Even in Myr we heard about them.” Leera muttered, looking a little ill.
“My father was not mad!” Dany protested. “The people loved him! He was betrayed and murdered by the Usurper!”
“The people? The people called him King Scab at first. The Iron Throne was made from dragon-melted swords, but those swords are still sharp in places and your father kept nicking himself on them. King Scab – who saw traitors everywhere, and as the years passed then the more traitors he saw and the madder he became.”
She opened her mouth to protest, but he raised a finger in the air and then pointed at her. “Do you know why the North rose as one man to follow Ned Stark, the second son of Lord Rickard Stark? Even though he was the second son?”
She shook her head, bewildered.
“Because your father killed his father and elder brother.”
“I don’t understand,” she whispered. “Why?”
Ser Jorah and Leera stared at her as if she was mad. “You do not know?”
“All I know is what my brother told me. That my father was let down by fools and weak-willed men on his council That he was betrayed. He, he mentioned once that Lord Stark – the elder Stark – had been a traitor, but he never mentioned him again.”
Ser Jorah was now pale with what seemed to be shock, whilst Leera was clutching at his arm. “What do you know of your brother, Rhaegar?” He asked the words thickly, as if he could not trust his mouth.
“That he was knightly and noble.”
“He kidnapped Lyanna Stark, the daughter of Lord Stark and the sister to Brandon and Eddard Stark. Willingly or not on her part, we do not know. But they both vanished and her brother, Brandon Stark, rode to King’s Landing to demand to know where they were. Your father did not like that. He threw Brandon Stark in a cell, calling him traitor. Then he wrote to Lord Rickard Stark, demanding ransom for his son and commanding him to come to King’s Landing as well.” He said the words stonily and dread flickered in her heart.
“What happened?”
“Your father announced that Rickard Stark was also a traitor. Lord Stark demanded a trial by combat. Your father granted his wish. When, fully armoured, he arrived in the throne room of the Red Keep your father announced that he had chosen a champion to fight him. Fire.”
She blinked. “I have never heard of a Lord Fyre. And I thought that all the Blackfyres were dead.”
There was pity in the look he now directed at her. “Not a man. Fire as in the element. Lord Stark was suspended in his armour from the rafters and Aerys had his pyromancers build a fire beneath him, which was then lit. And as Rickard Stark burnt to death Brandon Stark watched it all, with a sword just out of reach and a special collar around his neck. The more he struggled to reach the sword the more the collar tightened. Your father’s orders, all of it. And that is why the North will never follow a Targaryen. And that started the Rebellion.”
Dany’s stomach turned over and she felt her skin go cold and clammy. “No,” she choked eventually. “No.” Leera looked at her and gasped, but it was too late. She darted to one side of the road and then fell to her knees and voided her stomach. “No,” she said again when she was able to, through a burning throat and a haze of tears. “I… I don’t believe it. I can’t.”
The Northman was standing to one side and looking abashed. “I am sorry,” he said hesitantly. “I should have found a less blunt way to tell you. But you had to know. I am sure that your brother has his own version.”
Leera reached into her basket and pulled out a stone jar with a cork sealing it. She pulled it open and handed it to her. She took it with a shaking hand and drank from it. It was some kind of water flavoured with lemon and sugar and it was delicious. “Thank you,” she said huskily, before standing again. “And… and I do not believe you.”
Ser Jorah and Leera looked at her and then looked at each other, before shrugging. “Ask anyone you like about the events of the Rebellion.”
“Apart from your brother.” Leera said flatly.
They walked back the hill in silence, Dany on rather shaky legs. As they reached the mansion she could see that the doors were open and then Magister Mopatis was watching them. He had a look of carefully hidden irritation at her. “Princess,” he rumbled, “I was about to send people out to search for you. But I see that this good Ser has found you.”
“She was in the square where the Company of the Rose were assembled. Leera here saw her and also saw that there were some there who were viewing her with some suspicion. So we – with the approval of Lord Krats, the leader of the Company – got her out of there with a small stratagem. It worked.”
“My thanks.” The Magister said and then he looked at her more closely. “Princess, you seem…. Upset.”
“I…” Her thoughts were in a jumble. “I did not think that I was in any danger. I know that I was wrong now. Your pardon Magister. Ser Jorah, Leera… my thanks.” And then she walked to her room. She had a great deal to think about. And she wanted to be sick again, at the thought of her father and the… things that he had allegedly done.
Jorah
He watched the child go and mentally shook his head. The Targaryen girl had just had some of her illusions shattered and he had been the person to do it. Well, it had to be done. The Gods alone knew what other rubbish her brother had poured into her head.
Mopatis tilted his head at him. “Thank you for finding her.” Leera concealed a slight scowl at being ignored and then stepped back as the Magister gestured at Jorah to step closer. “You said that you spoke to Krats. What did he say?”
Jorah thought deeply for a long moment. “He said something most odd. That they were going back to the North because they had heard a message. A call. From the North.”
“What message? From whom?”
“Winterfell, or so Krats thought. As to how it was delivered – he said that he came awake in the middle of the night, with the words ringing though him.”
“Words?”
“’The Others come. The Stark calls for aid. You are needed.’”
Mopatis stared at him as if he was mad. “The Others? They return because of a legend?”
“They seem certain of it. I shall return to talk to them again. They plan some ceremony this evening.” He paused, assessing his next words. “Coming after what I heard about the Dothraki…. Magister, something has changed in this world. The Company of the Rose feel a pull back to the North, a need to be there. And I also feel it. I have for many days now.”
The Magister’s stare changed slightly. It was still intent, but there was more considered thought behind it now. “Curious,” he muttered after a long moment. “Word has come from Oldtown. The glass candles can be relit.”
He heard a gasp from behind him and he turned to see that Leera had both hands over her mouth in shock. She noticed his look and then blushed a little and ducked her head in apology. Not that Mopatis seemed to notice. Instead he seemed to be so deep in thought that nothing could possibly make him notice anything. And then he seemed to return from wherever his mind had taken him.
“This changes everything,” he muttered. Then he paused. “If it’s all true that is. The Grey Waste means the Five Forts. And then…” He cut himself off, nodded at Jorah and then turned and walked back into his mansion, calling over his shoulder: “I will send word to Varys!”
Jorah watched him go and then turned to Leera. “Feel like another walk down the hill?”
“A little exercise never did anyone any harm,” she replied with a smile and then she linked arms with him and they walked back down the road.
“Where did you get the food?”
“I wanted to get something for supper. Good that I did.”
“Aye.” He frowned and then shook his head. “Her brother never told her. The swine.”
“He is a Targaryen, Jorah. The Dragons always held themselves to be above all overs.”
He remembered the aftermath of the Trident and then the Red Keep afterwards. The bodies being brought from the Black Cells. The tales of Aerys and his last days of insanity and barbarity, the burning alive of anyone who crossed him, the torture and the mindless cruelty. “We are well rid of them.”
She peered at him worriedly. And then they passed down the road to the square. There they found that the crowd was now quieter and also organised into groups that formed a great circle, each group having a furled flag. There was a tension in the air now, something that he could almost taste. Leera tightened her grip a little on his arm but stood next to him.
“Your cousins wish you two to stand with them,” said a voice to one side and he noticed that The Stone was standing to one side, leading a horse and holding a furled flag himself. Behind the horse stood a younger version of The Stone, along with a woman who looked like his wife and four other children of varying size. “When you are with them we shall begin.”
Jorah looked around in some confusion, but then walked with Leera over to where the women that The Stone had pointed out to him were waiting. They seemed to be amused, irked and expectant all at the same time.
“Cousin,” one of them – Lyra? – said. “Well met.” Then she frowned. “We have much to talk about. You resemble our grandfather by the way.”
She spoke with such an intensity and with a such a look of wry (and angry) humour that he was instantly reminded of Maege and all of a sudden he wanted to hug her and weep for what he had lost. However, she’d probably box his ears and tell him not to be a great dunderheaded fool, so he restrained himself and instead looked back to The Stone, who was walking with his horse and his family to the centre of the circle. There he took the furled flag from his son and grounded its spiked base next to his foot.
“We are the Company of the Rose!” The Stone cried in a loud voice. “With our kith and kin. We are the sons and daughters of those who did not bend the knee to the Dragons. We are those who remember the vow made by our ancestors. We remember. For many long years who have remained here in Essos, as was agreed.”
This was interesting, Jorah thought. Agreed by whom?
“But now everything has changed. We have heard the Call. The call home. The call from Winterfell. The Others come. We all know it. We all feel it.” The crowd rumbled in agreement and approval. “I know that we are bound by the Oath that our ancestors swore. But there is an older oath that we must obey, an older calling. We are of the North! We must always rally there when the call comes to fight the Long Night, to fight the oldest enemy of our people! How could we not? How could any man or woman of the North fail to rally against such a threat? Could I? No! Could you?”
“NO!” The crowd bellowed back and Jorah was startled to find that he had shouted too. Leera looked at him and then wiped the tears from his face with a quick finger and a fond smile.
“Then we must return home! Who will go with me? Who will heed the call? Which of the Houses who sent their exiles to the East will return?” He turned to face the various groups and then raised a hand to the one in front of him. “Will you?”
“House Bolton will!”
“House Cerwyn will!”
“House Glover will come!”
“House Karstak too!”
“And House Hornwood!”
“House Mormont will answer the call!” Alyse bellowed, leaving his ears ringing a bit and reminding him again of Maege.
“House Redstark will follow!” Jorah jerked his head at that. House Redstark??? Where had they come from?
“And House Ryder!” And that shook him like nothing else. Where had they been hiding? There hadn’t been a Ryder in the North since the arrival of the Targaryens, since… and then he started to wonder again about how this Company had been founded. Then he drew his attention back to the square. A few other houses had announced that they were going and then a tall man with three tall sons and two tall daughters stepped forwards.
“And House Umber! We too will answer the call!”
The Stone looked about the square and Jorah could see the shining tracks of tears on his face. “And my House too,” he rumbled, before raising his voice again. “We name ourselves true again. House Stark returns home!” And then he unfurled the banner and shook it a little so that the wind could catch the cloth. The Direwolf caught the breeze and boomed and snapped.
As did the other banners as the men and women bearing them lifted them in the air. There was a moment of silence and then the cheering started. Someone slapped Jorah on the back and he smiled as he wiped the tears from his cheeks. Why was he crying? Why did he feel so home with a group of strangers, even if some of them were kin? Was it the fact that he felt what they all did?
When he was finally able to, he turned to see Leera looking at him with a smile of her own and also eyes filled with tears. “You are going back with them, aren’t you?” Leera said in his ear.
He frowned and then nodded. “If I can get passage with them, yes.”
“Jorah, it will be dangerous!”
“I have to go. I am drawn there, drawn home, like they are. I will risk it.”
She peered at him, with large eyes. Then she nodded as if she had seen something in his face that made up her own mind. “Very well. I shall go with you, share your risk and face your fate with you.” He opened his mouth to protest, but she laid a finger over his lips. “This is not something we will debate. I have decided it.”
He looked at her for a long moment and then he pulled her to him and kissed her fiercely, hearing his cousins cheer him on with a number of rude comments. And he felt something that he had not sensed within him for some time.
Hope.
Arya
The brands guttered and flared as Father and the others approached the door. She had run to fetch Father as fast as her legs could take her, leaving Jon in the Crypt. When she returned – having run ahead of the others – Jon hadn’t moved a muscle, still staring at the door.
Father stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the door, forcing the others behind him to slow a little. When he started walking again he could see that he must have summoned a lot of people after she’d burst into his solar and gabbled that he had to come to the Crypts at once as she and Jon had found a door that they had never seen before, with a direwolf carving.
She could see Robb behind Father, and Mother. Maester Luwin was there, and Domeric, the GreatJon too. And then bringing up the rear was Theon and a bright-eyed and inquisitive Bran.
They all came to a halt before the door and stared at it. “I see that you were right,” Father said eventually, before smiling at them both wryly. “Well done.”
“Arya, why were you down here?” Mother asked with more than a little curiosity combined with exasperation.
She rolled her eyes for a moment. ‘Avoiding Septa Mordane’ would be the wrong thing to say, even if it was accurate. ‘Getting out of stupid embroidery’ was another accurate answer. “I was looking for Jon,” she said eventually. “I saw him come down here.”
Everyone looked at Jon, who looked back at Father evenly. “Today is… is Aunt Lyanna’s birthday, Father. I lit a candle in her name, in front of her statue.”
Father closed his eyes for a long moment. “Aye,” he said eventually in a thick and regretful voice. “I had forgot that.” He opened his eyes and there was approval in them now. “You did right by your aunt. Good lad.”
And then he shook himself a little and stepped closer to the door. “Now this is… interesting. I have never seen this here before. I wonder how long it has been open?”
Robb stepped forwards and joined their father as they examined. Then something seemed to strike him. “Father! The night of the direwolf – you vanished when you were possessed by our ancestor. When I saw you next you were coming up from the Crypts, from here. What if Edric Stark knew of this place and how to open the door?”
Father seemed to think about this for a moment and then nodded. “Ah, that might well be it.” Then he reached out and pulled on the door. It didn’t move. Frowning he handed his brand to Robb and pulled with both hands. It still didn’t move.
“Oh in the name of the Old Gods, Ned, give over. Let me have a go.” And the GreatJon stumped over, gave his brand to Arya with a smile and then braced himself and hauled on the door. Something groaned – either the GreatJon or the doorframe – and then there was a grating noise as the big man forced the door open. Once it was fully open he released it and then turned back to Father. “There you go Ned,” he panted. “Needs a little oil though.”
Father grinned at his old friend. And then he seemed to sober himself as he took back his brand from Robb, before stepping up to the doorway. And then he seemed to take a deep breath and stepped forwards into the dark room beyond.
As the others also followed him Arya squirmed with impatience, before finally squeezing in through the door at the same time as Bran, who protested vehemently. And then they both fell silent and still as they saw what was in front of them.
There were tombs lining the sides of the room. Pairs of tombs in fact. And statues too, also in pairs. Man and direwolf. Women too. Everyone stared around the dark, dusty room in some shock.
“By the Gods…” Theon said eventually. He was staring at one of the statues intently. Then he bent down and brushed the dust from a carving at the foot of the statue, before straightening and then stepping back in what looked like shock. “Lord Stark! This is… this is Edric Stark’s tomb. He and his direwolf, Thorn. He died… he died a thousand years ago.”
Father strode over and peered at the carvings. Then he looked around at the tombs and there was an odd look to his face. “Wargs,” he said eventually. “The legends were true. The Starks were wargs.”
“Aye father,” Robb said quietly. Then he looked at Father. “But are we still wargs?”
Arya felt her eyes widen. Wargs? Men – and women! – who could step into the minds of animals! And direwolves too! She shifted from foot to foot quickly and then she looked around the room. Robb looked almost wistful. Jon looked thoughtful, as did Bran. The GreatJon looked stunned, whilst Domeric… looked almost happy? Odd. Luwin’s face was a picture of concentration and Mother, well, she looked shocked and more than a little resigned. Also a little green for some reason.
She wondered why. And then she caught sight of a statue of a woman with a direwolf just to one side and darted over to it, rubbing on the inscription to read the name. “This one’s Dacey Stark! And her direwolf Huntress!” She looked about the room in delight – and then she paused. “Father – why did they hide this place?”
By the look on Father’s face he did not know. Yet.
Brynden
Anyone who had ever lived in the Riverlands or the Vale was well-acquainted with rain. But that didn’t mean that he had to like it. Brynden looked up at the sky sourly and then pulled the hood of his oiled campaign cloak a little further down so that the rain would hopefully stop dripping on his nose and not for the first time blessed old Ser Dalbert, the man who had given it to him so many years ago. A seemingly trivial thing, but he had cared for it over the long years and it had kept him dry. He thought back to the War of the Ninepenny Kings for a moment and then snorted a little. Had it really been so long ago?
The rain eased a little and he looked at the road ahead. Where was he going? West. Why was he going Southwest? He didn’t bloody know. He wondered how much of a mess his successor was making as the Knight of the Gate and shuddered a little. Hopefully Arryn had appointed someone competent.
Which brought the issue – again – of why he was going Southwest. He still didn’t know.
The road wound through a wood and he watched the trees cautiously. There was the occasional problem with idiots with blunt swords who thought that they could rob people. His brother tended to make object lessons of them.
Then he paused a moment. Speak of the devil. There were two bodies on the side of the road ahead, both with crude weapons next to them, or what remained of them. The old swords looked as if something had shattered them and the men looked as if what had shattered their swords had been a far better and sharper sword. He nodded in satisfaction. Good, clean strokes.
The rain lifted as he passed through the far end of the little wood and he peered at the horizon. The great bulk of Harrenhall was off to his right and he winced a little as he looked at it. He disliked that place, there was indeed something cursed about it.
He rode on, glancing up at the sky and assessing the sun. It was going down and at some point he’d have to think about where to sleep. The last inn was far behind him and he didn’t know where the next one was. This wasn’t a big road, nor a busy one. He’d normally make do with sleeping under a tree wrapped in his cloak, but judging by the cloud with a curtain of rain beneath it on the horizon that might not be a good idea tonight.
An hour later he was sure that he needed shelter. It was going to be a wild and wet night by the flash of lightning ahead. Longshanks was a pretty stoic horse, but he didn’t want him too spooked by the bad weather.
And then, as dusk started to fall, as well as a fine drizzle, he saw the great bulk of a crag to his right, and beneath that crag the light of what looked like a fire. He narrowed his eyes a little, remembering the bodies that lay far behind him and then shrugged a little. If they were willing to share the fire then he could bring food. If they were not, he could find another place. And if they eyed his possessions and then tried to rob him then he’d provide a messy object lesson.
As he approached the fire he dismounted and as he led Longshanks along he noticed a few things. The fire was in the mouth of what looked like a South-facing cave, one with enough of an overhang of rock over it that it was sheltered from the rain. And there was a figure there, standing behind the fire. A tall man, cloaked and hooded, but with one hand on the pommel of a longsword. He was peering at Brynden suspiciously.
He sighed and stopped, before raising his free hand. “Ho there! I saw your fire and with your leave would share it. ‘Tis a foul enough night and I have food I can share. Bread and salt for a start.”
The figure seemed to relax a hair at the mention of bread and salt and then nodded slowly. As Brynden approached he could see that the cave was a deep one and that there was a horse tethered at the far end, its nose in a nosebag.
“May I tether my horse at the back?” Brynden asked. The figure nodded again and he led Longshanks into the cave.
It was roomier than it first appeared and also drier. Someone had hammered spikes into the rock face at the back at some point and then attached metal rings to tether horses and he chose the one furthest away from the other horse. He unsaddled Longshanks and then pulled out a blanket and rubbed him down carefully, before hanging up the wet blanket over two of the rings on the wall. Then he pulled out the old familiar horse blanket, draped it over Longshanks, clinched it just tight enough, and then watered and fed him. And all the time he could feel the eyes of the other man on his back.
Finally finished he shouldered his saddlebags and then strode over to the fire, where he sat to one side of his suspicious fellow traveller. Reaching into one of his bags he pulled out a piece of clean cloth which was wrapped around the fresh bread that he’d bought that morning from the inn he’d stayed at. He pulled a piece off it, sprinkled some salt onto it from a little pouch that he always carried, broke the bread in half again and then handed it over to the other man. “Bread and salt,” he said, before eating it.
“Bread and salt,” said the other man and then ate his piece. There was something odd about his voice. The accent hinted at the Stormlands and the voice seemed growly, but as if it was being projected lower than was usual. “Thank you.” And then the other man turned to look at the fire. Brynden nodded slightly and then dug into his bag again, before finally pulling out a wrapped pack of cold but cooked sausages. He then pulled out his old campaign skewer, with its wooden handle, fastened a pair of sausages on the tines and then held the skewer just above the nearest flames.
The other figure watched in silence and then dug into the bag next to him and pulled out a small stone jar, which he opened and placed to one side. Brynden looked into it. Mustard. He nodded. “A trade then? A sausage for some mustard?”
The other man nodded and then sniffed as the smell of hot sausage started to grow. Brynden watched them critically and then pulled back the skewer before they had a chance to burn. The other man nodded and then teased one of them off with a small knife that he had pulled from the bag.
A little mustard was applied from the jar and then Brynden bit into his. Not bad. His flask contained some watered wine and he took a pull on it before placing another two sausages on the skewer and then putting the rest away. They’d last until tomorrow. Then he warmed the sausages whilst thinking about the other man.
Whoever he was he was not keen on showing his face. The cloak was good quality, the gloves too. From what he could see of the sword it too was well made. And the gelding back there was fit, well-cared for and might have had a splash of Dornish blood in it. But whoever he was he seemed keen to hide his face. Who was he?
The other two sausages were eaten and then he replaced everything in his bag. Thunder rumbled in the distance and he looked out at the night. “I’m glad I’m not out there tonight.”
There was a grunt in answer. There was also a whinny from the back of the cave and he sighed. If the storm got any closer then he’d have to see to Longshanks. That horse got skittish when it thundered too much and would need soothing.
He looked back at the fire and then thought. The question of where in the name of the Gods he was going was nagging at him again. Was this all a fool’s folly on his part? He had given up being Knight of the Gate – and for what? A fancy, a restlessness he could not explain, a need to be somewhere than he was right now.
The thunder growled again, louder and he sighed and then stood. “My horse hates thunder,” he muttered and then stalked back to Longshanks. The horse whickered at him and he stroked his nose and soothed him, as if he needed reminding that his master was still in the area. He’d be fine now.
He stalked back to the fire and sat. The rain was pounding down outside now. “Longshanks gets nervous at thunder. He’ll be fine now.”
The head of the figure jerked up at that. “Longshanks? Ah. I had thought I had seen you before once, from a distance. You are the Blackfish.” That voice was intriguing him now. It was low-pitched but was a little higher than before.
He peered at the figure. “I am Ser Brynden Tully.”
“The Knight of the Gate.” There was some admiration there. And then he had it. He was a she.
“I was. I am not now.”
She tilted her head and he saw a flash of bright blue eyes. “Why not?”
He stroked his beard carefully as he thought of his answer. “I was called away. Am still called away. By something I cannot explain. I am following a pull to the Southwest.” He smiled awkwardly. “That sounds foolish, I know. But it… nags at me. Especially the words from a dream.”
The woman had straightened as he had been speaking and she now pulled her hood down and stared at him in what looked like some astonishment. She was not a pretty and could be described as homely at best, with short, straw-coloured hair, a wide mouth and a nose that seemed to have been broken at least twice. But her eyes… Now there was something to behold. Large and blue and with something that seemed to blaze in them. She reminded him of someone, but he could not put his finger on who.
“You… are pulled Southwest? On this road? Since when?”
“A month at least since I heard the call.” He peered at her sharply. “You too?”
“Aye. T’was a dream in the night. I was travelling home from business for my Father in the Vale when I heard a whisper – and then a pull towards something that I cannot explain.”
“Southwest?”
“Aye.”
“Then perhaps we should travel together.” He paused. “I saw two dead bandits on the road some miles back there.”
She snorted. “Fools who saw a woman on a horse and did not think that I could defend myself. I corrected their mistake.”
“As was right.”
She eyed him again. “I will ride with you Blackfish. I am Brienne of Tarth.”
“Well met Brienne of Tarth.” He paused. “I have met your father, the Evenstar. A good man.”
“He is. Taught me all he knew.”
Brynden smiled and then nodded. “Do you want to take the first watch or the second?”
“The first.”
“Then good night and wake me for the second.” And then he wrapped himself in his cloak, laid his head on a saddlebag and fell asleep in an instant.
Jon Arryn
The figures were cold and bleak and they told a terrible story. And there were so many of them. He sighed at the thought of what they entailed and then rubbed at his forehead. He could feel a headache start to build. Ah well, he’d live. There was far, far too much to do.
Fingers drummed for a moment on the desk and he looked over to see that Stannis had finished his own perusal of the latest book that had emerged from the secret stash of such books in the possession of the late and thoroughly unlamented Petyr Baelish.
“Drowning was too good for him,” Stannis said in a voice that was tight with fury. “He deserved more than that.”
“I know,” Jon said with a sigh. “But he is dead enough. Now we must clear the rubble and build anew.” He stood with a slight wince as various bones protested and then walked to the nearest window and stared out at the morning sun.
A tap at the door and Quill poked his head in. “Your pardon my lords, but Janos Slynt is here as you ordered. And I have the forms that you also asked for.”
Excellent. “Thank you Quill. Please keep an ear out in case we need those forms.” Hopefully they wouldn’t. Slynt was a fool and a coward.
The man himself stamped in, looking as always like a plump fool who knew everything. Heh. Not today.
“Ah, Slynt,” Jon said as he returned to his desk and then looked at the commander of the Goldcloaks. “Are you well?”
Slynt, who looked rather more like a frog of late than before, blinked at him. He seemed a little nervous. “Ah, yes my Lord Hand.”
“You have seemed unsettled these past few days.”
Slynt swallowed convulsively. “I have? I mean – no, my Lord Hand.”
Jon leant back in his seat and looked at the commander of the City Watch again. He seemed to be sweating a little. Good. “A shame that your men were unable to find Baelish when I asked them to. As you know, I had to rely on my own man.”
“I am sure that we would have caught him, my Lord Hand,” Baelish mumbled as the sheen of sweat grew a little. “We searched most diligently.”
“Yes,” said Stannis darkly, “I am sure that you did.”
Slynt made a ghastly attempt at a smile and then, as a silence fell, he twitched a little. “Um – why did you summon me my Lord Hand?
Jon looked about the room as if he had forgotten – and then he leant forwards a little and pointed at the book in front of him, with all its damning numbers. “Do you know what this is, Slynt?”
“Um – no my Lord Hand.”
“It is one of the many secret account books owned by the thief and traitor Baelish. It is the one in which he recorded… certain payments.”
Slynt looked even sweatier than he had before. “Payments for what my Lord Hand?”
“Bribes.” Jon said the word in a voice as cold as he could make it. “Bribes to merchants. Bribes to officials. And bribes to members of the City Watch. Bribes to Goldcloaks.”
Slynt paled but then swallowed and objected. “Lies! Everything that Littlefinger wrote there is naught but lies! The man was notorious for his attempts to bribe my brave men and I but I took not a penny from him!” The words sounded brave but the sweat dripping off him told of fear.
Stannis gazed at him scornfully. “Have we mentioned you? Odd that the moment we mention bribes to Goldcloaks you immediately protest that you are innocent. Most odd that. Unless of course you have a guilty conscience.” He looked the man up and down and then sneered. “Or indeed that you even know what a conscience is.”
The commander of the Goldcloaks licked his lips nervously and then his eyes flickered from Jon to Stannis and then back to Jon. The words ‘I am trying to think of a plausible lie’ might have been written across his face. “I-”
But Jon cut him off. “Be silent! Your guilt is written here, plain to see for all! Bribe after bribe after bribe. Small ones at first, but then larger and larger as the years went by! And not just you – there is evidence here of a spreading web of corruption. The officers under you – how much did Baelish pay you to look the other way whilst you bribed them as well? And the others under them? How much coin have you been raking in from all over the place?”
His finger jabbed down. “Did you know that Baelish left notes about what he paid you for? No? How about this – ’50 dragons for Slynt on the matter of the son of Lord Tywald’. I remember that. The wretched little piece of filth raped three women here in Kings Landing and yet somehow none of them lived long enough to identify the boy in front of me. They all had their throats cut and I had to dismiss the matter, much to my anger. And now I find that you had a hand in it! I care not a jot that the boy later died when he was stabbed in the groin by another woman and in fact I would reward that woman if I knew who she was! You conspired with Baelish and Tywald to hide the truth!”
Slynt was as white as a sheet now, his fingers opening and closing convulsively at his sides. He was also shaking a little and there was a suspicion of something in the air that made Jon suspect that bladder control was becoming an issue for him.
“And the list continues! Not merely bribes, but crimes as well! Perjury! Murder in places!”
Slynt made a noise of protest but Jon again cut him off. “Yes, murder! Did you think that it can be seen in any other way? Men bribed to look the other way whilst innocent people were ‘disposed of’ by guilty men! Other men paid to lie to cover up the crimes of others! And all of this resulting in a steady stream of coin flowing in your direction, until it became a river!”
“Lies!” Squealed Slynt, very pale now. “All falsehoods and lies!”
“Liar!” Jon roared. “You didn’t even bother hiding the gold. And more than the gold! Baelish paid you in property as well! Three businesses that you had long coveted and which he was obliging enough to help drive out of business so you could ‘appropriate’ them! And you were too stupid to pass them on to anyone else, but instead you kept them for yourself!
“Thanks to you and Baelish the Goldcloaks are little more than another gang in this city. Goldcloaks? Middencloaks morelike! You’ve dragged your cloak through the filth and enough of it has finally stuck to you.”
He leant back and stared at Slynt. The wretched man had one hand on the pommel of his sword now and he looked as if he was a hairbreadth away from drawing it.
“If you draw that sword,” Stannis grunted, “You’ll be dead before the tips clears the scabbard. I promise you that, Slynt. I’ve killed a lot of men. Reachmen. Targaryen loyalists. Ironborn. Pirates. I’m not like the scum you confront. Whenever someone like you can be bothered to confront actual criminals. I can gut you like a fish where you stand. I promise it.”
Slynt eyed him like a cornered animal and then Stannis did something that unnerved the Goldcloak almost as much as it unnerved Jon. He smiled slightly at him. It looked a bit like a death-rictus, but it was a smile.
The Goldcloak made a whimpering noise and Jon made a note to get someone scrub the spot where he was standing. Yes, there was a small puddle there. And then Slynt lifted a shaking hand off the pommel and tried to say something. All that emerged was another whimper.
“Quill!” Jon shouted and the door flew open to reveal Quill and two other men in full armour and holding drawn swords.
“My Lord Hand?”
“This… man is under arrest, on charges of corruption. Strip of his weapons, his armour and above all the cloak that he has disgraced.”
“Aye my Lord Hand,” Quill said tersely as he removed Slynt’s sword and dagger, grimacing a little at the puddle. “And then?”
“The Black Cells. The King will work out what to do with him.”
Slynt made another noise of distress, but allowed himself to be led away by the grim faced guards. Jon watched them all go and then nodded as a servant darted in with a bucket to scrub the puddle away, before leaving, closing the door as he went.
“What will you do with the Goldcloaks now?” Stannis asked.
“I know not. Their upper ranks are as corrupt as Slynt. Takers of bribes – and that might be the least of their crimes.” He ran a hand over his face. “I think that the worst of them will have to go to the Wall. I can’t send them all though, that will leave the City in a parlous state.”
Stannis thought about this, looking about as grim as he could ever remember seeing him. “I see your point. Much as I would dismiss every guilty man, that would gut the City Watch almost completely. Winnow out the worst and then make the lower ones redeem themselves. Review them regularly. Who will you appoint in their place?”
“I know not that either. We need a man who can lead and not be corrupted. If he was not so vital to you I would suggest Ser Davos Seaworth as a temporary replacement. Or can you spare him?”
Stannis ground his teeth a little and then nodded. “He would do at a pinch. It would be a bad blow to lose him even for a month, but I could just spare him for a while.”
Jon sighed and then stepped closer to Stannis and lowered his voice down to a whisper. “We need more reliable men than we have. Especially as this business of the King’s Great Matter must be resolved and soon. The Queen has already sent me a list of men that she thinks would be suitable to be the new Master of Coin. Not one of them is acceptable to me.”
“Lannisters or men close to her father?”
“Both – and a number who would merely bind themselves closer to her in the hope of a future reward. I have no doubt that once she hears that the Goldcloaks need to be placed in order she will volunteer the services of a large number of Lannister guards – and then suggest some replacements for Slynt.”
“Then we shall have to pre-empt her. I can bring in men from Dragonstone, just as you can from The Vale. Reliable men. When we finally move, we need to control the City and the Goldcloaks are the key to it.” He looked annoyed. “This makes things… complicated.”
“Aye. We cannot move until the ground beneath our feet is certain again. And at the moment, what with Baelish and now Slynt… well, things are in flux.” He stared out of the window. “More in flux perhaps than I first thought. This business with the Great Sept and the tales of people looking to the North… Well, I need to send a raven to Winterfell to meet with Ned Stark as soon as possible.” He saw Stannis pull a face and he nodded. “I know, more delay. But something that I cannot explain is happening. In the meantime we must do what we can with the tools that we have. Send me Seaworth when you can spare him today. He’ll need to clean out the headquarters of the Goldcloaks with some reliable men as well.”
“I’ll send him when I can. Do you really mean to leave the decision of what to do with Slynt to Robert? I thought that you would send him to the Wall.”
Jon pulled a face of his own. “I do not think that my Goodbrother would thank me for sending the most corrupt man still remaining in King’s Landing to the Wall. For one thing he might try and sell it to the Wildlings. For another he might leave a trail of piss and slime all over it. I jest, but he’s a bad bargain even for the Wall.”
“True enough.”
There was a formal knock at the door and they both turned to face. “Enter.”
Quill entered. “My Lords, a signal from the harbour, from Ser Davos Seaworth. The King’s ship is in sight.”
Jaime
He was in a dark mood as he rode down to the docks behind the Hand and Old Stoneface. The encounter with Dawn the other day had stirred a lot of memories that he’d worked very hard to try and repress. Memories of his youth. Memories of his first days in the Kingsguard.
He’d worshipped some of those men at first. Arthur Dayne had been his ideal as a knight. What could be said about Barristan the Bold, except high praise? Jonothor Darry. Lewyn Martell. Names that had made him tongue-tied and nervous. And then of course old Gerold Hightower, the White Bull himself.
That admiration had died on the same day that the Starks had. Died in fire and blood and screaming, in a throne room filled with deathly silent men and woman, watching white-faced as a terrible crime was committed that eventually destroyed the Targaryen Dynasty.
“You swore a vow to guard the king, not to judge him.” Hightower’s words. Words he must have known were hollow and worthless. They had both known that Aerys was then far beyond mad. His cackling glee at the agonies of both Starks was more than proof of that.
But he was in the Kingsguard now. And effectively a hostage.
So he had turned his pride in his white cloak into something else. Duty. And then again into a careful watchfulness. Especially after the death of Elia and the children, after all he had done to save them.
And now here he was, Kingsguard to the Fat King, a man who had let himself go at such a pace that it still astonished him at times. He sometimes wondered why Robert Baratheon had wasted himself in the way that he had, before shrugging and deciding that he didn’t care anymore.
He shook himself slightly as they arrived at the docks and he repressed a more recent memory. The feel of Dawn twisting in his grip like a snake trying to get away. What had that been about? He had thought about approaching young Lord Dayne and asking him, before he and Dondarrion left for the North in a day or so, but for once in his life his nerve had failed him.
The sound of a growing crowd brought him back to where he was. Ah, the ship was approaching, slowly creeping next to the docks. It looked like all ships did to him, although if Seaworth was here he could probably tell him where it had come from.
He put on his best beaming smile for the crowd and dismounted. He filtered out what they were saying about him. He didn’t care.
And then he saw the king – and frowned. Robert Baratheon was prowling around the deck like a caged wolf, waiting for the ship to dock. When it did he stood by a stanchion and drummed his fingers on it as the gangplank was manoeuvred into place. And when it was, he at last stormed down it, with Barristan Selmy behind him and Renly Baratheon behind him in turn.
He did his best not to blink in surprise. The Fat King had… changed. He was still fat, but he was thinner than he had been when he had left. And there were other differences. He was clean-shaven now, with his hair also cut to half its length. And he blazed with energy, as if he had finally rediscovered some vital wellspring within himself. Oh and then there was the massive sword that was strapped to his back. It looked old and ancient – and dangerous in a way that he couldn’t put his finger on.
“Jon!” Baratheon shouted as he strode rapidly forwards, before clasping hands with a clearly startled Jon Arryn. “Good to see you again. Where’s my horse? That one? Right! The Red Keep and bloody fast. We have a lot to do.” And then he leapt on the proffered horse and spurred it into a fast trot up the hill, accelerating to a gallop in places as Selmy and Renly Baratheon took their places at his side.
Jaime and the other mounted as fast as they could and as Jaime galloped up the hill he wondered what in the name of the Seven Hells was going on.
In the end he did catch up with them. Sadly not through great horsemanship, but rather because they had stopped to stare at the head of the late Petyr Baelish. “Jon?” Robert Baratheon called out.
“Yes Your Grace?” Arryn panted as he reined in.
“Why is the head of my Master of Coin looking down at me from a spike?”
“He was stealing from you, Your Grace.”
A dark flush stole over the back of the big man’s neck and then he spurred his horse again, trotting quickly into the Red Keep. When they reached the main courtyard he dismounted. As Jaime also dismounted he got a better look at the sword. It was very old indeed. “I see that you have a new sword, Your Grace,” he called out. “Well, so to speak.”
Robert Baratheon turned on his heel and in doing so loomed over Jaime slightly and for a moment, just a moment, Jaime seemed to see the Demon of the Trident in front of him. And then Baratheon smiled and the spell was broken. He reached back and slapped the hilt of the sword.
“Found this at Storm’s End! The sword of my ancestors, the sword of the Durrandons! It was waiting for me in the Durrandon tombs there.”
There was a scoffing noise. “Durrandon Tombs? At Storm’s End? What nonsense is this?” Stannis Baratheon did not look as if he believed a word of what his brother had just said.
Oddly enough, instead of being angry at the scathing tone used by his younger brother, Robert just looked steadily at him. “It was at the end of the Long Passage brother, under where the Godswood used to be. It was young Edric who spotted that the stones at the end of the passage were mortared together, but the walls laid stone on stone. We took down the mortared stones and discovered that the passage led to the tombs.”
Stannis listened to this with a scowl and then what Jaime thought might have been the beginning a facial tic. “Truly?”
“Truly, Lord Stannis,” Barristan Selmy said gravely as he approached from one side. “I was there, along with Lord Renly. And within…” he seemed to shake his head in bewilderment.
“There was a statue,” the Fat King said solemnly. “And it was holding this sword here. I approached it and... the eyes opened. Magic, Stannis, it was magic! The eyes burned with red fire. ‘Storm King’, it called me and then it gave me the sword and told me to go North. Next bit’s a bit hazy as I think I fell over, but when I came to I was holding the sword. Jurne looked into the records and the inscriptions. Do you know what this is, Stannis, Jon? Stormbreaker!”
There was a long silence. It was broken by Robert Baratheon clapping his two hands together. “Right! Littlefinger’s dead, after stealing from me you say? So what else has happened?” And then they passed into the Red Keep as Arryn talked quietly to Baratheon. Jaime watched everyone go silently. He had the oddest feeling that the world was changing before his very eyes.
Robert
Much to his surprise Jon and Stannis did not take him to any room that he had seen before. Instead they seemed to wander until they found a smallish room without window and with a chimney that received a great deal of attention from the other two. Renly had wandered off somewhere and Selmy stood guard outside.
“I take it that I’m about to hear bad news for my ears only?” He saw Jon nod and he sighed. “Right then. If you’re both satisfied with this room, would you mind telling me why you’re so worried about eavesdroppers and then what the bloody hell happened with Baelish?”
“This place is a warren, Your Grace,” Jon admitted. “And there are far too many places for people to overhear things. I think that we never realised how paranoid the Dragons were. As for Baelish – he was indeed stealing from you. Stealing on a scale that still beggars belief. As Master of Coin he had every chance to divert coin. He even stole from loans made by Tywin Lannister. And also the Iron Bank.”
This rocked him back on his heels. “Oho! Ambitious of the bastard.” He thought about and then flushed a little. “Damn it! I always scorned counting coppers. I should have listened to you Jon. So – how bad is it?”
“Not as bad as I first feared. Ironically he was using the coin he stole to buy buildings and set up legal businesses. Because he often used further stolen coin to make improvements to those places, he increased their value. And because we found all of Baelish’s accounts and records we now own those properties and businesses.”
Robert stared at the man – and then threw his head back and roared with laughter. “Oh, very nice! Ironic! I take it we can sell them?”
“Aye, if need be. And we also found all the money he’d squirrelled away in Essos. The Iron Bank is happier with us now and Tywin Lannister is being sent the details of what Baelish owned in the Westerlands. ‘Tis a goodly amount.”
That was good. But then Robert stared at the other two. “There’s something else, isn’t there? What else was Baelish up to?”
Stannis stepped forwards. “Ser Davos Seaworth was taking young Robert Arryn North to White Harbour, so that he could travel to Winterfell and foster with Ned.”
“Aye, I remember talk of that. It’s a good idea – I’ve sent Edric there myself.”
“Well, one of the crew was a neer-do-well, hired by Baelish. His instructions were to kill Ned’s man Cassel, set a fire on the ship, and then flee with Robert Arryn.”
“What? Kidnap your son? Why?”
“We do not yet know, not truly,” Jon broke in. “Some scheme of Baelish, from his twisted mind. And… there was another plot. It seems that someone has been poisoning young Robert. He is free of it now. But… there is some reason to belief that Baelish gave my wife the poison by pretending that it was some kind of medicine.”
Various tendons crackled as Robert clenched his fists. “Baelish was poisoning my young namesake!?! It’s a good thing you killed him before I arrived – I would have used Stormbreaker to chop his fucking head off!!” He glared at them both. “Right. Now – what else?”
“The Mountain Clans of the Vale have vanished.”
He stared at Jon as if he was raving mad. “What?”
“I’m afraid you heard me, Your Grace. They appeared before the Bloody Gate and told the Blackfish that they were going to fight the Others in the North. And then they vanished. No-one’s seen them since.”
“The Others. In the North?”
“Aye. And then the Blackwoods and the Brackens called a truce and have sworn a great oath to keep that truce as they need to… erm, fight the Others.”
He knew it. Something had indeed changed, war was indeed in the air. But – the Others? They were a legend! Weren’t they? Then a further thought struck him. Stormbreaker was a supposed to be a legend too, yet it was now at his back.
“What else?”
“The statues of the Seven in the Great Sept have all changed and are now pointing North. The Septons are in an uproar over this… apparent miracle. And things are… unsettled as a result. Different interpretations are flying around.”
He sat down at this. “Gods, but I hate religion,” he muttered, running a hand over his face. “Right. We need to see Ned as soon as possible and we also need to lance this religious boil.”
“For the first part I was going to call him South to Riverrun, or even Moat Cailin, to talk about all of this business about mention of the Others. For the second part, I do not know. There is a final thing Your Grace.”
“Go on.”
“Baelish was bribing the Goldcloaks. Janos Slynt was far more corrupt than we had ever feared. In fact the entire higher ranks of the Goldcloaks must be sent to the Wall. They have all failed spectacularly.”
He scowled. “Gods, I knew the man was bad – but truly that bad?”
“Worse if anything. We have all of Baelish’s secret account books. It’s all in black and white. Slynt was paid to look the other way in cases of assault, rape and even murder.”
Rage filled him. “He was, was he? Very well. Ned always says that the man who sets the punishment must also swing the sword. I shall damn well do so. Stormbreaker will taste blood again.” He paused. “And I need to spar, before and perhaps even after that. Got too much damn fat on me. If a war is coming, I’ll greet it as close as I can get to how I was at the Trident.”
The other two gaped at him a little and then they nodded. “Brother,” Stannis said after a long moment, “What happened to you?”
This was a good question and he paused at the door. “I have a purpose again.” And then he swept out down the corridor, Selmy at his side. He needed to spar. War was coming.
Ned
He ate his breakfast in his solar that morning. He had a lot to think about and as he ate he looked at the map as the plans and, well, he brooded.
There was so much to do and he was starting to wonder about how much time he had left to do it. The Others had to be aware that he knew that they had awoken, that the North and the First Men had become aware of the threat.
But there were still the other threats in the South and to the Southwest that had to be dealt with. The Ironborn concerned him. He had been quietly investigating what was going on down there and what he was starting to see was deeply worrying.
Balon Greyjoy had been rebuilding his fleet under his bloody nose. How? He had his suspicions. Too many parts of the Western shores of the North were barren and had few settlements, so it would have been easy to sneak their longships in and harvest timber without anyone knowing. He had thought that he had been keeping a good eye on them. He had been wrong.
At lease Howland had sent men to garrison Moat Cailin and to restore the more easily repaired parts. He had sent ravens to order more men and supplies there. At the very least it could be a waypoint for any forces coming from the South. At worst it could be held against the Ironborn should they be stupid enough to attack.
There were times, in his darker moments, when he wondered if Stannis Baratheon had been right about the Iron Islands. Balon Greyjoy should have been removed from power and his head placed upon a spike and someone better, someone smarter, placed in charge. The Reader perhaps, or even one of the lesser lords. It would have freed up Theon from the poisoned chalice that would one day await him as the Lord of the Iron Islands.
Theon… was a different man now. He wasn’t a boy. He was grave and thought a great deal before he spoke about weighty matters, and he prayed every day in the Godswood. And he was teaching Bran archery. The lad had a gift for teaching, something that he had shown no signs of before.
His gaze wandered South to the Westerlands and his lips tightened for a moment. The Old Lion was another threat. A proud man and a man who did not like to be proved wrong about anything. Did he suspect that his grandchildren were not the progeny of Robert Baratheon? If so, did he care? Or was he too set on having Joffrey take his seat on that damn Iron Throne?
And who to the South knew about the Others? Whose ears had heard the Call? He wondered. Word had come from Lord Manderly that a shipload of men and supplies had arrived from the Stormlands, bound for Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. Volunteers for the Wall, they had told the rather startled lord of the city. Moreover, volunteers with swords, timber, food and coin. Did Renly Baratheon know about them? Did Robert? How far South had the Call gone?
The door creaked a little and he looked to see that Cat had entered and was looking at him fondly. “Good morning my love,” she said with a smile. “Breakfast in your Solar? Arya was asking after you.”
He smiled at her and then gestured at the map. “Too much thinking to do,” he sighed. “Too much needs to be done.”
She closed the door behind her and then walked over and sat in the chair next to him and looked at the map. “So much relies on us, doesn’t it?”
“Aye,” he said wryly. “So very much. We need to watch the North but also make sure that the things that happened in the South don’t vex us. What Robb saw is invaluable. We know that Balon Greyjoy is eyeing the North in revenge for his defeat now. We know that the Lannisters will fight to support Joffrey should he ever become King. And we know that Robert and Jon are in danger. Oh and we also know that Renly’s a fool.” He shook his head. “If only I’d known what I know now when I’d gone South to King’s Landing in that other future.”
Cat turned a little pale. “I do not like to think about that future,” she said faintly. “You dead, Robb trying his best to fight a war, Sansa a prisoner, Arya missing, Bran unable to walk, our home here lost…”
He was on his feet in an instant, crouching next to her. “It will not happen now, Cat. We’ve seen to that. The North is mobilising for the Long Night and the South is starting to respond. We need to talk to Robert, and right soon, but what happened in that other future will not happen again.” He smiled at her and then kissed her gently on the lips. “I swear it. It will not happen, that future saw.”
Cat smiled a little tremulously at him. Then she sighed. “Ned, the vault we found. Do you really think that they were Starks who were also wargs?”
“I do,” he said softly. “Luwin has been translating the runes on the tombs. They were wargs.”
“Then what are the chances that any of our children are wargs? Or you, or Benjen?”
Ah. And that was something that he was wondering himself. “Cat, I don’t know. I wish I could tell you that I knew, but that would be a lie. When the direwolves are born… well, we will have to see what happens. The fact that the mother is here and seems so… compliant… is, well, astonishing.
“Cat, I know that much of this must be alien to you and I am sorry. But this is something that is buried deep in the history of my family. I barely understand it myself, and I am supposed to be the Stark in Winterfell.” He shook his head. “But this is something that is a part of me – and our children. The Old Gods have spoken. I know that you worship the Seven, and they must their own role to play, but this is the North Cat. The Old Gods have given us a second chance and we must take it.”
She smiled at him again. “I know it. Ned… I saw Luwin this morning. I wanted him to confirm something. I am with child again.”
He stared at her, his heart soaring within him. “Truly?”
“Truly.”
He whooped with joy and hugged her, before fearing that he was being too rough with her. “I am sorry, I shouldn’t have done that, the baby-”
“Is not due for some time and I am not made from glass, Ned!” Cat’s eyes were warm and amused and also contained a challenge.
“Another child… yet another departure from the future that Robb saw. With every step away from that we tread a new path. And that both reassures me and frightens me Cat. We have gone from one war with rules that we understand to another war that was last fought by our ancestors – and with rules that are clouded by time.” He caught her look of sudden understanding. “We face an enemy that we have never fought before, with powers that we do not understand. An enemy that can make the dead walk.
“I have ordered the walls of Winterfell checked for any damage, I have ordered that the Broken Tower be inspected for repair – and I have a plan for that anyway.”
She looked at him sharply, but at that moment someone knocked at the door. “Who is it?” Ned called.
“Luwin, my Lord. I have messages.”
“Come in,” Ned sighed as he stood and watched as the Maester bustled in. “Who are they from?”
“A raven from Dragonstone first, my Lord,” Luwin said as he handed it over. “From his Grace the King.”
Neds felt his eyebrows fly upwards. “What was Robert doing in Dragonstone?” Then he looked at the message – and if his eyebrows could have gone up any further then they would have. “’Ned, am writing in haste from Dragonstone, travelling from Storm’s End to King’s Landing. Have found the sword of the Durrandons in Storm’s End. I’m sending my son Edric to foster with you at Winterfell. Treat him right, please, he’s a good lad. There’s a storm coming. Don’t know what or where, but stand ready. Robert, King, etc, etc.’”
He lowered the letter and felt a fierce exultation fill his heart. “Robert’s Durrandon blood sings true! Although where he found the sword of Durran Godsgrief is a mystery to me.” He paused. “And he’s sending his bastard son Edric here.”
“We will have to keep an eye on him,” Cat sighed. “And given what we know about Joffrey’s true parentage it will be more important than ever to keep him alive. Cersei Lannister will not take it kindly either.”
“I care not a whit for what Cersei Lannister thinks of us. I trust her about as much I trusted Aerys Targaryen – not at all. She is dangerous and false. The problem is that Robert is not aware of her true nature. We must deal with her at some point – and defang her brother and their father at the same time.” He looked up and saw that the other two were staring at him. “I have given this matter some thought. In the meantime – you have another message for me Luwin?”
“Aye my Lord,” the older man said with a slight shake of his shoulders as he seemed to settle himself. “From the Redfort, in reply from your message.” And he held out a thick package.
Ned took it and opened it. Inside was a sheath of papers, secured with a ribbon with a wax seal, with the personal seal of Lord Redfort pressed into it. “Ah. The answer to my letter. Thank you Luwin. Cat – we have some reading to do. We might soon know the answer to the question of if Domeric’s suit to marry our daughter can be granted or denied.”
Willas
He came awake slowly. He felt hungry, and so very, very, thirsty. He also felt weak, as if he had been ill. He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. He was… in his bed? How had he gotten there? Why was his head so fuzzy? Then he frowned. His leg didn’t hurt. How odd.
Licking his lips made him realise how dry and cracked they were and he sat up slowly.
As he did he realised that he was not alone. Margaery was asleep in a chair next to his bed and by the main window that looked out over Highgarden Grandmother was embroidering with a scowl on her face.
“What happened?” He croaked through a throat that seemed drier than the Bone Road.
Grandmother looked up from her embroidery. “Aha,” she said caustically. “The sleeper awakens!”
Margaery came awake abruptly. Her hair looked dishevelled and her eyes were red, making him think that she had been crying. “Willas! You’re awake!”
“I need a drink,” he croaked, looking around. Then he saw a goblet to one side and reached out with a shaking hand. He very nearly dropped it, but Margaery took it from him and then brought it to his lips. He wanted to scold her for treating him like a child but at the very sight of what looked like watered wine he desired nothing more than to drink every drop within. He almost choked on it at first, but by all the Gods it felt good to drink it. And he did drink every drop.
“Is there any food in here?” The question came out in an almost normal voice and at the very thought of food his stomach growled.
“Here,” Grandmother said as she crossed the room, clutching a plate of what looked like honeycakes in one hand whilst her cane clacked on the floor. “Eat these.” She placed the tray on the bed in front of him and then pulled up a chair as he grabbed one and ate it in two bites. “You seem yourself again. Good.”
Willas grabbed the second honeycake and then peered at her. “What do you mean?”
Grandmother leant back in her chair and then eyed him critically. “You’ve been asleep for some time, boy. And this has not been the first time that you’ve woken up since you found that room with the statue.”
The room with the statue… he cast his mind back. “Garth Greenhand!”
“Aye, Garth Greenhand. In a room that no-one had ever known of. But you found it.”
He frowned again and then ran a hand over his beard. “It all seems… fuzzy. Indistinct.” Then he frowned at her again. “What did you mean, that wasn’t the first time I’d been awake? The last thing I remember is being in that room.”
Grandmother swapped a look with Margaery. His sister looked worried. His grandmother looked slightly puzzled.
“Willas,” Margery said hesitantly, “Two days after you collapsed you woke up, shouting orders. Orders to men long dead.”
“You sounded as if you were ordering men whilst in battle,” Grandmother said quietly. “And the names you were shouting… well, they were to the sons of Mern the Ninth. You seemed to be on the Field of Fire. You seemed very distressed, shouted something about dragons, drank two cups of wine, ate a plate of food and then fell asleep again. Oh and you pinched the bottom of the maid who brought you your food.”
He stared at her, baffled. “I did?”
“Oh yes. With hindsight, it was all most amusing. And then seven days after that you awoke again, used the privy, dictated three letters to men long since dead, including Loren Lannister, about mobilising men against Aegon Targaryen, ate three honeycakes and drank a goblet of watered wine, pinched the bottom of the same maid and then collapsed.” She leant forwards. “So, as you can imagine I am very happy to see you in your right mind again.”
He eyed her bemusedly as he swallowed the last of the honeycakes. “I don’t understand.”
“Willas,” Margaery said tearfully, “We thought that you would never wake up again.”
He looked at her and smiled. “And yet I have.” He paused. “I feel as weak as a new-born kitten though.”
“You are awake at least, which is good. And apparently in your right mind. The Maester was worried. As was I.”
“I told you not to worry yourself, child,” Grandmother harrumphed. “I always thought that your brother would awake. That Maester is a ninnyhammer.”
Margaery looked at her. “Grandmother, you were worried too.”
“I was not. I never worry. I muse.”
His sister shot him an amused look and then reached out and grabbed Grandmother’s embroidery. “Then explain this.” She passed it over to Willas, who looked at it and then snorted with amusement. Grandmother had embroidered a picture of a man in Maester’s robes being chased by an angry thorn bush. “You were worried.”
Grandmother snatched it back. “I may have been slightly concerned. Now – how do you feel?”
Willas considered this question carefully. His stomach no longer felt as if it had a kitten loose in it. “Still weak, but no longer as hungry. And my leg no longer hurts.”
“Try standing.” It wasn’t a request from Grandmother, it was more like a command. He blinked at her and then moved to the end of the bed. Pulling the sheets aside he could see that he had been dressed in a robe (who by?) that preserved his modesty – and then he stared at his leg. His bad leg. Which no longer looked as if the bone had been broken and reset. It looked… fine. It didn’t hurt.
He slowly stood. Tested his weight a little and then took a cautious step forwards. He was weak and wobbly on his feet – but his leg didn’t hurt at all. “It doesn’t hurt,” he whispered. “It really doesn’t.” He looked around at the other two and saw their sudden smiles. Then he remembered the statue. “I need my clothes. I have to see what I discovered.”
“Good,” Grandmother muttered. “You can make better sense of it than your fat fool of a father.” She sounded even more acerbic than she usually did when talking about Father and Willas looked at Margaery, who pulled a slight face in response.
Grandmother, naturally, noticed this. “Oh stop that. I gave birth to him and I have every right to call him an idiot. How any child of mine could have the brains of piece of wood is beyond me. Your father has not reacted well to that room. He’s been going around telling people that he always suspected that there was something there in order to make himself appear less clueless. He’s almost ordered it bricked up three times.”
Willas frowned as he walked over to his dressing screen and then pulled off his robe. “Why?”
“Because he’s afraid of what it represents. It’s a symbol of the Gardener Kings – and your father never forgets that House Tyrell were merely the Stewards of Highgarden and not the kings of it. You have the blood of the Gardeners in your veins, children, but there are others who claim that their claim is stronger. The Florents, Rowans, and Oakhearts. And all have sent messages to your fool of a father in the wake of the finding of that statue. He thinks that this is all some new gambit of the Game of Thrones, or The Reach’s equivalent. Games that he is truly terrible at playing.” She paused. “Are you getting dressed boy?”
“I think,” He said deliberately after sniffing at himself, “That I need to bathe first. I smell.”
He did indeed and he put his robe back on and ordered a bath to be drawn at once, whilst a clearly much happier Margaery and Grandmother vanished outside. As he waited he drank another cup of watered wine and ate a plate of bread and ham that he ordered. He noticed that the maid who brought the food eyed him carefully with a suspicion of a blush and he wondered if that was the maid that Grandmother had mentioned. It seemed that even possessed he had good taste and he smiled warmly at her and saw the blush grow more than a little.
The bath did him a lot of good and he dressed quickly afterwards and strode out. It was odd to walk without a cane for the first time in years and he found the hand that usually grasped it feel oddly empty. Perhaps he should start wearing a sword again.
Grandmother was sitting on a bench outside, basking in the sun and as he approached she looked at him. “So,” She said eventually, “Want to see what mischief you have wrought?”
He looked at her. “Yes.” A simple, short answer, but all that needed to be said on this.
She looked at him almost approvingly. And then she took him to the room. There was the statue that he so dimly remembered, and the little stream that now bubbled cheerfully up and out of the room. Someone had left fresh flowers at the foot of the stone figure and he peered at the face of his distant ancestor. Garth Greenhand. There were other statues of him elsewhere in Highgarden, but this one seemed different. Clearer, somehow.
“’Make the Garden bloom again’… what does that mean?”
Grandmother shrugged. “I know not. But many want to talk to you about what it could mean. Your father wants to ignore the whole thing.”
“No,” Willas snapped abruptly. “We cannot. This means something. And… what help needs to be sent to Winterfell?”
“You remember that part do you? Good.” Grandmother most assuredly sounded approving now. “No cheese in your ears or in your brain, unlike your fool of a father.”
He thought hard. There was no shame in admitting that he needed more information. “We need to access the archives Grandmother, see what the Gardener Kings used to send North, if anything. We need more information than we have at the moment. And this is not a matter that can be dismissed. This is not a gambit in the Game of Thrones, nor a conspiracy by the other houses. This is a relic of the past with a message for us.”
“Your father will disagree and tell you that it’s all mummery.”
He felt his expression harden into something that looked rather like the look on Grandmother’s face at the moment. “Father is wrong.”
Grandmother smiled at him. “I taught you well.”
Chapter Text
Ned
He stared at the map again as he waited for Cat to bring Sansa to his solar. The letter from Lord Redfort lay on the table and he thought about that other message that lay with in it. ‘The Redfort prepares for war,’ Lord Redfort had written. ‘I am told Runestone does too. The Stark calls for aid. Command us.’
The call had indeed been heard South of the Neck and he needed to work out the implications now. The Redfort and Runestone owed their allegiance to Jon as the Lord of the Eyrie and Defender of the Vale. For them to send help to the North would mean that Jon would have to be told about what was going on. There were political implications now.
The sound of footsteps and the noise of the door opening dragged him away from his thoughts and he looked over to see Cat leading his oldest daughter into the room before closing the door very firmly behind them.
“Sansa, be seated. I hope that we didn’t tear you away from anything important?”
She shook her head, looking a little bewildered. “I was watching Domeric give cousin Robert a riding lesson on a pony. He seemed very intent.”
“Domeric or Robert?”
She smiled a little. “Both. Annah was watching intently on one side and Domeric was on the other telling Robert what to do and what to look for on the horse. Robert seemed very keen to learn.” She then frowned a little. “Cousin Robert seems sharper than he had been before, Father.”
“He is, I know,” Ned agreed, as he placed a chair to one side for Cat, fetched his own chair and then stared intently at her. “Sansa, we must talk about a very important subject. Did you know that Domeric Bolton had asked me for your hand in marriage?”
She turned a little pink and sat up straighter in her seat. “I… I did know. Domeric mentioned it to me. He was very respectful and considerate – knightly in fact.” Then she peered at them both. “You have thought about it for some time Father?”
He leant back in his seat. “I have. It is not a thing to be taken lightly, your future happiness. Especially as a marriage between a Stark and a Bolton would have… ramifications. You know the somewhat vexed history of our two houses, do you not?”
Sansa stared at him and then laughed nervously. “But Father – that is all ancient history.”
He stared back at her and then passed a weary hand over his eyes. “Oh, Gods,” he muttered, “It seems I neglected your training as well.” Then he looked at Cat. “What nonsense has that Septa been teaching her?”
“I will enquire,” Cat replied in a cold voice and with a long-suffering look at the ceiling. “And yes, we should have taught her otherwise.”
“Mother?” Sansa asked incredulously.
Ned cleared his throat. “Sansa – this is important. You might think that it is ancient history, but it is not. It still has relevance. I have an… understanding with Roose Bolton, as I know what kind of a man he is. He secretly yearns for the old days, when his family had certain… hobbies.” Sansa turned white – but less white than he might have thought. Interesting. Did she suspect?
“And if Roose Bolton was offered a chance at supplanting us, say if I died and Robb became Lord of Winterfell, then he might try, if the opportunity presented itself. He is a cautious man, but given sufficient incentive he might cast off the mask and reveal his true face. And given the monster that was his bastard son, we have to wonder how closely that particular apple fell to the tree it grew from. So you can see that I have concerns about Domeric.”
Sansa had grown even paler. “Father-”
“Did Domeric tell you about his half-brother?”
“He did. He said that if he had known half the things he now knows about him he would have ridden out and cut him down like the animal he was, even though he would have been labelled a kinslayer.”
Ah. That was a good point. She started to open her mouth again and he raised a hand in a gesture for her to be silent. “I have heard him say something similar. When I first heard that he was coming here I wanted a chance to observe him closely. Given who his father is and given what I later heard about his half-brother, I wanted to watch him very closely indeed.” He leant back in his chair again. “What I have seen of him has been good. He is courteous, well-read, behaves well around the other children and above all I have heard nothing bad about his behaviour from the standpoint of the smallfolk and the servants. That last point is important.”
Her face scrunched slightly as she thought about it, but he then ploughed on. “Part of the reason why I have waited for us to have this conversation is the fact that I wanted to observe him. The other reason is that I was waiting for a reply to a raven I sent to Lord Redfort in the Vale, where Domeric was fostered. He sent me this today.” He lifted the letter.
“Lord Redfort is very complimentary about Domeric,” Cat said softly. “And he has written a great deal about him. About how he learnt to ride and then passed on those lessons to others. About he treated the servants there fairly. And how none of the smallfolk made a single complaint against him.”
“Aye, the letter took us some time to read, but was very detailed.” He looked at his daughter. “Lord Redfort had also heard of Roose Bolton and wanted to keep an eye on him. It seems that there was no need. Domeric… is not like his father. In fact he absorbed a great deal from Lord Redfort and his sons about what it means to be knightly.”
Sansa smiled at that and sat even straighter. “Father,” she said hesitantly, “Domeric and I have… talked about his plans for his house. And he does have them. He told me that he will never follow the path that his ancestors followed and which he suspects that his father yearns for.”
And then his daughter took a deep breath. “He has asked my help for something Father. The design of a new banner for his house. He has told me that when he succeeds his father he will replace the banner of the Flayed Man with another one. We have been discussing what would be fit.”
Ned stared at her and then looked at Cat, who raised an eyebrow in surprise. “A new banner would fly over the Dreadfort?”
“Yes Father.”
That was… astonishing. Such a thing had not been heard of for many a long year in the North. The noble families had their banners and sigils and they stuck to those banners and sigils. For Domeric Bolton to discuss this with Sansa meant that he was more than serious, he was in deadly earnest.
He stroked the tip of his nose for a long moment and then he looked at Cat, who nodded the barest tilt of her head. “Sansa, should we agree to Domeric’s suit then you must understand something. Marriage can be an alliance between families – and more than that. It is not just a matter of providing heirs. When I married your mother I barely knew her, something I regret very much. But we forged a love that has withstood much and I rely on her for many things.
“Should you marry Domeric then there is something that you must hold to. As well as giving him children and helping to run the Dreadfort and the area around it, you must keep him to this path that he has outlined to you. Life here in the North is never easy and there is a Winter coming that will freeze many men and women down to their very bones. The Long Night comes, Sansa, you know it, as we all do. As does Domeric. He must never be allowed to go down the road that his father secretly yearns for. He must never produce a Ramsey Snow. Preventing that, keeping him the Domeric Bolton of the Redfort, will be one of your tasks, should you marry him. And it will be a hard task given the war that will come.”
Sansa was very pale as she stared at him. So, to that matter, was Cat. He knew that his wife knew very well what he was asking their daughter to do, how important it was. “Sansa, sweetling, we would have you happy,” Cat said after a moment. “But we would also have you open your eyes to what a marriage with Domeric Bolton would mean. As your father said, there is the Long Winter coming and a war with the Others. But you cannot let that distract you from your duty if you marry Domeric. Now – do you need time to think about this?”
Sansa sat very still for a long moment, her eyes far away as she thought things through. There was a struggle visible on her face, one that she had obviously not expected to ever have to confront. “No,” she said eventually. “I believe in Domeric. I have talked to him, considered his words. Given your views and those of Lord Redfort… I can only say again that I believe in him. Mother, Father – I love him.”
He looked at her gravely and then at Cat, who raised her eyebrows at him and then lowered them when he nodded seriously at her. “Very well,” he said with a slight smile, “I shall tell Domeric that we look favourably upon his suit. And then-” Ned felt the smile slip from his face. “Then I shall send a raven to Roose Bolton. He and I have much to discuss.”
Jory
The boy who had once been so pale and wrong in the head pulled on the reins and the little pony slowed to a halt, before turning in a careful walk at the gentle urgings of the boy. Only when the pony was facing the other way did he look up at the watchers.
“Good,” said Domeric Bolton, “Very good indeed Robert. You’ve done well.”
Robert Arryn beamed widely at them all, especially when Jory and Annah both smiled at him. “Domeric, can I ride him a little further tomorrow?”
The son of the Lord of the Dreadfort appeared to think about it, his hand rubbing at his nose – but Jory could see the small smile that he was concealing under his hand. “I think so. A little further every day. Your horse is important Robert. It’s getting used to you, just as you are getting used to it. You wouldn’t expect to suddenly be forced to walk for ten miles with a pack on your back, would you?”
Robert Arryn shook his head, his eyes suddenly very wide and thoughtful. Then he solemnly dismounted, held the reins in his hand and looked at Domeric. “I had not thought of that,” he said musingly and then looked at his horse. “I wish I’d had my own horse at King’s Landing. Mother never let me near one. How can I get one here?”
“You ask me or your Uncle Ned and we will get you one. Do you want that one?”
Jory started a little. Lady Stark could be very quiet sometimes. “My Lady,” he said formally. “Lord Robert has been practicing his riding skills.”
“So I see,” she said with a smile. “I watched for from afar.”
Robert Arryn beamed at her. “Aunt Catelyn! Were you really watching me?”
“I was - You are getting better and better!”
His smile got even wider, before he suddenly became more serious. “I like this pony very much, Aunt Catelyn. His name is Surefoot.”
“A good name for a horse,” she said and then looked at Jory and Domeric. “Who picked him out?”
“I did Lady Stark,” Domeric said quietly. “He seemed to have the best temperament for your nephew. He’s young as well. They seem a good match.” Something seemed to pass between them and Lady Stark nodded slightly before turning back to Robert.
“Well then, as you seem to like him, would you like Surefoot to be your horse?”
The little boy stared up at his aunt with very wide eyes. “He would be mine?”
Domeric squatted down to be on the same eye level as the boy. “He would be yours. But you would have to take care of him. A good knight takes care of his horse. He’ll rely on you for many things. Others will muck him out, but you must teach him more about riding and you must groom him. It’s a great responsibility, Robert.”
Robert Arryn looked from Domeric to Lady Stark and then back again. And then he set his chin in a manner that made him look very like his father. “Then I accept it.” He sounded older than his years for a moment. He nodded almost formally. “I shall lead him back to the stables.” The last was punctuated with a massive yawn that he tried desperately to suppress.
“Let us do that together, Lady Stark said with a smile. “And then perhaps a honeycake or two, a cup of milk and a story? You’ve had a long day, Robert.” She looked up. “Domeric, Lord Stark wishes to see you in his solar. I suspect that you know what it is about. Annah, I shall take care of young Robert.” She smiled rather enigmatically at Annah, who blushed for some reason and then she left with the boy and his new pony. Domeric Bolton was standing there, white as a sheet. After a moment he swallowed with a gulp, smiled wanly at Jory and Annah and then left.
“Lady Stark is taking her nephew to the stables. Lord Stark is in his solar. There is little chance, I hope that anyone with red eyes will wander past?” Annah sounded amused – and something else.
“No,” he said slowly as he took a cautious step towards her. “I think not.” He froze and then stared around them. “My apologies, I did not mean to tempt fate.”
She laughed softly and then sobered. “That night, before Lord Stark interrupted us with his eyes of red fire, what were you about to ask me?”
He looked at her and all of a sudden his heart was hammering in his chest as if he had run a mile. “I said that I was – and still am – looking forwards to showing you the North.”
“And I am keen to see it. I do not know how long I shall be here. I am just Lord Robert’s nursemaid. He will not always need me.”
“What will you do when he does not?”
“Go home.”
“And where is home?”
She smiled at him. “Wherever my heart is.”
“And where is your heart? Wait – I would tell you where mine is.”
She stepped a little closer to him. “And where is yours?” She was almost whispering now.
“With yours.” And with that he finally took her in his arms and kissed her. And judging by the way that she stepped into the embrace and then melted against him as she returned that kiss, he knew that she’d be staying in Winterfell for a while.
Domeric
He paused in from of the door, before taking a deep breath and then knocking. After what felt like an age he finally heard a voice call: “Come.”
He opened the door, stepped in and then closed it again. Lord Stark was standing by his desk. He was dressed in his usual leathers but there was a formality about him that made him stand a little straighter and taller. This was important.
And… the desk also held something else. The Fist of Winter. This was beyond important now. This was about the future of his very House. He felt his legs shake for a moment and then he stiffened them. He had to be strong for this moment.
“You asked to see me, Lord Stark.”
“I did indeed Domeric. Take a seat please.”
He sat carefully and then looked at Lord Stark, who looked back at him with his head tilted slightly to one side and his hand stroking his chin, which he did when he was thinking very hard. After a moment Lord Stark smiled slightly.
“Domeric, I have been considering your request to marry Sansa. Considering it mostly carefully indeed. I am sorry for the time that it has taken to give you an answer on this, but it was a matter of the greatest import for me. I even wrote to Lord Redfort to ask his opinion of you.”
Domeric felt his cheeks burn. Lord Redfort was a man whose good opinion he had always worked hard to earn. Very hard indeed. Lord Redfort was the man that he had secretly wished could have been his father. Just but fair. A true knight. “I respect Lord Redfort very much indeed, Lord Stark. May I ask what he said about me?”
Lord Stark leant back in his chair a little. “Nothing but good things. No complaints were ever made against you in your years at the Redfort – just the opposite in fact. He said that it was an honour to know the fine young man that you became.”
He felt his eyes moisten for a moment as he remembered his time at the Redfort. How he missed that place. “That was most kind of him.”
“It was. It also fitted in with my own observations of you. I have watched you most carefully, Domeric. We Starks pick our marriage alliances most carefully. For a Bolton to marry a Stark… well, there will be many who wonder the reason, given the history between our two families. Now I know what that reason is. I have talked to Sansa. You are in love.”
His cheeks reddened again. “I do not deny it, Lord Stark.” His voice seemed squeaky in his own ears and he cursed his reaction. “I do love Sansa.”
Lord Stark’s eyes narrowed a fraction as he looked at him. “She has also confided in me that you have plans for House Bolton. Plans that might include a new banner. Enlighten me if you can.”
He sat there for a long moment as he ran though his answers in his own mind. Finally he settled on the brutal truth. “The Flayed Man banner is a link to a past that I want no part of. I would never flay a man, the very thought is abhorrent to me. An upright red sword on a white background perhaps, or a sword over a cross of red on a white background. I have not yet decided – I gave Sansa my word that we would settle it together. But no more Flayed Man, or the colours thereof.”
There was a short silence as Lord Stark absorbed this. “Your father will not approve.”
“I do not care. I honour my father on many things. This is not one of those things. This is more important. I will be Lord of the Dreadfort one day. I would not have it feared. I would have it respected.”
Another short silence. And then Lord Stark stood. “Good. Then your suit to marry Sansa is approved. I will send a raven to the Dreadfort, summoning your father. He and I will talk – about many things. There is one last thing though. Marriages last for many years, the Old Gods providing. I would have my daughter Sansa happy throughout those years. And that is the greatest condition of all.”
Domeric fell to his knees and then placed a hand on the Fist of Winter. “Lord Stark, by the Old Gods, I, Domeric Bolton, do swear this oath of my own free will. Should I ever disappoint, betray or harm your daughter, Sansa Stark, I will take whatever punishment you deem necessary. Even death. This, I swear.”
Perhaps it was the moment, or perhaps it was his imagination, but he felt the floor shake just a fraction as he said those words.
“This oath I accept, as the Stark in Winterfell.”
Domeric looked up at the man who was going to become his Goodfather. And for a moment he fancied that he saw red fire in the eyes of Lord Stark.
Tyrion
Every time they stopped he’d find his eyes looking at the horizon, at the nearest crag or hill. He was looking for links. He was starting to think that he was finding them. He looked down at the map on the pommel of the saddle as they rode North. He was also taking notes as they went, because what he was seeing was both fascinating and deeply worrying.
The North was preparing. Preparing for two things in particular. The first, given by the amount of sowing and field clearance, was Winter. A long and, judging by the amount of repairwork being undertaken on homes and buildings, a terrible one. The second thing was war. Men were drilling when they weren’t working on the fields of chopping wood and storing it for drying out.
They stopped for lunch near another crag and as he dismounted he stole a look at Dacey Surestone. The closer that they got to Winterfell the quieter and more terse she became. He suspected that she would have some anguished words with Lord Stark as to why he had not acknowledged the news of the death of her beloved father.
He ate quickly and then stumped over to the crag, leaving the others behind him. They were used to this by now, so they no longer sent silly questions in his direction any more. Yes, this looked as if steps had been carved in the side of it, curving upwards. In some areas the stone looked almost blackened, as if great fires had been set repeatedly at the base of the steps.
Something cracked under his feet and he looked down. He was standing on loose shards of stone, but here and there, once in a while there were – yes. There. He bent down and picked up a shard of a particular shape and colour. It was an arrowhead, or at least part of one. Who knew how long it had been laying there? He peered at it closely. Dragonglass, or obsidian. Just like the other fragments had found scattered around the other crags he had seen. Now, to find such things at one crag would have been interesting, two a co-incidence – but five? No, that meant something.
He just had no idea what.
He pulled the little bag from his pouch, opened it, placed the partial arrowhead in with the others he had found, tugged it shut again and then walked back to the others. As he did he noticed another mound of earth about 100 yards to one side. The earth was bare and barren and not a thing grew on it. He shivered a little and then remounted.
They made good progress that day, better than he could have imagined just a fortnight before. The road was good – recently repaired. Which was a good thing, given the amount of traffic that seemed to be on it.
That night they stopped at one of the best inns that Tyrion had seen so far in the North, a formidable place that looked almost like a manor house. It had a bathhouse that was linked to a hot spring and Tyrion soaked away his aches and pains in some luxury, with a mug of cold ale in one hand and a scrubbing brush almost as long as himself in the other. The Inn of Sanctuary was its name and it also did a damn good supper, well-cooked venison. The girls looked clean and scrubbed, but he did not avail himself of one.
Instead he watched Dacey Surestone. She had used the baths in the woman’s section of the bathhouse, emerging scrubbed and clean but almost wan. She ate quietly and then had wandered outside. Tyrion viewed her passage, mulled things over, sighed and then drank the last of his wine, marked a place in his book and then strode over to the door.
Night had fallen and he had trouble at first working out where she was. Then he saw her. She was standing to one side, staring up at the stars. And the stars – what stars! The sky was clear of clouds and the stars blazed down. He could even see that great long ribbon of light that told of a huge belt of stars.
“A wondrous sight, the stars,” he said softly as he walked up to her. “I wish that I had studied them better.”
There was a long pause and then she finally spoke. “My father loved them. He taught me much about them. The Surestones have been watching the skies since time out of mind. They are beautiful. And I wish that I did not see the threat that hangs in them.”
He eyed her out of the corner of his eye. “Threat?”
“Do you see the Crook?”
He peered at the horizon. “Aye.” Then he paused. “Oh. I see the base of it as well. You can’t even see that in King’s Landing at this time of year. Or in the Stormlands.”
“It’s one of the things that we descendants of the First Men must look for. When the base of the Crook appears, when it starts to grow higher, it’s a sign.” She sounded… tired and almost defeated.
“A sign of what?”
“The Long Winter comes, Tyrion Lannister. It comes. As do the Others. And even Casterly Rock will shiver.” She looked at him and then smiled a smile of infinite tiredness. “The Others come. The Stark calls for aid. I am needed.” And then she sighed and walked back into the inn.
Tyrion stood there for a long, long, moment, staring up at the stars. And then he shivered, as if his spine had been brushed with ice, before going back inside as well. Winterfell tomorrow. And perhaps answers too.
Aemon
Castle Black was well astir by the time that he had finished feeding his ravens with the help of a young man. It was good to be back at his quarters. But there was a difference to the Castle Black that he had returned to. It felt... well, alive. He remembered what it had been like when he had first joined the Night’s Watch. It had been a different place to the one that he had left weeks ago for Winterfell. All those decades ago there had still been a sense of… vigour about the place. That had ebbed away over the long years.
Until now.
As he had approached Castle Black he had heard the sounds of hammering and the clink of trowels on stone. The noise of barrels being rolled over cobblestones. The clash of metal on metal, accompanied by the bellowed shouts from Alliser Thorne that he had seen small children fight harder. But there had been something in his voice that spoke of a grudging satisfaction. And there had been something else, in the background. Laughter.
Castle Black felt alive again. More voices, more work on its upkeep, more energy pounding through it. It made him feel years younger. Well… some years younger. He quirked his lips into a slight smile and then wiped it from his face. He needed to see the Lord Commander.
The young man assisted him to the quarters occupied by Jeor Mormont, who was talking to someone not too far away. Something about repairing the next castle down more. It made him feel… more than a bit stunned. The Night’s Watch itself seemed to be coming alive again.
Footsteps and then the scrape of a chair. “Maester Aemon.”
“Lord Commander.”
“I wish that the First Ranger had stopped for longer before he left. He seemed… determined.”
Aemon nodded thoughtfully. “He seemed very determined at Winterfell as well. Lord Stark tasked him with an important mission.”
“Aye,” the Lord Commander sighed. “Benjen Stark discussed it with me. The hand of a wight. If it wasn’t for hearing the Call, I would have told him not to be a fool.”
“How strongly was the Call heard here? I was in Winterfell when it was issued. I heard it all too well myself – my mother was a Dayne, you see, of the First Men.”
There was a pause and then a rasping noise as Jeor ran a hand over his beard. “It came during the evening meal. And everyone heard it, clear as a bell. Everyone within Castle Black. Same with the other two castles on the Wall. Everyone, no matter what their lineage, heard it.” Hmmm. Interesting. Some magic from the Wall perhaps?
“I was on the privy at the time and I damn near shat meself,” rumbled a new voice and Aemon realised with a start that he had been so intent on Jeor’s answer that he had failed to notice the arrival of Alliser Thorne. “I would never have believed it if I had not heard it.” The door closed and the other man took a seat. “What news from Winterfell then, Maester Aemon?”
“As you know, the Others come. There was more proof. Lord Stark was given a vision by the Old Gods. A most worrying sign indeed. And a room within Winterfell was discovered. A room containing objects known to past Starks. Records as well. Lord Stark did not know anything about them. His father did – but that knowledge died with him and Brandon Stark in King’s Landing, thanks to my fool of a Great-Nephew.” He found himself snarling the last five words and then caught himself as the other two coughed and probably looked embarrassed. Thorne had been a Targaryen loyalist.
“What kind of records?” Jeor asked after a moment.
“Copies of records to and from Castle Black, amongst other things. Which disturbs me greatly as no such records exist now, or none that I know of.”
“I thought that everything was in your offices?” Thorne asked. “How could Winterfell have such copies but we lack them?”
“I know not, but I would like to have the older part of Castle Black searched for any blocked off rooms. I have had the time to think much on this matter, and I cannot believe that the records were lost entirely. Some must still remain, somewhere.”
“A good point,” rumbled Jeor. “I shall order it so. We have more than enough men here now.”
“So I heard. When did they arrive?”
“Not long after the Call was heard,” Thorne said reluctantly. “Men wanting to help. Women too. They had heard the Call as well. They offered services, brought food, offered to repair the walls, cook. Food’s a damn sight better than it used to be.”
“How many then have taken the Black?”
“Of the men, one in three,” Jeor said quietly. “The rest wish to volunteer to help fight the Others. I’ve never heard of the like of it, but they insist. They want to help. Volunteers on the wall? Bloody odd. But they’ve changed this place. We’ve gone from quiet despair – do not pull that damn face, Thorne, you know it to be true! – to quiet hope.
“We have parties out now working on the next three castles, assessing what needs to be done and making repairs. Might be able to start sending out garrisons in a month or two, on a temporary basis at least. The same is happening with the Shadow Tower and Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. Of the latter, Cotter Pyke sends word that ships have been docking with more and volunteers there.”
Aemon nodded at this. “I think that a party must also be sent to the Nightfort. That place was the first to be built along the Wall and the greatest as well. It might well have records, or at least artefacts. And if the Others are indeed moving Southwards then the Black Gate must be secured.”
There was a silence. And then from both of the other men: “What Black Gate?”
He did his best not to roll his eyes in disgust. “Do you mean to say,” he barked, “That the Lord Commander and the Master-of-Arms have not consulted the Histories of the Wall?” The other two harrumphed and he waved a hand in apology. “Your pardon. I read of it long ago. There is a gate beneath the Nightfort that is sealed so that only a member of the Night’s Watch who speaks the words of the Vow can open it. The Others should not be able to access it. Nevertheless it must be secured.”
There was a creaking noise from the chair that Jeor Mormont was sitting in. “I did not know that. Very well. Who should lead that party?”
He thought deeply for a long moment. “I am not sure. Given the import of what might be found there – as well as the terrible legends that surround the place – we must choose wisely. In the meantime we must await the return of Benjen Stark. We must have proof of the Others and their wights.”
“Proof would be good,” Thorne said wryly. Then he seemed, from his next words, to sober a little. “The thought of fighting the dead terrifies me.”
“Aye, me too.” There was a different kind of creaking from Jeor Mormont’s chair, as if he was leaning forwards perhaps. “But we are of the Night’s Watch. And we do what must be done.”
“Aye,” Thorne said, before pushing his own chair back and standing. “Well said. I have much to think on. And some men to train that aren’t as bad as some of the scum we’ve had in the past.” And then he stamped out.
“Lord Commander,” Aemon said after a moment. “I understand that the Wildling raids have diminished?”
“More than diminished – ceased. It’s all most odd. But if indeed the Others have returned… well then they must be more informed than we are. Word came that Mance Rayder has been seen near the Wall. I’m not sure what worries me more – the Wildlings ceasing their raids or that Rayder has been sighted.”
Aemon nodded. “It might be that a common cause might be made between us?”
A rasp of hand over beard again. “Mayhaps. Mayhaps. Ned Stark has sent a raven saying that he need to talk to me face to face about matter regarding the Wildlings. That might be it. I also wonder how far the Call went.” That last sentence was said bleakly.
“To your son perhaps?” Aemon said the words gently. “Such a call would have gone far. And the…” He paused, thought about it and then went on. “Forgive me, but the crimes of our families cannot be forgotten. I should know. How we deal with those crimes defines us.”
There was another moment of silence. And then Jeor Mormont cleared his throat. “I know. I know. I just wish-” But he was interrupted by the sound of a horn being blown in the distance. “That’s from North of the Wall.”
There was a long pause and then shouting outside, before a rumble of feet on the corridor outside and then a knock on the door, before it creaked open after Jeor Mormont’s growled command to enter.
“Lord Commander! The two men that the First Ranger went beyond the Wall with have returned. One seems to be injured.”
“Is the First Ranger not with them?” Jeor growled.
“No, Lord Commander. One of the men shouted up that the First Ranger sent them back whilst he went on with his mission.”
Jeor sighed heavily. “Very well.” The door creaked closed again. “Bugger. Now I’m worried.”
“He knows the Haunted Forest well,” Aemon pointed out. “In fact far better than most.”
“Aye. But I’m still worried.”
Jaime
Janos Slynt did not die well. He was in a bad enough way after just a day in a Black Cell – Robert Baratheon did at least look at the evidence against him and then immediately proclaimed that he and his three main lieutenants should be put to death – but when the moment came he rapidly fell to pieces.
When Jaime first caught sight of him the man was being half-dragged and half-carried by two guards in Baratheon liveries who did not look happy. As they approached Jaime realised why. Slynt was burbling a constant stream of piteous whimperings about how this was not justice, how he was innocent, about how unfair this all was, about how he had been betrayed.
When he saw the baying crowd, the headsman’s block and the motionless figure of Robert Baratheo holding Stormbreaker flat against his chest, point down, then… well, Slynt didn’t just lose control of his legs, but also his bladder and his bowels, given the curses from the guards and the revolting trail that the wretched man left.
He was finally deposited at the feet of the Fat King, who looked down at the former commander of the Goldcloaks with considerable disgust. “Gods, man, can’t you even die in a clean fashion?”
“Your Grace, blubbered Slynt wetly, with his neck on the block, “Mercy, please, I shall take the Black, I will go to the Wall, I confess it all, but spare me.”
The King laughed. “Send you to the Wall? Never – the Night’s Watch would think I scorned them for send such a man like you there.” Then he sobered and there might even have been a flash of sympathy. “Chin up. I’ll make it quick.”
Looking at the crowd Baratheon set his shoulders and then spoke. “I, Robert Baratheon, the First of my name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm, do here and serve sentence of death on this man Janos Slynt. For the crime of corruption! Of taking bribes! Of malfeasance! And of murder! I have found him guilty – and I will swing the sword, as in the old days!”
Slynt screwed his eyes closed and therefore never saw the great blade come up and then flash down. His head bounced once, twice and then stopped. As the crowd cheered Jaime frowned a little. He thought he could hear thunder rumbling somewhere. He wasn’t the only one – Seaworth, who had been standing grim-faced at the head of a large group of pale-faced Goldcloaks, turned his head to seawards. “Odd,” Jaime heard him mutter. “I smell no storm coming.”
Jaime turned back to the spot where the Fat King was standing. Men in Baratheon livery ran out to pull the body away, take up the head to place it on a spike and (thank the gods on this warm day) to wash down the flagstones with buckets of water.
But as the next man was dragged out for execution Jaime was more fascinated by the sword. Stormbreaker was starting to puzzle him. It was the sword of the Durrandons – but the Durrandons had been of the First Men. The sword of Durran Godsgrief should have been bronze. But this was not. It reminded him of Dawn a little, by the sheen. Which might explain why Durran had been king. Then he frowned a little. The sword should have been bloody. It was not. Had Baratheon cleaned it quickly?
The next man did not disgrace himself as badly as Slynt. Instead he went to his death in silence, spitting at the ground in front of the crowd as they booed at him. His Fatness didn’t even bother with last words. He simply took his head from his shoulders with a single savage swipe that looked contemptuous. Jaime stared at the King of Westeros. Yes, the man looked alive again in some terrible way. But – there was no blood on the sword. Had he shaken it?
The third man was as bad as Slynt – a cowardly wreck who wailed at the sight of the block, and the sword, and everything about Robert Baratheon. Jaime averted his eyes for much of it, because it was frankly embarrassing.
And then the fourth man came forwards. He was a dark-haired man who strode to the block with a straight back and a face that showed deep shame. The crowd seemed to sense it and they booed him less than the others.
Baratheon looked him over and then nodded at him sombrely. “Kneel, lad.” And then, as the shame-faced man did so Baratheon said something that surprised Jaime. “I know why you took the coin,” he rumbled in a low voice. “Your wife and your son took sick. But even after they were better you kept taking it. That was not right.”
“I know, Your Grace, and I am ashamed of it,” the man replied, tears in his eyes. “My family-”
“Will have a pension. My word on that. But there’s a price.”
The Goldcloak nodded and then braced himself. “I will pay it.”
“Good lad.” The sword came up and then slashed down. The head thudded to the ground and the crowd cheered again. But Jaime’s eyes were on the sword. This time there was blood. How odd.
His Fatness stepped over the body and then looked at the assembled crowd – and the Goldcloaks who had watched the whole thing with such pale faces. “People of King’s Landing! These men did you most grievous wrong! These men betrayed your trust in taking bribes! And I will not have that! I will have justice in this city and not corruption! And trust instead of betrayal! You have my word on that!”
“Long live King Robert the Just!” The call came from a squinting little man not too far from Jaime and he peered languidly around as the crowd of smallfolk threw their sweaty caps in the air and about stank the place out with their stinking breath.
His Fatness beamed a little grimly at them, hefted Stormbreaker with one hand as if he was a little surprised about something and then sheathed it, before slinging it onto his back and then stomping towards his horse.
It was only then that Jaime caught sight of Joffrey, who was staring at the heads of the three Goldcloaks as they were being placed onto the pikes on the nearest gateway. There was an odd look on his face, like a combination of uncertainty, fascination and… excitement? And then he seemed to catch himself as the hulking and grim-faced form of Sandor Clegane brushed past him, before darting after His Fatness.
“Father,” he heard Joffrey smirk at Baratheon, “Can I practise with Stormbreaker?”
“Of course you can lad, but not just yet – you need to get some muscles on you first. ‘Tis a heavy sword. Lighter with use, but too heavy for you just yet. You need to practise with your own more first to build yourself up. Clegane!”
“Your Grace?” The scarred man stepped forwards.
“Train my son a bit harder will you?”
Clegane eyed Joffrey. “He’s lazy.”
“I am not!” Joffrey protested.
“Yes he is Your Grace.”
Baratheon stopped and turned on Joffrey, who blanched a bit. “Always train lad. There’s a war coming. There always is. There will be when you’re king eventually. So always train.” He pulled a face as if he was reminded of something. “And I must train now. I’m too damn fat, still. No longer.” He eyed the horse nearby. “Ser Barristan?”
“Your Grace?” The Lord Commander called from one side.
“I need to train. I also need to talk to someone with knowledge of sword making.”
Ser Barristan Selmy pursed his lips with thought for a moment. “For the former I think the Red Keep Your Grace. For the latter – I know of at least one place you can find experts on the Street of Steel.”
Baratheon nodded and then mounted. “Ser Barristan and I have some questions to ask then, on the Street of Steel. Kingslayer, Clegane, get my son back to the Red Keep.” He nodded at them and then rode off with the Lord Commander in a great clattering of hooves.
Jaime watched them go with a sardonic eye. And then, very far away, he seemed to hear the boom of distant thunder.
Melisandre
The servants built the fire quickly. She knew that they were deathly afraid of her, but she did not care. They were sworn to her service. Their lives were hers to do with as the red God commanded. Today they would build her a great fire, the greatest that they could. She needed to see the flames, to look into them and see the visions of the path she now had to tread.
She had to admit that she was getting impatient. Her visions had become clouded of late, for the first time that she could remember. Clouded by what though? She could not say. It was as if the eye of her mind was suddenly unfocussed, as if R’hllor had lifted his gaze from her. Which was, of course, impossible.
So much had happened to lead her to this place, this point. An island just to the West of Tyrosh. She had had her servants take her there by ship, with all the wood that they bring without sinking the ship. And now the great fire was complete.
“Go,” she said coldly to them. “Leave this place. What is to happened here is not for the likes of you. Go. Return in the morning for me.” They bowed and then they all but fled. They lacked her faith. Well – what did they know? What could they know? Nothing. Poor fools.
A walk around the fire revealed that even though they were fools they had done their job well. Wood piled upon wood, soaked in lamp oil. She nodded and then picked up a burning brand and thrust it into the kindling, before stepping back as it started to take.
The flames crackled at first and then started to roar. As the main section of the fire caught and the wood started to blacken the roar increased to almost a shriek. Yes, they had built it well. The heat roared off the great blaze and she felt her lips peel back in a smile of joy. R’hllor was with her, the Lord of Light was here. She undid her robes until they fell to the ground and stepped as close to the fire as she could, revelling in the heat on her naked body. The grass started to brown and curl between her toes. She minded it not.
The flames danced and sang to her and she stared into them. Yes, something was appearing. Visions of Tyrosh. Faces of men and women, young and old. Did they matter? It was a start at least. The vision was crisp and clear.
Where to turn her gaze next? Dragonstone? That had been where her feet had been taking her before this odd mist had descended. Not yet. East perhaps? She frowned a little Yes. Eastwards. The Five Forts appeared in the flames, a chain against the forces of the Great Other. Were they manned yet? They should be. Where were the Fortsmen? Coming? She frowned harder. Her Brother should have it in hand. She’d have his heart in a brazier if he did not.
Where next? South? She smiled a little – and then she frowned. Eyes flashed from bronze panels and she would tell that something had changed there, that something had awoken. What though? She had long suspected that something was hidden to the South. She did not know what.
She did not look to the South-East. That way madness still lay.
North now. Animals seemed to crowd the streets of Pentos, whilst… something seemed to be growing there. She stared into the flames. A… girl? There was too much confusion there. A horseman flickered in and out and then vanished. And then something – no, somethings – seemed to flash across the sky for a moment. And then, as she tried to look further North, there was something else. Something moving Westwards. She blinked and shook her head a moment. No. Nothing had wings of ice.
And now she took a deep breath and turned to look Westwards again. She had to see where he was, the Azor Ahai. Where had he been born, how was he to be forged by his trials anew into a weapon for the Lord of Light?
Dragonstone appeared in the flames… but there was some odd about it, something she had not seen before. Tendrils of light flowed North from it. What could they be? An old man’s face appeared, as he talked with a fond smile with a young girl with a shadow on her face that seemed to seethe and flex and then vanish.
Westwards again… and then the mist descended again. She wanted to scream in frustration. What was this? She sharpened her focus and stared more intently. For a moment a number of flashing images appeared. A man with a sword on his back and lightning bolts flashing around him, sloughing off old layers of himself. A… child? A child who commanded fire? Snakes that found purpose. A garden blooming mightily. A one-eyed lion with a sword of light. An empty man finding a purpose again. A man with the blood of a wolf and a sword that shone like a star. And men and women with the heads of wolves.
And then the mist slammed down and she could see nothing. Wait…. There was something appearing. A face. A white face of wood. A tree? Yes – a Weirwood tree. A… Hearts Tree? Was that the name? And then the eyes carved into the tree opened to reveal orbs of red fire. We are stronger now, she heard a great voice boom in her ear. We were weaker before. No longer. You are wrong about so many things, Red Priestess. Cast your eyes Eastwards. Your brother is not as strong as you are.
“Who are you?” She barked the question at the terrible face. “Are you a servant of the Great Other?”
The red orbs blazed harder. Foolish child! The enemy has many faces. Ours is not one of them. Your Red God was always a fool to think that only he could fight them. This is a greater fight than you think. Things have changed here. We are stronger. Things that were sleeping have awoken. Things that you cannot understand. Do not come here. You will only do harm. Events are in motion that must not be disturbed. The Others are awake. And old friends who thought each other dead are meeting again. Cast your eyes not again to the West. Now – go!
The face roiled and rippled and suddenly she found herself flying backwards, landing in a breathless and astonished heap. She looked at the roaring fire and then shook her head in confusion. As she looked part of the fire collapsed inwards as the wood was consumed and a great blaze of sparks flew upwards. And those sparks briefly formed the shape of a tree.
Tyrion
The moment he finally saw the gatehouse of Winterfell he sighed at the thought of what lay within. Good food. A bed. A bath. Oh and maidservants, preferably ones with large breasts and sultry smiles. He thought for a moment about sending everyone on ahead and finding a good brothel, but then changed his mind at once. No. He had his duty to do first.
As they rode to the gate he had Emmon shake out the banner that had been furled since The Twins, and he smiled a little as the red and gold cloth shook and boomed in the breeze from the West. He heard shouts from the gatehouse and then the gates opened.
As they entered he looked around with quick glances. The Wintertown outside the fortress had shown great signs of being worked on and renewed, rebuilt even in places. And Winterfell itself seemed to be a hive of activity, with men and women working on so many things. Blacksmiths were busy, as was a small brick kiln not too far away. All most interesting. Yes, they were preparing for something. War or winter? Or perhaps both?
He drew rein as he saw what looked like a Maester walking towards him, with a young man with the auburn hair of a Tully. And that young man stopped dead in his tracks at the sight of Tyrion and his eyes widened as if he had not just recognised him but knew him somehow. And then he seemed to shake his head a little and strode ahead of the Maester.
“You are Tyrion Lannister.” The young Stark – who else could it be with hair that colour – sounded like a man trying to make a grim voice lighter and Tyrion blinked a little at the thought of it. What was going on here?
“I see that my fame has preceded me!” He smiled and then noted that whilst the Stark boy smiled for a moment with his mouth, he did not smile with his eyes. “I am indeed Tyrion Lannister.”
“Robb Stark. This is Maester Luwin. Word did not reach us of your coming.”
“It did not?” Oh. Damn Father. “Your pardon. Your father sent word to the major houses that they send any word back about the legend that is the Others. So I was sent by my father from Casterly Rock with what we had on this topic.” He heard the beginning of a throat being cleared behind him and then forestalled it. “And I have also had the high and signal honour of escorting the Lady-”
But he was interrupted by an astonished voice from one side. “Dacey? Cousin Dacey? What are you doing here?”
Everyone looked over to see an astonished-looking Lord Eddard Stark as he stared at Dacey Surestone. Then he beamed at her and hurried over. “I have not seen you for years! How is your father? Why did he send you here?”
Tyrion watched her closely and then winced as many emotions seemed to flash over her face. Anger, confusion, bemusement – and then astonishment and horror. He had heard her muttering a few times on the road to Winterfell, practising a great tirade against her cousin for abandoning her. And how it seems that he had forestalled her by being… well, oblivious to her recent ordeal.
“Lord Stark,” she said eventually in a shaking voice. “My father is dead.”
He went pale at that. “No – surely not! He was hale and hearty when I saw him last!”
“He may have been then, but he... he died. Many weeks ago. I was told that word had been sent to Winterfell on this. When I heard nothing back I thought… I thought that…” Her face crumpled with anguish for a moment and then in an instant Lord Stark was at the side of her horse.
“Oh by the Gods Dacey, I knew not a thing. No word of his passing came here, I swear it. I am so sorry. You must have thought that we had abandoned you, when nothing like that had happened.” And then he seemed to catch himself. “Lord Tyrion, please accept the hospitality of Winterfell, for you and your men. Quarters will be provided for them, and a meal and ale. Maester Luwin – please take charge of the books that Lord Tyrion has brought. Robb, can you go or send someone to your mother and have them tell her to meet us in my solar? Then join us too. You too Lord Tyrion.” Then he looked at his younger relative. “Dacey, welcome to Winterfell, cousin.”
As everyone dismounted and servants rushed about to collect horses and take down saddlebags Tyrion looked at Dacey Surestone worriedly. She seemed as if she was about to fly into a thousand jagged pieces – but then she seemed to rally herself, shaking her head a little and then dismounting herself.
Tyrion sighed and was in the process of dismounting himself when he froze. Over to one side there was what looked a building containing a set of kennels and in the doorway sat a giant wolf that was staring at him intently. He opened his mouth to say something but then discovered that a combination of terror and fascination had strangled his vocal chords. “…”
Lord Stark caught his look of shock and then looked at the kennels. “Mind her not. She’s interested in everything.”
Dacey Surestone had also frozen in place at the sight of the creature – and then a huge smile lit up her face, making her appear beautiful for a long moment. “Ned! You have a direwolf!”
“I have. It has been an… interesting few weeks.” Then he flushed a little. “Your pardon. You have lost your father. Come.”
Tyrion kept an eye on that direwolf as he walked towards the door of the keep. He still couldn’t believe that it was there. Weren’t direwolves supposed to be extinct South of the Wall? Then he pulled a slight face. Might as well add it to the list of odd things that had happened.
By the time that they reached Lord Stark’s study he was starting to wonder what else was going on. He’d counted men in the liveries of at least three of the important Houses of the North – Umber, Reed and Bolton. The latter had been confined to one young man with a harp who might have been Domeric Bolton – he’d seen him once from a distance at the Redfort when he had been there on a visit on behalf of Father.
And then when he got to the Solar he came damn near to tripping over his own feet. Parts of the room were covered in books and records, whilst one wall had a great map of the North that had very disturbing implications if it meant what he thought it did. Were there really that many settlements North of the Wall?
As they sat and Lord Stark passed him bread and salt – and more importantly a goblet of rather good wine – Tyrion watched as Dacey Surestone sat down and for the first time since he had met her she seemed to relax a little.
Boots rang in the corridor, along with softer feet, and Robb Stark entered with some who can only have been his mother. She was a Tully to her fingertips and from the way that she warmly embraced Dacey the two had met before. Then she turned to Tyrion and he noticed that there was something at the back of her eyes as she greeted him. There was caution there. And unease. What was going on? Why did they seem to dislike Lannisters so much?
“My thanks Lord Stark,” he said after another sip of wine, before noticing that an elderly balding man with the chains and robes of a Maester had also entered, closing the door him. “I should perhaps briefly mention my role in your cousin being here. I met the Lady Dacey in an inn about three days ride South of here. A badly run inn that had a thief and a scoundrel in charge of it. Food appalling, drink worse, filth everywhere. Things going missing. Coin especially. He was cheating your cousin and I suspect that he had designs on her.”
Dacey closed her eyes and nodded wordlessly, whilst Lord Stark stared at them both and then turned a very nasty shade of red. “Where is this piece of filth?” He asked the question in a commendably level voice.
“Dead,” Tyrion said with considerable satisfaction. “He made the mistake of trying to cheat a most formidable woman who was staying there with her merchant husband. A punch was thrown, knocking the landlord out and sadly it was later discovered that he fallen head-first into a full bucket and drowned. The inn has been taken over and improved enormously And I offered to escort the Lady Dacey here. To Winterfell.”
Lord Stark settled a little, the anger leaving his face. “Then you have my most grateful thanks Lord Tyrion. Dacey – how did you come to be there though?”
She sighed. “Father died during a visit by cousin Willem – Ser Willem Bootle. He was Father’s heir, although we he was there at the time still escapes me as-”
“One moment Dacey,” Lord Stark interrupted. “But I don’t understand. Bootle was not your father’s heir. Your father came to me a year ago and told me that in the event of his death, Ser Willem Bootle was not to be allowed anywhere near Surestone.”
“Word had reached us from the Riverlands, via my brother Edmure, that Ser Willem was a spendthrift, an idiot and a neer-do-well,” Lady Stark said with a frown. “We told your father this.”
Dacey looked at them both, obviously baffled. “He said nothing to me. When word came of Ser Willem’s visit he just looked grim and said that it would be an awkward time for us as he had bad news to pass on. But he never said… wait, if Bootle was not the heir to Surestone, who was?”
“You, Dacey,” Lord Stark said gently. “Your father came to me and said that Bootle would be removed from the succession as being unfit – and that he was always unfit as there should always be a Surestone in Surestone, as was the tradition. You should have inherited, as Maege Mormont did at Bear Island after her brother disgraced himself. Your father made that very clear to me and also left me a copy of his will and testament, signed in front of me and witnessed duly by me.”
“Why did he not tell me? And why did Bootle say otherwise?” Dacey Surestone sounded angry and confused.
Tyrion broke in, a horrible suspicion crystallising in his own mind. “What exactly happened when Bootle arrived?”
“Father took him to his solar and they spoke for a long time. I saw Bootle afterwards and he looked very angry. That night Father took ill.”
“And what was the nature of this illness?” Tyrion asked, feeling angry with himself for not asking this before.
“It took on the nature of an apoplexy. He could not speak and could barely open his eyes. He… he died the next day. And as he lay sick and dying Ser Willem Bootle announced that as the heir everyone had to obey his orders. And after Father was dead… Bootle said that he would send word to Winterfell, dismissed the Maester, all but looted my home and went off with it South.” There was a numb horror in her voice. Yes, she suspected too.
“Poison perhaps?” Tyrion said the words softly and grimly and the room went still as they all seemed to think the same dark thoughts. “Maester… Luwin, was it? Yes. Arrowbinder perhaps? Or Hearts Forlorn?”
The Maester pursed his lips a little in thought. “Either might bring on the appearance of an apoplexy before killing. And both are known in the Riverlands.” He shook his head a little. “And both are cruel ways to kill a man. The Maester at Surestone was… Grantle by name, I think? A very young man and also inexperienced.”
Oddly enough Dacey Surestone now looked very like a female version of Lord Stark, whilst Robb Stark was pale with fury. And equally oddly he exchanged a peculiar look with his father that ended with the younger Stark shaking his head a little in some kind of message.
“Maester Luwin,” Lord Stark said in a voice as implacable as the mountains of the North, “I need to send a raven to my Goodfather at Riverrun as soon as possible. I must demand the arrest and trial of Ser Willem Bootle on charges of murder and thievery. He robbed my cousin of her birthright!”
“I will prepare a raven at once My Lord,” Luwin said formally. “My swiftest one to Riverrun.”
“And I shall have some words to add to my father,” Lady Stark said, shaking her head. “This is terrible. My poor Dacey – we will get you back Surestone. And the things that this Bootle stole.”
Benjen
He was being watched. He’d know that for some time now, perhaps a day or so. The question was who was watching him? Wildlings? Perhaps not. He’d seen two groups in the past few days. Both had gone out of their way to avoid him – albeit with some hard stares and hands on sword pommels. But this new watcher was... different. More mysterious.
He gave a mental shrug as he rode Wanderer through the forest. Whoever they were he so far sensed no ill-will towards him. It was all most odd.
Wanderer plodded on and he looked about keenly. He almost liked the Haunted Forest, there was a refreshing simplicity about the place. It was… clean. He knew that he was foolish to go on alone though. However, Alek had fallen badly after his horse had shied at a raven that had flown almost straight at its head and he’d broken his arm badly. Too badly to continue and in fact too badly to get back to the Wall safely. He was a good man, Alek, a good woodsman, so he’d sent him back with Royce.
Royce worried him, and he knew that the man worried the Old Bear as well. He may have been a Royce of Runestone and therefore of the First Men, but he was too arrogant at times, to sure that he knew right and men of lower rank knew wrong. True, he had changed since he had heard the Call and apparently could sometimes he almost civil to the lower born Brothers of the Night’s Watch, but Benjen still worried about him. He needed to learn that The Wall demanded certain changes to his way of thinking.
He stopped at noon and kindled a small fire, using it to cook a haunch of the rabbit that he’d killed three days before and left to hang from the back of his saddle wrapped in an old piece of cloth. As he ate he plotted his course in his head. North, parallel with the river. He’d avoided Craster’s Keep – that man set his teeth on edge every time he saw him these days, there was something no right with him – and instead he wanted to head for the hills that led to the First of the First Men. A ranging patrol had vanished near there two months before. Perhaps they had been killed by wights?
The thought of wights and the Others made him shift uneasily for a moment. This seemed almost mad – but he had heard the Call so clearly on the way back to Castle Black. It had shaken him to realise that Ned was right.
As he finished the last of the rabbit and then carefully doused the fire he felt those watching eyes on him again. Yes, someone was there. Closer this time. Who were they? And were they living – or dead?
Straightening up he walked over to Wanderer and then mounted him. As he checked his reins and settled himself in the saddle he looked about of the corner of his eyes. No, nothing. No-one. Odd. Were they gone?
He clicked his tongue and rode on, still North. Every now and then he could see the hills ahead, with the Fist of the First Men somewhere amongst them. That place fascinated him. The name alone was a mystery. Why a fist? Why had it been so important to the First Men? He’s once heard an old Black Brother mention a rumour that the Fist had once been a very important place for the Rangers – but that he did not know why. Benjen had explored the place himself a number of times, but had never found anything of significance.
An hour or so later he pricked an ear. Someone or something had snorted off to his left, a long way away. After a few minutes he heard another snort, closer now. He paused and then drew his sword carefully. A bear perhaps? Or a direwolf? He could hear the sound of heavy paws crunching on wet snow and damp twigs. What was there?
And then he saw a figure looming out of the trees to one side and he stopped Wandered dead in his tracks and stared at him. It was a man. Mounted on an elk, with huge horns. Whoever he was, the man was dressed in black robes, with a hood over his face and scarf wrapped around it. A great bow was at his back, and a quiver filled with long arrows with white fletches at his hip. The moment that he laid eyes on Benjen he nudged the elk to a halt with his feet.
There was a long moment of silence as the figure stared at Benjen. Finally it spoke: “Brother.” Whoever he was, he spoke in a dry, unused voice that contained an odd note. “You are a Brother of the Rangers, I see. Well met.”
Benjen stared at him. Well, this was no wight. But then again – what was he? “Well met. I am Benjen, First Ranger, son of Rickard.”
The figure nodded in recognition. “There have been times when I have seen you at a distance. Well met, First Ranger. I am… I am called Coldhands.”
An odd name. Benjen frowned a little. Who was this man, and why had he called him ‘Brother’? “Are you linked to the Night’s Watch? You called me Brother.”
Coldhands sighed and then ran a hand over his breast for a moment. “I once served on the Wall. A long time ago. A long time indeed. I was… different then. Until I was sent on a greater mission. That… is a tale for another time. What brings a lone Ranger close to the old stronghold North of the Wall?”
Benjen stared at him and assessed. This was most peculiar. A Black Brother sent on a ‘greater mission’? When? And by who? He mulled it over for another moment and then decided that it was time to take a risk.
“The Others have returned. We need proof – of wights at least. I am hunting for proof of a wight.”
“Proof of a wight…” Coldhands mumbled. “They have indeed come. But how did you know?”
“A Call was issued. ‘The Others come. The Stark call for aid. You are needed.’”
Whoever this Coldhands fellow was, he seemed so shocked that he just stared at Benjen for a long moment, before raising a trembling black-gloved hand to the scarf around his mouth and muttering something that Benjen did not catch. And then he turned the elk and gestured to him to follow as he urged the elk to start walking again. “Come. Follow.”
Benjen watched him go for a moment in bewilderment and then kicked Wanderer into moving on again, to follow Coldhands. “Where? Where do we go to?”
“The Overlook. I was wondering when the Rangers would return to it.”
He frowned. “The Overlook?”
“The… place of watching. Do you not know of it?”
“No!”
“Then follow and learn!”
Asha
She was getting tired of seeing dead men in gibbets at the entrances to harbours. This one, however, was different. She knew the man for a start. And he was – or rather now had been – a Drowned Man. She stared at the corpse. Interesting. He’d just been hung. No stakes.
Looking around she could tell that the sight of the man had, in some odd manner, slightly relaxed her crew. With the exception of Alek, the man who had signed on at Pyke and who she suspected was some kind of informer for Damphair. Meh. Haken was keeping an eye on the little wet runt. If it meant that Alek suffered an ‘accident’ then he’d arrange it.
As they reached Long Stone Quay and tied up she looked up at the castle. She’d always loved Ten Towers. It was so very different to Pyke and its rope bridges and eternal dampness.
Dale was standing on the Quay, directing repairs to a longship that looked as if it had seen better days. He nodded to her as she approached. “Your nuncle sent word to send you to him when you arrived. He’s not at the castle today. He’s at High Harlaw.”
She stared at him. “He hates High Harlaw.”
“Yes, but that’s where he is. I must warn you – he’s in a foul mood.”
She sighed a little and then paused. “Who’s in the gibbet on the point?”
“A friend of your other nuncle. He started to be shouting a lot when he heard that Black Gregan was on his way to the Shadow Tower with a longship of supplies, men and weapons. It was annoying. So Lord Harlaw cut him short.” He smirked a little. “Got cheered for it too, by every man nearby.”
She smiled a little and then strode off to the stables, where she saddled one of the little shaggy ponies that the island was famous for, mounted and then rode out of the gates, down the road to the old holdfast of the Harlaws. As she did she looked about carefully. The people of Harlaw seemed to be preparing for Winter. Odd, that. She’d heard of some communities on Old Wyk were doing the same.
She also had an unpleasant feeling that the fight between those who claimed to have heard The Call and those who denied it, like Father and Damphair. Her religious nuncle was worrying her a great deal. He appeared to be increasingly angry, increasingly obsessed with punishing those that claimed that The Call had been real, that the Stark needed their help. More men were in gibbets at Lordsport. The lucky ones had died quickly.
And now her nuncle Rodrik was pushing back. This would not end well, she could tell that. The question was – how bad would it be?
When she finally arrived at High Harlaw she found her nuncle Rodrik scowling over a set of records that looked as if they had been locked in a box and then covered in dust for several decades at the very least. But judging from the severity of the scowl she guessed that he either wasn’t finding what he wanted or didn’t like what he had found.
“Useless,” he muttered as she slammed the topmost book closed. “All useless. Damn my ancestors. What were they so afraid of?” Then he looked up. “Asha. How is Pyke?”
“Parts are heated. Parts are fearful. And parts are dead. Damphair rules over Father at times. There are more gibbets at Lordsport.”
He nodded. “So I heard. We have one of our own here. We put fools who smell too much of Damphair’s madness in it. After we’ve shut them up that is.”
“Damphair will not like it. Neither will Father.”
“I care not. I am Lord of Harlaw. My word rules here, not Damphair’s. And if your father disagrees then we…” He set his jaw. “We will have words.”
Asha thought about the kind of words her nuncle was implying and hid a wince. “What are you looking for here?”
He directed an odd look in her direction. “Reasons.”
“Reasons for what?”
He sighed. “Reasons for why my – our! – ancestors were such damn fools and destroyed so much.”
She stared at him. “Destroyed what?”
Her nuncle ran a hand through his hair and then gave her another considering look. Then he crooked a finger. “I need to show you something.”
He led her down a long dark corridor and then handed her a burning brand, before starting down a long spiral staircase. It smelt damp down here and as they descended still further she could see moisture on the walls. The stonework was rougher down here too, older. How old was this place? Which of her ancestors had built it? Or had they built it on something else, something older? A strange feeling stole over her and she shuddered a little.
“Do you feel them too?”
She looked at her nuncle, who was still leading the way. “Feel what?”
“The ghosts. I shudder every time I come down here. I feel the spectre of the past most heavily here. This is the oldest part of High Harlaw. Should be the dampest too, but whoever built it knew his drains well.”
“How old is it?”
He paused for a moment and then laid a hand on the rough walls. “This stonework is that of the First Men. I have seen it in other places. Read of it too.” A ghost of a smile crossed his face and then he resumed downwards. Asha stared at the walls for an instant and then followed him hurriedly.
The stairs ended and a long corridor stretched ahead. There was a slight curve to it, a subtle one and Asha wasn’t sure if it was intentional or not. What she did see was the room that her nuncle led her too. Especially as she saw it from a distance. There was an… odd… dull light flickering it, like a guttering candle.
Her nuncle paused at the doorway, set his chin and then walked in. As she reached the doorway as well she stopped dead in her tracks. The walls of the room were covered in… something she couldn’t quite make out. She peered at the nearest wall. Runes, or the remains of what seemed to be runes. The carvings were glowing fitfully, like dying fireflies. And they had all been incised by lines, as if someone had been trying to destroy them. It was beyond eerie. It gave her the creeping horrors as she looked at the walls. “What… what is this place?”
“I do not know.” He said the words heavily, as if it pained him to say such a thing. “I wish that I did. All I know is that the Steward of High Harlaw was assessing stores not too far from here when he saw the light. It was the first that I ever knew of this place.”
She raised a hand in bafflement and pointed at the nearest rune. “Do you know what they say?”
“No. Whoever carved the lines through them did too good a job of it. And yes, I can read runes. The odd word here and there – in some of the darker corners – survive, but all they give are hints. Dark hints at that. ‘Blood tide’. ‘Outcast’. ‘Prophecy’.”
He fell silent and Asha stared at him. “What else nuncle? I see the battle in your face.”
“Words that make my heart sink. ‘Death cult’. ‘Lost God’. ‘Sea Wolf’. And – most ominously – ‘Beware the return of the Others’. It’s the longest fragment.”
She absorbed this and then looked about the room again. “The light… where does it come from?”
This question brought a sour smile to his face. “Oh, that? Simple – magic. Probably the magic used by the First Men. The thing that your father and Damphair deny even exists. Deny it to the point where they kill men.” He spat the words bitterly.
“Nuncle…” Asha started to say, before stopping as she struggled with the words. “Nuncle… what is going on?”
He surprised her by laughing softly for a moment, before spreading his hands. “I know not! And it’s not from lack of trying. There are no records of this room, no legends of it. Someone carved those runes and then someone else, afterwards, carved lines through them, weakening whatever magic was within them. And from the violence of some of the strokes – someone who hated whatever the runes said.”
There was a pause as her nuncle leant tiredly against the wall. “They call me The Reader, and they think that they insult me. No. It is a simple truth within a name. I read. I try to understand this world of ours. I try to see beyond the walls that your benighted father seeks to build around these islands. I would have a good future for Harlaw, a future where the sails of the Ironborn were not viewed with dread. And I seek to understand the threats that your father and his insane brother would deny even exist!”
He ran a hand through his hair. “Something comes, Asha! Something comes, something black and terrible, a storm like nothing that we have ever seen before. I smell it in the air. This room had a warning here once. A warning carved by the First Men. By… by my ancestors. There have been Harlaws here for hundreds of years, if not longer.” Grief rippled over his face for a moment. “Fair Isle changed me. When my sons died… well, it broke a part of me. Broke any faith I had in your father as well. Damn him.”
Asha winced a little. “Nuncle…”
“Oh don’t look like that Asha! Your wretched father is a fool. This notion that The Call was some kind of Greenlander mummery… do you know why your father supports his brother Aeron so much? Because he and his Drowned Men – still don’t call themselves as such openly – make up so much of his support for the Old Way. The Iron Price. That’s what he bases his power on, after the stupidity of his rebellion against Baratheon.” He spat to one side. “I have a done a lot of thinking of late,” he said bitterly. “And the more I think about it, the more I wonder if your Grandfather Quellon had the right of it. If only he’d lived longer. He might have beaten some sense into your father, instead of your father deciding to turn against what his father believed.”
This made her look around uneasily. Yes, Father’s adherence to the Old Way was… traditional. She understood that. And yet Father had, in his own way, also let her walk her own path, which was non-traditional. But he also demanded that the people around him charge the Iron Price. Follow the Old Way.
“Nuncle…”
“I am having the island searched for other such rooms. Any records at all. I am searching for answers, because my people are in danger and they need those answers. And if Damphair or even your father try and stop me from protecting my people I shall turn the waters around this island red with their blood. I will not ignore this Asha. I cannot. I heard The Call to Winterfell. That’s something else that I cannot ignore.” He shook his head. “So – now you know where I stand. I do not want you to make a choice as to where you stand yourself – but you must know the issues.”
She stared at him for what felt like a very long time. A hundred things or more flashed through her mind. The Call. The bodies in the gibbets. Damphair’s dangerous madness. Father’s comments about his plans for the North. He probably thought that his secret was unknown to her. If so he was wrong. She’d seen enough to put the pieces together. She wasn’t an idiot. She also knew that the very thought of attacking the North – of attacking Winterfell – now made her… uneasy. She made her choice.
“Nuncle, I cannot fight my father. But that does not mean that I will fight you. You have the right of it in this case.”
He nodded at her and then directed a brief wintery smile at her. “Keep your eyes on the horizon, Asha. Send word if you see or hear anything odd. And smell the wind, especially when it blows from the North. If you smell foul things, steer for Ten Towers.”
Riding back to the quay she was in a thoughtful – dark, even – mood. Her nuncle’s words had shaken her. Shaken her more than she could admit. Her nuncle was looking for answers… where could those answers be found? Wait… Old Gram. Where was she again?
When she reached the ship she found Haken sitting on a bollard and using a honing stone on his knife. “What news?”
“Alek’s gone.”
“Deserted?”
“Died.”
“What from?”
“Stupidity.”
“How so?”
“He thought that he was better at using a knife than me. And before that, that he could lecture me about taking orders from a woman. Oh and he also seemed to be a very religious man. All told – he died of stupidity.”
“Oh.” Then she shrugged. “Hire someone to replace him then. We stay the night here. Have the ship reprovisioned. We sail on the morning tide.”
“Where to?”
“Great Wyk. There’s someone there I need to talk to.”
Robert
The Street of Steel was the kind of place that made any man feel alive. So many people, so many horses, so much noise, the smoke and sparks, the pounding of metal on metal… Oh and now the cheers. Men and women cheered him as he rode down the street, with Ser Barristan by his side, with cries of ‘Long live Good King Robert!’ and ‘Long live the King!’.
He nodded genially at them and gave them his best flashing smile. It was good to be the king on a day like this.
Ser Barristan pointed to one side and he nodded. The shop that they stopped at was a large one – and a very well-appointed one. This was the workplace of a man who knew the value of good equipment – he could see that at one.
Dismounting he tied up his horse himself. “What’s the name of the merchant again, Ser Barristan?”
“Tobho Mott, Your Grace. He’s an Essosi – and a very skilled one.”
Nodding that this, he strode in. The workshop was very well-appointed indeed and he nodded at the workmanship on some of the weapons he could see on display. “Hello? Is Tobho Mott here?”
“Yes, yes, I’m coming,” a man called out tone side crossly. A door opened and a man entered. He was balding, with the shoulders of a smith. Not that he was using one of his arms at the moment – his right arm was in a sling. The moment he saw him he stopped dead – and then bowed deeply. “Your Grace. How may I help you?”
“I have a sword that I need you to have a look at,” Robert rumbled as he unslung Stormbreaker and then pulled it from its scabbard before placing it carefully on a workbench. “It’s my family sword – the sword of the Durrandons – and I’ve only recently rediscovered it. That said, it’s occurred to me that I know nothing about it. It never needs to be honed and the more I use it, the lighter it seems. Odd. So – I would know more about it.”
Mott stared at it and then nodded slowly. “I can do my best Your Grace. I might have to call on my apprentice – damn it, my ex-apprentice now, but he’s still here for a few days to help out – as I might need help because of my arm.”
“A bad injury?”
“Foolishness on my part.” He went slightly pink. “She was heavier than I thought,” he muttered quietly. “But worth it.” Then he stepped forwards and looked at the sword. After a moment he frowned. “The sword of Durran Godsgrief, yes? There are tales of this sword Your Grace. Odd ones.”
“Aye,” Ser Barristan Selmy said to one side. “It’s a sword that was said to turn aside lightning and embolden fainthearts. It’s even said that it gave warnings – but just how it did that is not said.”
Mott moved closer to the sword and then stared at the metal with a frown on his face that deepened by the moment. Then he straightened up and turned to the door. “GENDRY!”
“Master?”
“Get in here!”
“Can’t Master, this steel needs to be quenched properly. I’ll be there as soon as I finish it.”
There was something about the voice that rang a faint bell at the back of his head, but he shook it off as Mott stamped over to another workbench and then used his good hand to open a drawer, muttering as he did so. When he turned back he was holding a small round object, which he then put to his eye, scrunching his eyebrow and cheek up to hold it in place. It seemed to have some kind of lenses in it, because as he walked back to the sword Robert could see that his eye appeared to be massively enlarged. It was… unsettling.
“A payment from a Myrish merchant for some work I did on a sword for him,” Mott muttered. “It lets me see things close up.” Then he leant back over the sword and inspected it intently. Robert watched him. The man seemed to be increasingly puzzled by something. He was about to ask him what was wrong, when all of a sudden the smith straightened up. “Your Grace, may I use a tuning hammer on this sword? I want to hear what it sounds like when the metal rings.”
He stared at the man. “You want to sound the sword?”
“Aye.”
“Very well.”
Mott rummaged in a desk to one side and then pulled out a small hammer. As he did there was movement to one side and another man entered. He was well muscled and wore a blacksmithing apron. He also had a cloth over his head that seemed to be soaking up the sweat that was trickling down his face. “Master?”
“Lift the sword a little Gendry.”
“Yes Master.” The apprentice reached out and lifted the sword by the pommel. As the smith gently tapped the sword Robert heard a melodious chime from it that seemed to ripple through his very bones.
“Odd,” said the smith. “I have no idea what this metal is, Your Grace. None at all. It… it is a mystery to me. The First Men used bronze, the Andals steel. I know both metals well. The Valyrians invented their own way to forge steel, the secret of which is lost. It is the greatest mystery, for smiths, Maesters, all who work with metal. Some – myself included can rework Valyrian steel. But none can make it from new. And now, there is a new mystery. This. I truly do not know what this is made from. It is no metal that I am familiar with at all. I cannot even tell by the sound. That dull noise is odd as well.”
“Dull?” Robert asked, confused. “You’ve been by your forge for too long, man! It did not sound dull when you tapped it. It chimed!”
“Your Grace?” Mott and Ser Barristan both looked confused.
“It chimed!”
“I heard no chime,” Ser Barristan said with a frown. “Odd.”
“Your Grace,” the apprentice said hesitantly, “I heard it chime as well. Like… like a bell.”
“Not now Gendry,” Mott barked, but Robert was now intrigued.
“Take that sweatrag off your head lad. You’re the apprentice?”
“Former apprentice,” the lad said dully. “I’ve been told I’m to work by the docks now.” And then he pulled the cloth off his head. Robert openly stared at him. Blue eyes. Black hair. That Baratheon jaw. It was like looking at a younger version of himself. He could see that Ser Barristan saw it too. And Mott… well, he was looking a bit shifty.
Robert rubbed at his temple for a moment. Oh gods. “Gendry, is it?”
“Yes Your Grace.”
“You look familiar to me lad. Who was your mother?”
The lad stared at his feet. “Don’t rightly know, Your Grace. She died when I was very young. She worked at an alehouse.”
“And your father?” Robert prompted gently.
The apprentices shook his head. “Don’t know, Your Grace. That’s why I haven’t got a last name.”
“How long have you been working here?”
The lad looked deeply puzzled at the sudden change in the direction of the conversation. “Um… some years now Your Grace. A man brought me here. Can’t remember who he was now.”
Robert stared at him – and then he looked at Mott, whose shifty look intensified. “Who brought him here?”
The smith looked at him. “A man I’d never seen before, Your Grace. He paid me twice the normal fee for an apprentice. Not that he needed to. The lad had a knack with a hammer.” Oh, he knew. “He might have been an Essosi though. His accent was good, but I could tell he was once from Essos.”
Varys. It had to be him. He had seen to the matter of young Edric. How many more bastards did he have? It was an unsettling thought. Then he looked back at Gendry, who was staring at the sword. “Your mother – which alehouse? And can you remember anything at all about your mother?”
Gendry frowned in concentration. “Crossed Keys, I think. And… she had blonde hair, Your Grace.”
The Crossed Keys… he remembered that place. Oh, but remembered it. What had her name been again? Bessie? No, that was the one with the massive tits. Ah…. Oh. Alys. She’d had the most amazing smile. “Alys,” he said out loud. “Her name was Alys. She was from the Stormlands, originally. That’s why I remember her. You have a last name lad. Gendry Storm.”
The lad looked at him, and Robert could see what looked suspiciously like tears in his eyes – but that he was not going to cry. No, he wasn’t going to shed a tear. Had to be a man. “So you’re here for a few days? And then down the docks?” Robert asked, keen to move away. “I’ll talk to you again lad. And on the matter of your father – I need to talk to you about that. On another day perhaps. How good an apprentice is he, Master Mott?”
“Fair to middling. Needs to work at it. Can be a good one – if he applies himself.”
“Are you working on anything at the moment, lad?” Robert asked.
“Thought about making a helmet,” Gendry muttered. “The head of a bull.”
“Not a bad idea,” Robert said. “A challenge. Tell you what – once you make it, bring it to me. If it’s any good I’ll have you make one for me. Only in the shape of the head of a stag.”
Gendry gaped at him for a moment and then tugged his forelock. “Be honoured to do it, Your Grace.” Then he sniffed. “Master, I need to get back to the forge. Don’t like leaving it unattended. Dangerous. Your Grace. Ser Barristan.” And then, at their nods of dismissal, he left.
Robert watched him go and then looked at Mott again. “What’s he really like a smith?”
Mott smiled slightly. “If he applies himself – a very good one. He’s a steady one. A mite stubborn at times and if you throw too many things at him he can get a little confused. But he has a big heart – he’s a fierce friend. Loyal. He’s had a hard life, but he’s a good man.”
Sounds like Father, Robert thought with more than a little sadness. The poor lad. He needed to do something to help him along a little. Then something occurred to him. “Why is he going to the docks?”
“I was told that was because of Lord Stannis, Your Grace. He saw the lad once. With, erm, The Lord Hand. Lord Arryn.”
Gods, did everyone know about the lad? Did Renly know? Then he paled a little. Did Cersei? If the Scold knew about him then he might be in danger. Stannis had the right of it – the docks was a good idea. He’d talk to him.
Robert turned back to the sword. “Very well, let’s get back to the matter at hand – Stormbreaker. You don’t know what the metal is?”
“No, Your Grace. It is a mystery to me. Although… it might be a form of sky-metal. There are many kinds and I have not seen all of them.”
“Sky-metal?”
“Sometimes a star falls to earth, burning a great fiery trail as it descends. They are rare – and still rarer are the ones that are intact. And some – rare upon rare upon rare – contain a heart of iron, the kind of iron that is unlike any other. The First Men were very skilled in fashioning weapons from these things. Those that they did are famous amongst smiths. Legends in fact.”
This was intriguing. Robert shared a glance with Ser Barristan, who looked almost excited. “Such as?”
Mott stroked his chin. “The Gardener kings were said to have a great spear. The Casterlys an axe – Rocktooth by name, or so it is said. Twin daggers as well. Who knows what happened to them though? Oh and the Starks were said to have something called the Fist of Winter. A… mace I think, and a legendary one.”
Robert stroked his face. “You said that this is the work of the First Men.”
“Aye, Your Grace.”
“And possibly this, this, sky-metal.”
“Aye Your Grace. Oh, and there was another on the list. ‘Tis said that the Daynes of Starfall have a sword made from a fallen star. Dawn.”
“Dawn is the work of the First Men?” Ser Barristan asked. He looked at Robert. “’Tis very likely Your Grace. I knew Ser Arthur Dayne well. He said that Dawn was unique. And very old.” He looked ashamed for a moment. “I liked the man but… he was deep in Rhaegar Targaryen’s counsels.”
Robert felt his blood thunder in his ears at the mention of that bloody man, but kept his temper in check. “And Dawn was in this city recently, oddly enough.”
“I know,” said Mott wryly. “Half the smiths I know of – including me – were hoping to catch a glimpse of it. And that is a sword that has many, many odd legends attached to it. It’s said to be a blade that can only be borne by a Dayne. A blade made with magic. Rather like the Fist of Winter. And Stormbreaker. I think, Your Grace, that only you – and your blood can wield the blade properly.”
He considered this. Then he smiled. “Ironic. I love my Warhammer, but I now have Stormbreaker. Ned loves that sword of his, Ice, but his family once had a mace. I wonder what happened to it? Ned never mentioned any such weapon. I’ll write to him.” He stood up. “Master Mott – my thanks for your time. You do good work here, I can see it. You will receive commissions from the Red Keep, I swear it.”
“My thanks, Your Grace,” the smith said with a bow. “I should be fit again to swing a hammer in a week or so.”
Robert grabbed Stormbreaker, returned it to its scabbard and then secured it to his back again. “Good. Ser Barristan?”
“Training, Your Grace?”
“Aye.” As he strode back to his horse he sighed a little. Why was it that he got on better with his bastards than his trueborn? If only Joffrey wasn’t quite such a Lannister. He mounted with a grunt. Ah well.
Chapter Text
Tyrion
A positive flurry of ravens had been sent out in recent hours, and if words contained power then those ravens would be at Riverrun days early and with singed feathers.
He had checked that Emmon and the rest of his men – he had become accustomed to seeing them as his men by now – had been well taken care of. They had indeed. Stark’s hospitality was most generous. And the meal he had just eaten had been passing good as well.
So now he headed back to Lord Stark’s solar, a cup of rather good wine in one hand and with a head filled with questions. Arriving there he was relieved to see that the door was open. He knocked politely and then entered at the gruff ‘Come!’ from within.
Lord Stark was sitting at his desk, with books all around him and a look of fierce determination on his face. Oddly enough he did not look that surprised to see Tyrion walk in. Not even after he then closed the door.
“What can I help you with, Lord Tyrion?”
Tyrion walked to the map and stared up at it. “Your map of the North is a very good one, Lord Stark. Very detailed. Very impressive. Especially…” he waved a hand upwards. “The area North of the Wall. More detailed than any other map of the area that I have ever seen.”
Lord Stark leant back in his chair and then shot Tyrion a look that made him intensely uncomfortable. “I had information from a very… well-informed… source.”
“Really?” He found a chair and then sat, before frowning at the map. “There are far more settlements there than I had thought.”
“Aye.” Lord Stark’s eyes glittered. “Wildlings, Lord Tyrion. Thousands of them. Far more than we ever imagined. And the map shows where the northernmost villages used to be. No more. They’ve been abandoned. They’re moving South.”
He stroked his chin and then took another sip of wine. “Moving South. Interesting. Is it because they’ve heard The Call?”
Lord Stark’s look intensified still further, something that he hadn’t previously thought was possible. “Did you hear The Call?”
“No,” he conceded reluctantly. “But I felt… something. I think I was asleep when you sent out whatever it was. But I have talked to a lot of people who did hear it. Clearly enough to allow me to quote it to you now: ‘The Others come. The Stark calls for aid. You are needed.’ Lord Stark, it was even heard in the Iron Islands. Where they are now killing each other, because of this Call.”
This startled the Lord of the North, who sat up a little. “Killing each other? We heard word of unrest in the islands… but why should they kill each other?”
“Apparently Damphair Greyjoy denies this Call and is killing those Ironbborn who speak about sending aid to Winterfell – and to the Wall. Odd, is it not?”
Lord Stark muttered something under his breath in a language that might have been the Old Tongue, before looking back at the desk. “More Greyjoy idiocy,” he finally muttered out loud. “And Balon allows this? His hatred for the North runs deeper than we knew.”
Tyrion took another sip of wine. Interesting. Perhaps it was time to be totally unlike Father. It would be refreshing to imagine his reaction.
“Lord Stark, do you know why my father sent me to Winterfell?”
Another intense look, followed by a wry smile. “You said that you were just delivering some books from Casterly Rock. Knowing your father though… there had to be something more. Let me guess – he thinks that all this talk of the Others is a new gambit in the Game of Thrones that he’s so obsessed with?”
He felt his eyebrows twitch upwards with surprise at Lord Starks’ astuteness. Father had always talked about Lord Stark with a certain degree of contempt. ‘The honourable Lord Stark, a man who put honour ahead of good sense,’ Father had once said of him. ‘Honourable idiot morelike.’ Hmmm. It seemed that there was more to Lord Stark than met the eye.
“Yes,” he admitted. “My father sent me to find out what you were up to. Then I heard talk of this Call. And then I saw preparation for war. Winter too. And then I noticed that this is not the last time that the North has prepared for – and fought – such a war. Lord Stark, I have seen the crags that litter the North – those that can be seen from the King’s Road at least. And the signs of the old signal network. Oh – and there were these.” He pulled out the little pouch and passed it over to Lord Stark, who opened it with a frown. The moment that the saw the obsidian arrowheads inside his face went blank.
“You’re a very observant man, Tyrion Lannister,” he said quietly as he replaced the contents carefully. Then he placed the bag to one side, before reaching out and taking a small leather pouch of his own from his desk, before tossing it over to Tyrion. “What do you observe from that?”
Tyrion opened it with a frown of his own. Oh look. “Obsidian arrowheads. You seem to know what these mean, then? Why use this stone? Does it have a special quality?”
“It does indeed. We think that it kills Others. The First Men called it ‘Glytterglass’ and it seems that they often sent it to Winterfell when it was discovered.”
Tyrion went very still. “Did you say ‘Glytterglass?”
“Aye. Obsidian – some call it Dragonglass too. But the old days it was known as Glytterglass.”
All of a sudden he wanted to close his eyes and place his head on the table. Oh, Father would not like this at all. Instead he smiled sardonically and sipped some more wine. “There is a room in Casterly Rock, Lord Stark. An old one, deep underground. It has runes carved on the walls. Most are illegible. But a few words can be read. One of them is ‘Glytterglass’.”
Mirth – and something more – sparkled in Lord Stark’s eyes. “Really?” He stood and poured a goblet of wine for himself, before topping up Tyrion’s own goblet. “Does your father know?”
“More than likely. Interesting. That means that the Casterlys were sending obsidian to Winterfell. I wonder how Father will fit that into his ponderings over your activities.”
Lord Stark shrugged. “Your father was Hand to the Mad King. It was his job to try and work out if people were playing their thrice-damned Game of Thrones. He had to work out if mere shadows were actual threats, and if apparent threats were mere shadows.”
He leant back in his chair again, until his own face was half in shadow. “The threat beyond The Wall is real however. We face an enemy that we have not fought for tens of centuries. An enemy that we know little of. I am told that you are a clever man, Tyrion Lannister. Mance Rayder, the King Beyond the Wall, sat where you sit now not too long ago and said that the Others were the reason why the Wildlings were fleeing South. South to the Wall. Did you know that he said that he can call on a hundred thousand Wildlings? I see you unconvinced, but look again at the map. All those villages. So, then. What is your initial impression of the situation we – all of Westeros – face?”
Tyrion stared at Lord Stark and then looked back at the map. Ah. His eyes swept across the map and then at the Wall. It was such a thin line. He really wished that he could see it right now. Measure its height. Its width. The measure of the men on the Wall. Their hearts. Their courage.
“If the Wildlings truly believe that the Others are coming, and if this Rayder fellow really does have 100,000 wildlings at his command then the Night’s Watch is in deep trouble.”
“It’s worse than that. With every Wildling that dies there’s a corpse left behind. And we know that the Others can raise the dead, which then become what we call wights.”
For a moment rotten smell seemed to pass under Tyrion’s nose as he remembered that damn dream. And the terror he’d felt in that dream. “The dead march on the North?”
“They do.”
Ice ran up and down his spine for a moment. Then he drained his cup. “You seem very convinced about this Lord Stark.”
“I have seen them. In a vision sent by the Old Gods.”
Tyrion peered at Lord Stark He seemed sane, but his words… “I beg your pardon?”
“Tyrion Lannister, what do you think was responsible for The Call? It was magic. Things have been unearthed here in Winterfell. One of them sent out the call when an artefact from Last Hearth was placed in it. We have been discovering… things. Things like that mace.”
He looked over to where Lord Stark was pointing. ‘That mace’ was a huge weapon that would no doubt gladden the heart of Robert Baratheon. It was also, by its appearance, a very old one. And a very odd one. It seemed to have bits of… obsidian in it. Ah. Connections clattered into place in his head and he pinched the bridge of his nose tiredly. Damn it. He hated it when he was right about things that Father would say were mad.
“Lord Stark, I am growing convinced on this matter, but then I have seen much to convince me. That said, my father is the man that must be convinced, out of all the Lannisters. He is the one who has the power to send the kind of help to the Wall that the Westerlands can provide. My father will require proof of the Others. Proof of wights.”
“I know,” said Lord Stark quietly. “My brother, the First Ranger of the Night’s Watch, is ranging North of the Wall now. He’s on a dangerous mission, a mission I could not ask of anyone else. He seeks to bring me the hand of a wight. Will that convince Tywin Lannister?”
He was impressed, he had to admit it. “That would indeed impress my father. That is, along as such a thing could still be moving and not rotted to pieces. You must know how much warmer the Westerlands are than the North.”
This brought another thin smile to the face of the Lord of Winterfell. He reached to one side and held up a small cage made of some metal. “The First Men, it seems, thought of that. A wight’s hand will be preserved in that. It will be proof to send to the South – and to Casterly Rock.”
Imaging Father’s reaction to the moving hand of a dead man brought an instant smirk to his face. “Yes, that should be a sight to see. The great Tywin Lannister will probably spit out any wine he might be drinking possibly even show some emotion.”
Lord Stark’s eyebrow flickered upwards at the bitterness that permeated Tyrion’s last words and he cursed internally. He shouldn’t show how much anger he felt at Father’s disdain and aloofness for him. Better to mask it with laughter than drown in bitterness.
Someone knocked on the door and they both looked at it. “Who is it?”
“Robb, Father. And Dacey. We need to talk to you.”
“Enter.”
The door opened to reveal Robb Stark, who escorted Dacey Surestone in. She had formality in her very stance and her every step. She also had a book in her hands. A very thick book. She looked at Tyrion for a moment, smiled slightly but then turned that very serious gaze onto her cousin, who stood as she approached.
“Lord Stark, the Surestone of Surestone is here to deliver the burden of knowledge to you. The Others return. The Stark has called for aid. Surestone has answered.” And with that she solemnly handed the book over.
Lord Stark took the book and stared at it. “Thank you,” he said with some emotion. Then he paused. “Dacey, what is this? My father had many secrets, ones that he told Brandon. But he did not tell me.”
Dacey Surestone went white as a sheet for a moment and then she nodded. “Father was always afraid of that. You hold his life’s work. He made a new copy of the old histories, transcribing every rune of the oldest ones and every description of things that are now lost. We Surestones have always been the archivists of the North.”
This seemed to astonish both the Starks, who swapped one of those odd, intense, looks again. What was it they were hiding?
“So this is…”
“A history of the First Men.”
The Starks stared at the book, as did Tyrion. Oh, he had to read that.
Jaime
He had to face facts. It was hard to admit this, as it flew in the face of years of silent contempt and quiet japes. But it had to be done. Robert Baratheon was starting to worry him.
The Fat King was sparring with Selmy at the moment, the first with Stormbreaker and the second with his own beloved sword. He could tell that Selmy wasn’t quite giving it his all – but then neither was he letting the Fat King up easy. Selmy was still as brilliant as ever, more than Jaime liked to admit. But Baratheon… well, he never made the same mistake twice. His normal weapon was the war hammer, a devastating weapon in its own right, but a different one from Stormbreaker. It needed a different grip, a different stance, a different way of controlling the impetus. And Baratheon was absorbing every lesson and learning.
Selmy won the bout, but only just and as the two men leant, panting, on their swords he explained to Baratheon just what exactly it was that he had done wrong in a low voice. The Fat King listened carefully, absorbing every word with a frown of concentration, his feet moving slightly as he seemed to relive what he had done – and what he had done wrong.
Jaime sighed slightly and then looked over his shoulder to the North. He wondered idly what young Dayne was doing now – and what he had done in that ‘Godswood’ that didn’t even contain a Weirwood tree. Word had it that he had left it pale and trembling. That said, word also had it that Petyr Baelish had faked his own death, that Robert Baratheon was the bastard son of Aerys Targaryen and that it was possible to balance an egg on its end on the equinox. Frankly you couldn’t really trust the word on the street at times.
“Selmy, you look done in,” Baratheon panted finally, before stretching and hefting that big damn sword of his. “And don’t deny that you have a cold. I can hear you sniffling.”
Ser Barristan smiled slightly. “I may not be entirely at my best, I must admit Your Grace. But you asked me to teach you, and teach you I shall.”
“Aye, but not at the expense of you falling over. KIngslayer! Can you take over from Ser Barristan?”
He smirked slightly as he stood. “But of course Your Grace. I shall endeavour to complete your education with the sword. Ser Barristan – where shall I start?”
“Footwork, Ser Jaime. His Grace needs to work on his footwork. And also his swing, but you know my mantra.”
The smirk grew a little. “Aye. ‘Place your feet right and you can slay giants’. Very well – Your Grace?”
The Fat King worked his shoulders up and down for a long moment and then sent a tight grin his way. “Very well then, Kingslayer. Let’s see what you’re made of then?”
More than you are, fatso, Jaime thought with a smirk, before drawing his sword and stepping forwards. There was a moment of silence and then he started to watch the King’s eyes. The key to any fight – even a mere sparring match like this, with both men pulling their strokes before any actual damage could be done – was the eyes. You watched the eyes of your opponent. They gave away the moment before they played a stroke.
He watched those blue eyes carefully. They were narrowed already, studying him back. And then Baratheon showed that he was truly formidable, because his eyes didn’t even flicker as he swung Stormbreaker. Jaime parried it with an internal curse. The bloody man knew all about that eye thing. Had probably used that against him.
Another parry, one that staggered him slightly – and then he swung against his King, forcing him back a step. There was a slightly feral grin on the face of Baratheon now, one that scared him just a little bit. The swords clashed again and he felt a frown steal over his face. His sword sounded wrong all of a sudden, as if it was balanced wrongly – which was insane. He could tell by the way that Ser Barristan had looked up suddenly to one side that he too had heard that discordant note of steel against whatever the Seven Hells Stormbreaker was made from.
Baratheon swung again, a blow over his shoulder and he swung his own sword up to meet it – and then the world twisted and turned around his head. As the two swords met Stormbreaker seemed to boom almost – and his own sword shattered like a piece of Myrish glass. Shards flew everywhere and one brushed his cheek, leaving first a cold feeling and then burning pain.
Both men staggered as their impetus took them away from each other, but Baratheon controlled his rush in time whilst Jaime did not. One of his feet seemed to get tangled with the other and to his humiliation he ended up sprawled on the floor, still clutching his broken sword.
There was a moment of shocked silence and then Baratheon turned to face him. “By all the Gods! Are you alright there Kingslayer?” He stepped forwards and reached out with one massive hand. Jaime took it and then was jerked to his feet in one powerful pull. “What happened?”
Jaime looked at his sword, or what was left of it. It had shattered at a point about a foot above the hilt. He’d never seen anything like it. “I don’t know,” he said dazedly. “It broke.”
“Well, you’re bleeding – someone fetch a Maester!” Baratheon shouted, and it was then that he felt the trickle of blood running down his face.
As someone placed a stool behind him and as he sank down onto it he looked at what remained of the sword. So much for best Westerlands steel. If Father heard about this then he’d probably kill the smith who had forged it.
“Well so much for your sword,” Baratheon rumbled. “That’s peculiar.”
“Most peculiar, Your Grace,” Ser Barristan said. “Most odd.” The Lord Commander of the Kingsguard was squatting amidst the shards on the floor, his fingers running over the pieces carefully. He held one up. “Corrosion.”
Jaime took the proffered piece and stared at it. The inside of the blade was… rusted??? He gaped at it. “That… that isn’t possible. How can it be corroded from the inside? I inspected it once a day. Honed it too. I never saw any sign of corrosion.”
“I know you did,” Ser Barristan said, confusion in his own voice. “I watched you do it on so many days.”
“I would never have missed any such rust – and how could it only be on the inside?”
“I know not,” the Lord Commander rumbled. “And yet it happened. Passing odd indeed.”
More than passing odd, Jaime thought as a Maester hurried towards him with a clean cloth and a bowl of water. He might have a scar after this. What would Cersei say? And then he saw the thoughtful look in Ser Barristan’s eyes as he looked at the corroded inside of his sword. And for the briefest moment he felt some indefinable emotion.
Benjen
He’d been up by the Fist of the First Men before, but not that much in the hills to the North of it. He’d asked the enigmatic man leading him about just why it was called the Fist of the First Men, but all he’d gotten in reply had been that the place had seen battles – but that it was no longer safe. “The walls are weak and the caches are too well hidden,” Coldhands had told him. “And the Others know it too well. That’s the reason why Overlook was built.” And that had been all he’d say.
They were riding now along the bottom of a valley between two hills, and up ahead he could see a great cliff. He’d seen this valley before, but he’d never gone into it, as there was no way out of it if attacked. As he rode he frowned at the ground. There was what appeared to be a path here and there, but it looked long-neglected.
As they approached the cliff he looked at it, puzzled. There was no way through there, surely? And then Coldhands guided his elk around one crag and then another and then a crack in the cliff emerged, one wide enough to admit the antlers of the elk. As they passed into it and the light started to fade they turned a corner and suddenly they were in a cave, with old gates to one side with runes carved into them. Light was shining down from an opening far above them and he could see that one wall had iron rings hammered into the rock. It was a stable?
Coldhands tied his elk up and then pulled his saddlebags off and as Benjen did the same with Wanderer the other man used what looked like a very old and well-used tinderbox to light a pair of brands that had been one of many carefully piled up to one side.
“I always keep a supply ready,” Coldhands said quietly. “Just in case.” He waited until Benjen was finished with Wanderer and then he held one of the brands out. “Here.”
Benjen took it and then followed the other man as he walked over to an opening in the cave that turned out to be a roughly carved passage that curved leftwards and slightly upwards, until they came to an old stone door that was open. On the other side were stairs that spiralled upwards, carved out of the living rock.
“The Overlook,” Coldhands said as he entered. “Once a base of Rangers of the Night’s Watch.”
Benjen stared about him in bewilderment. He had never heard of this place at all. “This a goodly place to have North of the Wall. Why did it come to be abandoned?”
“I know not, Brother,” Coldhands muttered. “The last Ranger to come here spoke of pestilence among the Night’s Watch and fading memories of the things that were important. He died here. I burnt his body and his ashes wait to be taken back to the Wall. He was a Blackwood.”
He nodded. “I shall take them back with me.”
Silence fell as they passed on upwards and after a while Benjen realised that he had lost count of the number of steps they had taken. And then suddenly he saw light up ahead and then another doorway.
Beyond that was another cave – or was it? Three of the walls were carved stone but the other was a wall of well-worked stones, with holes at irregular intervals along it. Some kind of crystal, clear as glass in places, was in the holes. There were doorways off to one side and he could see what looked like stripped wooden cots in them. There was another room off to one side and he could see what seemed to be a great wooden desk, blackened with age. The place was warmer than he had first thought.
“There is a warm spring beneath. Another passage leads there. And the ‘windows’ overlook the approaches to the Fist of the First Men. I have seen the Others there sometimes of late. They know it too well. You must warn your Brothers on the Wall.”
He looked around again. “I wish I had known of this place before.”
“I come here sometimes to…. to remember.” Coldhands’ voice seemed to quaver for an instant. “Once this place was very different.”
Benjen looked at the other man, his mind filled with questions. Who was he? Come to that, what was he – how old could he be? He was about to ask one of many questions when Coldhands raised a hand. “You must wait here for a day. Let me scout the area out. If there are wights nearby then I shall find out where. You will need proof. And there are some means to provide it in the office of the First Ranger. There are cages for hands, forged by the First Men. I must go.” And with that he left.
Benjen listened to the receding footsteps and then sighed a little. Well now – he should probably look at this office. Office of the First Ranger, eh? When had that been? When had anyone been here from the Wall last, in years? Perhaps there would be records, or at least some mention.
But first he walked over to the wall and those openings. He could see clear across the valley, right to the foot of the Fist of the First Men. This was a valuable place, somewhere that the Rangers needed to use again. This was a place of deep history.
He turned back to the other room. He needed more answers.
Tormund
He wondered where the bloody hell Mance was and then dismissed it. The man would turn up eventually. He didn’t like the fact that he’d gone South so quickly, telling others that he had to talk to the Stark in Winterfell, but then he’d had trouble not following him after he had heard The Call. It had gone through the Free Folk camps like a bolt of lightning.
Oddly enough something had also gone through the Giants, all of whom seemed… shaken. “Old Ways awaken,” Wun Wun had told him in the Old Tongue not long afterwards. “Old things awaken. Good and bad. Magic comes.” And then the shaggy giant had shrugged and wandered off.
He ducked under the lintel of the hut and looked around the camp. It was a fine day, if a little colder than the day before. The camp had grown again overnight and the sentries had reported that a new group had come in an hour or so past dawn.
Sigorn, the son of the Magnar of Thenn, was standing off to one side, talking to a messenger on a shaggy little horse. As Tormund approached the rider nodded to Sigorn and then booted the horse into a walk and then a trot.
“Trouble?” Tormund asked.
“Ach, word from Thenn. My father wants me to go to the Wall and meet with the Stark. He’d better have that bloody Fist.”
He eyed the tattooed man worriedly. He had no idea what the bloody hell he was talking about. The Thenn kept mentioning some kind of Fist, but he had no idea what they were talking about, especially as they never explained.
Wun Wun wandered past at that point, clutching a tree trunk with a sharpened base in one hand and a rock in the other. “New hut,” he muttered. “Needs stick.”
Tormund nodded affably, as it seemed the only thing that he could do. “Rayder will be back in a few days, or so I am told,” he said to Sigorn. “And then we will bloody learn what he has been up to in the South. And-”
There was a thudding noise as Wun Wun suddenly dropped the rock he had been using to hammer the trunk into the ground. The giant was sniffing the air with deep snorts of air and what looked like a frown under all that hair. Alarm stirred in him. Was he smelling a threat? He knew that giants had poor sight but a bloody good sense of smell. And Wun Wun was smelling something now.
“What? What’s in the wind?” Tormund called.
If anything the giant seemed puzzled. “Riders come,” he said eventually. “Our kind. From West. Many. But… who?” He turned to look West, or rather to sniff to the West.
Tormund looked westwards – and then he saw the sentries start to wave and shout on the western edge of the encampment. And then he saw them. Huge figures in the distance. Giants on mammoths, at least a hundred of them. He stared. A hundred? That had to be half the number that still even bloody lived. And if Wun Wun didn’t know them…
The giant was striding towards the West now and he trotted to join him, Sigorn to one side. “Many of us,” Wun Wun said in astonishment as he kept sniffing. “You see?”
“A hundred I’d say. I sees them, Wun Wun. I sees them there.”
The giant looked at him in what he now knew was their look of astonishment and then he redoubled his speed. When they reached the edge of the encampment he stopped dead.
Someone in the approaching group must have seen or smelt Wun Wun, because all of a sudden a horn was sounded, loud and brassy. Wun Wun put his hands together and then roared a response back and Tormund could tell that it was a joyful one. The group started to slow, which was good as they were making the bloody ground shake, and then Wun Wun stiffened as he sniffed – and then he broke into a run. Tormund ran with him, baffled.
One of the mounted giants slithered off his mammoth and then ran towards Wun Wun and the two came together in a thud of chest against chest – and then a great roaring bearhug. The two giants seemed to be crying and wailing and laughing all at once. Thormund and Sigorn watched, bewildered.
“Brother!” Wun Wun cried eventually through snot and tears. “Brother! Thought dead!”
Tormund looked at Sigorn, who shrugged. “A reunion?”
He looked at the massed ranks of giants. “Didn’t think there were this number left in the West. Neither did Wun Wun.” By the way that the giant was crying, he was bloody right about that too. And then his brother rumbled something at him, and Wun Wun stiffened again, this time in total shock. He stared at his brother and then rumbled something back at him. There was a long moment of silence and then Wun Wun sniffed the air and then turned to them.
“Tormund-man?”
“Yes?”
“Brother brought… brought a Child.”
This was bloody odd. “A bairn? A young one? A young what?”
Wun Wun stared at him, puzzled. “Bairn?”
“What child?”
Wun Wun seemed confused and then talked to his brother again, who then waved his long arms at another giant, who was leading a mammoth. The ground shook a little as they approached and then the giant brought his steed to a halt and then reached up and pulled something down from the saddle. It was… a kind of nest almost of furs, almost half the height of a man, maybe smaller. The giant walked over to them and very gently laid it down.
Tormund peered at it, confused. And then deep within the nest something… stirred. A little hand with three fingers and thumb, all tipped with black nails, reached up and pulled one of the furs to one side. There was a face there. It was brown, almost black, and old. Very old. Like a crone. And then the eyes opened and he almost pissed himself in shock. The eyes were large and green and looked like those of a cat. They also seemed to be very interested in him.
“I know you…” The voice spoke the Old Tongue and was weak but seemed to have great intensity behind it. “I have seen… you before.”
“You have?” He paused. He had squeaked. He was Tormund bloody Giantsbane and he did not bloody squeak.
“In... a vision.” A sigh emerged from the little creature. “First Man, I am… Heartstring.”
“You are one of the Children of the Forest,” Sigorn whispered reverently and Tormund felt his own eyes widen in wonder. “But… you were said to have passed from this world. Not even the Thenn have seen any sign of your kind for many long years.”
The wizened little face smiled a smile of deep sadness. “We hid, First Man. We hid. We could not… hear the others and it took time… to realise why. We thought that we… were dying. And we were. I am the… last of my clan. There are other clans, but I am… the last of mine. I was protecting… my brothers and sisters here… in the mountains to the West, and before… that beyond.”
“Beyond the Frostfangs???” Tormund choked. “Truly?”
“Truly, First Man. Now… listen. I am dying.”
The nearby giants made snuffling noises of sadness and grief and Heartstring smiled sadly at them. “I have… lingered too long… already, my friends. But I had… to get you… to safety. To your friends.” The little creature looked back at Tormund and pierced him with a gaze that seemed to go right through him. “Where… is the one who… leads you? I must speak… with him.”
“Mance Rayder? He is-”
“Here,” said a low voice behind him and he turned in relief to see Mance striding up to them, his eyes wide with wonder of his own. “You are one of the Children of the Forest. I am Mance Rayder. I lead here.”
“Yes… I saw you too. In a… vision.” Another sad smile. “I am… Heartstring. I came to bring… these to you to protect. And I came to… warn you. The ancient enemy… comes. He gathers his… strength for a great… blow. You must flee South… to the Wall. And beyond it.”
Mance nodded sharply. “I know. I have spoken to the Stark in Winterfell. He will tell the Night’s Watch to allow us past the Wall and into the Gift.” He eyed Sigorn. “And he wields the Fist of Winter. I have seen it.” The man from Thenn stared at him in shock.
This seemed to bring Heartstring to life for a moment, because a wizened hand emerged and gripped Mance’s own hand tightly. “Truly? The Stark… holds The Fist?”
“Truly.” Mance smiled. “I have seen it.”
The little creature released its grip and then smiled. “Then the… First Men are… indeed awake. The giants… felt something. Magic stirs…” The eyes closed and then opened again. “My time… grows short. My kind have… long lives… but even we can die. Long… years lie on me. Much grief… and much joy.
“Listen to me Mance Rayder. You must… go to the Wall. To… the oldest place there. The place… that is cursed.”
“The Nightfort? Why there?”
“You and this… one, bright of hair, must… go. You will meet… others there. The man with… the golden mind and… the boy who died and fell… through time. The Old Gods… grow strong again. They will be… watching. They will… protect you. But you must go there.”
“Why? Why the Nightfort?”
“The hidden gate. It must… admit the man you find… North of the Wall there. He must be brought through. Only… then can he lay down his burden. Long… years he has borne it. At… a great cost. He stands… between life… and death. We saved him… long ago. He must… pass on what he bears. Only… then can he sleep.”
“I don’t understand,” Mance muttered. “What does he bear?”
Heartstring sighed bitterly and wearily. He – or was it a she? – seemed to be weakening again. “When the Wall… was built, it was by men…. And with our… help. But the men did… not understand the way… that our magic works… not truly. They erred. They cut the links… between here and… South of the Wall. They could still… see, but we… could not. Long years it took… before it was clear. And when it… was we thought we could… repair it. A great… magic was prepared. But the… man it was entrusted… to, he was found by the Ancient Enemy. They almost… killed him. We… saved him… so to speak. But he could not… pass the Wall. Pass on the… magic he holds. He waits still… driven by his duty. And those men… who knew of him… died. You have such short lives… you First Men. And… short memories. You will know him… when you see… him. And… his… successor.”
The Child of the Forest seemed to be sinking fast now. “I… die now… but you must… know something. The Ancient Enemy – his great… blow will come soon. By… the sea. Wights gather… South of the Frostfangs. I felt… it. Magic. Terrible magic… Be warned. Be… watchful… Warn… your people. Warn… The Stark. Watch… the… sea…” Another smile. “Scatter… my… ashes… at the… sacred… hill… place… in the… land… of… the… rivers…”
And with that the hand went limp and the eyes closed. Everyone watched, but the little figure was no longer breathing and after a long moment the giants threw their heads back and wailed at the skies in grief.
“I will build fire,” Wun Wun said eventually, wiping his face with his huge hands. “Burn Heartstring.”
“I will help,” Sigorn said quietly.
As giant and man started work Mance took Tormund to one side. “How many more have come in?”
“Ten more settlements. You really talked to Ned Stark?”
“I did. He knew that the Others have returned. He sent The Call out. The Night’s Watch are stirring again – they have volunteers flocking to the Wall. Things have changed, my original plan no longer stands. And yes the Stark said that we can pass South of the Wall.”
“What of the Black Crows?”
Mance rubbed at his face. He looked dead tired and more than a bit dirty. He’d been pushing himself hard, he could tell. “They have heard The Call too. And they rely on Ned Stark to call his banners when needed. He told me that he will call his banners against the Others and not on us. And he said that he will make the Night’s Watch see that.” He paused. “We’ve been lucky, Tormund. He didn’t know about The Call. His father did, and his older brother, but he knew nothing about the warning signs. There’s something else. He claims to have been granted a vision of Hopemourne by the Old Gods.”
Terror trickled its way up and down Tormund’s back. “Really?”
“Really. He described it to me. He described it true. He’s been given a warning from the Old Gods, so what he did not know before he knows now. And now, with this…” He gestured at the body of Heartstring. “We have been warned. We must run for the Wall.”
Sigorn broke off from building the pyre to join them. “I will send word to my father. The Thenn will march with you. The Fist of Winter and the Stark command us now.” He nodded shortly and then went back to the pyre.
“I’ll order everyone to prepare,” Tormund muttered. “The Wall it is then, and right fast.”
Robb
He found Father in his solar, hefting the Fist of Winter with a frown. The weapon must have been as heavy as it looked, judging by the way that Father’s tendons were straining. After a moment Father noticed him.
“Robert would laugh himself sick if he saw me holding this,” he said with a wry smile. Then the smile vanished. “I’m going to have to learn how to use this, Robb. This is important. There will be those who will say that the Stark in Winterfell must wield the Fist of Winter. And if this is… magic, or linked to magic, then I must truly know how to wield it.” He snorted. “Rodrik Cassel hasn’t taught me how to use a new weapon since… well, I was a boy. Before I was sent to foster at the Eyrie.”
Robb nodded and then sat. “So much has changed since I came back,” he mused thoughtfully. “I can scarce believe how much has changed. The Hearthstone, The Call, Domeric Bolton, the room by this Solar… so much else. Dacey especially.”
“There was never any word of her being on the road in that other time?”
“None whatsoever. Not before the King came, or afterwards, when I led the Banners South to try and free you.” He felt his voice quaver for a heartbeat and Father looked at him quickly.
“Do not regret it, not for one moment,” Father said softly. “Yes, in that other world you made mistakes. You were too young, too unprepared, you did not know so many things. You did not know of the madness of Balon Greyjoy, or of the ambition of Roose Bolton. You did not know how ruthless Tywin Lannister can make himself be. And you did not know that the Others were coming.”
He nodded again. “But now I know. Now we know.”
“Aye. And we are preparing. But we must tell Robert.” He sank into a chair. “And that is what worries me. He was a little heavier then I was used to when we smashed the Greyjoys, but from you told me of Robert’s visit here, along with Jory Cassel’s account of what he saw in the Red Keep… how could have sunk so low?”
“He was unhappy, Father,” Robb said gently. “The first thing he did when he came here was to ask you to show him Aunt Lyanna’s tomb. And his marriage to Cersei Lannister was… poisonous. I think he was deeply unhappy. But you said that his recent messages were different – a new sword? That was new. Mayhaps things are changing to the South as well. The Call.”
It was Father’s turn to nod, more thoughtfully. “Yes – and we need to think most carefully about that. The Blackwoods have sent me a raven. The Brackens too. The Call has made them set aside their ancient bloodfeud. The Redfort pledges their support… and then there’s this.” He handed over a message.
Robb took it and read it. And then he read it again, baffled. “’The Runes glow. The Others come. House Royce stands with the Stark in Winterfell. We are coming.’” He looked at Father. “What runes?”
Father drummed his fingers on the table and then shook his head. “I know not. Runestone is an odd place, Robb. House Royce is of the First Men, one of the few major houses in the Vale to keep to the old ways, but they are secretive. Jon Arryn once told me that there are places in the fortress that the Royces forbid people to see, places that are sealed off. Perhaps they have unsealed them? I’ll find out more. If Bronze Yohn Royce really is coming then that will be something that will shake the Vale.”
“So, more politics then? Lord Arryn will want to know.”
“Aye, more politics. I need to meet with Jon and Robert. Every time I pick up a quill to write a letter to them something seems to happen though. I just hope that I have done enough to warn Jon. From what you told me his death was the fault of the Lannisters.”
“Father,” Robb said slowly, “Two things worry me. First, how can you tell King Robert about his wife and her brother? How can you prove it?”
Oddly enough Father looked smug at this. “Don’t worry too much about that, Robb. I have a plan. The Old Keep will be repaired first, the Broken Tower last. Or so it will seem. I’ll show you later. What’s the other worry you have?”
He gestured at the Fist. “That… worries me. Is it magic? Does it contain magic? I mean, in the tales there are stories of weapons only responding to people of the right blood. We are Starks, Father, but you are not the King in the North. Not in this time. Does the Fist have magic that is activated by Stark blood, or because it’s wielded by the King in the North?”
There was a long moment of silence as Father looked at the mace and ran a thumb over his chin. “You raise a good point. One that occurred to me as well. Luwin is consulting the histories. I was wondering as well when the Fist was last seen in public. Torrhen Stark bore Ice when he knelt to Aegon, not the Fist. Who knows when it was hidden from plain sight? And why?”
“Perhaps he was afraid that Aegon would have taken it? Or that the dragons might have melted it?”
The long fingers of his father drummed on the table again. “Mayhaps he thought that. But the Fist fell out of history earlier than that. I do wonder why.” Father seemed to shake himself briefly, like a wolf awaking from a nap. “Anyway, this talk of Ice reminds me of something. There will be a formal ceremony later for this, but I want to tell you now, face to face.”
Robb sat up straighter. There was a weight to Father’s voice now, a depth of solemnity that only Father could convey.
“I will train with the Fist of Winter. It will be my burden, my duty, to carry it. I am the Stark in Winterfell. That leaves Ice. From this day forth it will be the weapon of the Heir to House Stark. It will be yours, Robb. Yours until you have a son of your own to pass it on to, so that you can wield the Fist when I am dead.”
He looked at Father and felt his throat close up for moment and he remembered the horrible tide of grief that had washed over him when he had heard of his death, betrayed and all but murdered in that shithole known as King’s Landing. “Thank you, Father,” he said hoarsely. “I will wield it with honour.”
“Be sure you do,” Father said gruffly. “As I said, there’ll be a ceremony later today. GreatJon put my mind to it.”
He made a note to thank GreatJon Umber, when something occurred to him. “Father,” he said cautiously, “What do you make of the arrival of Tyrion Lannister?”
His father leant back in his chair again. “Another change from the time that you returned from. He seems a smarter man than his reputation led me to believe. And as he has a reputation as a drunkard with a love of whores, then I wonder if he has been hiding his lantern under a bush. He saw the threat posed by the Wildlings in an instant.”
Robb nodded – and then pulled a slight face. “How has Mother taken his arrival?”
“Better than I had thought, given how in that other future she was convinced that he’d given orders that Bran be murdered in his sickbed.” Father sighed. “I think that she’s trying not to think too much about that, given that her actions started an eventual war. Besides, the more I think about it, the less I think that Tyrion Lannister sent the man with the dagger. The only reason we thought that was the dagger – and Peytr Baelish told us about that. Given his attempt to kidnap Robert Arryn… well let’s just say that we don’t trust him very much.
“No, we’ll trust Tyrion Lannister just enough to let him see that we face a war here. He might be able to convince his very sceptical father. It’s Tywin Lannister I’m worried about. The man’s a prickly, humourless, ruthless cyst on the backside of Westeros. Unfortunately he’s also powerful and rich and sees himself as a great military commander. We must be wary of him. He’ll need proof. And from what I have heard he does not like his own son.” He shook his head wearily.
Robb nodded and then was about to ask Father why Mother had suddenly started being so civil to Jon, when a fist hammered at the door to the Solar. “My Lord,” Maester Luwin shouted from the other side. “Ravens!”
“Come in Luwin,” Father said and they both stood as the older man hurried in. There was something in his eyes that told Robb that something had happened and the Maester held out two messages.
“From Kings Landing,” Luwin puffed. “I ran to bring these to you.”
Father’s eyebrows went up – and then he took the first and read it quickly. As he did his eyebrows went up even further. “Lord Petyr Baelish has been arrested and stripped of his titles and positions by order of the Hand of the King. He is accused of peculation and thievery of the King’s coin. He is to face immediate trial and all of the Lords of Westeros are to inspect their holdings to see if Baelish owned anything or was tied to anything in their holdings.” He looked at them. “Well,” he said brightly, “It seems that the problem of Littlefinger has been taken care of for the time being. Luwin, bring the account books. We must search for signs of Littlefinger – there’s a list of his false names in business dealings.”
“And the other letter?” Robb asked.
Father opened it – and then went quite still. “Baelish was tried by Jon Arryn and Stannis Baratheon. He was found guilty and then accorded a trial by combat. He lost. He’s dead.” He lowered the letter. “That was fast. It’s good that he is no longer a threat, but that was faster than I thought.”
“I think that the raven with the first letter was injured on the way North, My Lord. It seems to have a strained tendon on one wing.”
Father nodded absently. “The letter has more information about Littlefingers’ peculations. Names as well. Very well – Robb, you and Luwin go through the account books. We have properties and businesses to seize that are now our property. And I… I will tell my wife of this. She will not grieve for the man that he became, but she will weep for the boy she once knew.”
Tyrion
The direwolf fascinated him. And he seemed to fascinate her, judging by the way that she would look at him and then look at the other men and then tilt her head to one side. She probably thought that he was a child or something. Speaking of children she looked as if she was going to whelp any day now.
He turned and continued his walk around Winterfell. The place both intrigued and worried him. Oh, it was a place that was preparing for War alright. But it was looking North, to the Wall, not South. He wondered, not for the first time, how he was going to word his letter to Father. Carefully for one thing.
Hearing voices to one side he looked over to see a young Stark – Bran was it? – being patiently mentored by an older boy about the joys of archery. When he finally saw the sigil on the older boys cloak he repressed a scowl. A Greyjoy. Lovely. A squidling a long way from the sea. Probably better not to go anywhere near the lad, ‘lest Jaime hear about it and then complain that he stank by association.
So he turned to one side and wandered over to the trees he could see in one corner. A Godswood with actual weirwood trees, how novel. The one in Kings Landing didn’t have any. As he wandered through the trees he sniffed the air. The smells of a real godswood were... subtly different. There was a pool to one side, by a Heart Tree and he shuddered a little as he looked at the face carved into it and the red sap that looked like bloody tears. It looked… old. Old and yet there seemed to be something about it that looked vaguely familiar. He looked at the tree carefully. Odd – there was new growth here and there, as if it had started to grow again.
As he approached the carved face a breeze picked up and rustled the leaves and as it did he could almost imagine that he heard a voice whispering something just a fraction too low to make out. And then he froze. Someone was watching him, he was sure of it. He looked around carefully. No, there was no-one there. Imagination? Probably. He’d be imagining snarks and grumpkins next. He reached out and ran a hand gently over the white bark of the tree.
And then he heard the sounds of someone approaching. He turned and then saw a tall young man with distinctly Stark features wandering through the Godswood, apparently lost in his own thoughts. After a moment he caught sight of Tyrion and stopped with a slight frown. “Who are you?”
“Tyrion Lannister,” he replied, with a touch of Lannister hauteur. “Of – obviously! – Casterly Rock. And you are…”
“Jon Snow,” The young man replied, before seeming to catch himself. “Or rather Jon Stark. I think.”
“You think? You don’t know?”
“Father has written to the King, asking that I be made legitimate.”
Ah, so this was Stark’s bastard son. He certainly looked enough like Stark. Father had occasionally wondered about the identity of the boy’s mother, although he hadn’t wondered so hard that people went out and found out more about it. And now Stark was legitimising him? All very heartwarming, but why? And then a chill ran through him. Stark wanted as many Starks around him as possible. A wise move when faced with war. Father would probably do the same at Casterly Rock.
“A pleasure to meet you, Jon Stark. I was just looking at your godswood here and comparing it to the one in King’s Landing.”
The lad nodded absently. “Is there not one in Casterly Rock?”
This was a good question. “Yes,” he said with a frown of thought. “The Stone Garden, we call it. But it’s not like this. This is… very Northern.”
The Stark boy looked a bit confused at this. “Just a Godswood. You should see the one in the Wolfswood. Now that’s ancient.”
Tyrion looked at him. “I wasn’t aware that Winterfell had two Godswoods.”
Jon Snow/Stark nodded, a faraway look on his face. “We found it on the night that we found the Direwolf.” And then he shivered a little before looking at the Heart Tree. “Your pardon, but I need to pray.”
“Of course,” Tyrion said with a smile. He stepped to one side and then watched at the Stark boy knelt in front of the tree, bowed his head and closed his eyes. Tyrion looked around idly and then started to walk away in search of perhaps a cup of wine, when all of a sudden the boy spoke again.
“Tyrion Lannister.”
He stopped dead in his tracks. The boy had spoken in a voice unlike his previous one. Deeper for a start, with a hint of mountains collapsing in the far distance. “Erm, yes?”
The boy turned around and then opened his eyes and Tyrion found himself torn between running, pissing himself in terror and being absolutely fascinated. Jon Starks eyes were… they were… well, there was red fire in them. Or that was what it looked it.
“Descendent of Lann the Clever, Lann Casterly. Loyal to the Stark in Winterfell, unlike his faithless father.”
“What?” Tyrion squeaked and then wanted to curse. He sounded as if he had been kicked in the nether regions. “I mean – can I help you? Whoever you are?”
“You must go to the Nightfort, Tyrion Lannister. There you will find the answers that you seek. The Others come. Casterly Rock must be warned.” The red fires seemed to intensify in the eyes of the boy. “The lion must shed his pride.”
“Jon???” The name was cried by a horrified looking young girl with brown hair, grey eyes and the undoubted look of yet another bloody Stark. “Your eyes…”
Tyrion stepped towards her and held up a hand. “Do you know what this is?”
She stared at him, obviously confused, and then nodded hesitantly. “It… it happened to Father not long ago. On the night he found the Direwolf. It’s the Old Gods.”
Jon Stark peered at her. “Worry not, young warg. But Tyrion Lannister must be warned. The Nightfort, Tyrion Lannister. You must help the wandering man through the Gate. You will know when.” The eyes flared again and then the fire vanished as the grey eyes of the boy reappeared. A boy who blinked at them both, confused.
“Arya? When… when did you arrive? I… was kneeling by the Heart Tree. How did I get here?”
Tyrion took a deep breath. “Well, your eyes turned red for a start. Red fire. It was all most unnerving. Then you told me to go to the Nightfort at some unspecified time.”
The young man turned white. “Red fire?” he turned to the girl. “Arya? Did you see this?”
She nodded wordlessly and he sank onto his haunches and then ran his hands through his hair, disordering it. And then he stood. “We must see Father and tell him about this.”
“Oh and you said that I was a warg,” Arya Stark pointed out. She seemed positively gleeful about it. “Isn’t it exciting?!”
Her brother just looked at her for a long moment. “Father’s Solar,” he said firmly, “Now. You too if you please Lord Tyrion.”
He nodded and followed them. As they walked through the trees and back out into the main courtyard of Winterfell the wind rustled the leaves of the trees around them again and once again he seemed to hear a whisper of words too low to make out. He made up his mind there and then that he would return to this place. Something seemed to be calling him.
Robb
He peered at the ledger, running his finger down the carefully written entries. Then he paused, looked at the names on the letter from King’s Landing and then smiled tightly. “And there’s another. A warehouse company in White harbour. Apparently owned by a ‘Barrowman’ – another of Baelish’s false names. Fach, the man had his fingers everywhere!”
“Indeed, my Lord. And here is yet another, also in White Harbour. A victualling company in a shipyard. Lord Manderly will not be pleased, although he will be happy to own it.” Luwin leant back tiredly. “It seems that the late Lord Baelish will not be missed.”
“You speak truly Maester Luwin.” He paused. “Lord Bolton will also not be pleased. The Dreadfort has been dealing with a store company owned by a man called ‘Smallkeep’. Yet another false name belonging to Littlefinger.”
There was little warning other than the most cursory of knocks and then the door sprang open and Arya arrived. She had been running and she looked both excited and a little scared. “Arya? What’s wrong?”
She caught her breath. “Robb! Where’s… Father?”
“Talking to Mother. An old friend of hers has died. Well – was executed.”
She looked extremely interested in that and started to ask a question, before catching herself and then waving her hands about. “Never mind that… Jon was in the… Godswood and his eyes went… all fiery and the Old… Gods spoke through his mouth!”
Robb came to his feet in an instant, Luwin next to him. “What? What happened?”
She turned to the door and then bounced a little in anticipation, before they finally heard the hurried footsteps – and then in came Jon with – of all the people – Tyrion Lannister next to him. The latter looked shaken.
“Where’s Father?” Jon asked, looking about the Solar.
“Here,” said Father as he walked in with a red-eyed Mother. Then he froze. “What has happened?”
“I was going to pray in the Godswood with Jon, but I could see that he was talking to the Imp here-”
“Arya!” Mother said, scandalised. “Lord Tyrion is our guest! Apologise!”
“Sorry, Lord Tyrion, and then Jon knelt to pray and I was going to join him when all of a sudden he said “TYRION LANNISTER” in a voice like doom and then he turned around and his eyes were red! Red fire! Just like Father on the night that Edric Stark took him over and got the Direwolf! And then he said that the Imp-”
“ARYA!”
“Sorry, Lord Tyrion, was descended from Lann the Clever, son of the faithless Casterly, and that he had to go to the Nightfort to help a wandering man through a gate when the time was right and then his eyes went out, no, I mean the fire went out and he was Jon again!”
There was a short silence that was then broken by Tyrion Lannister: “I am most impressed, Lord Stark, by your daughter’s ability to say all that without apparently breathing in at any point.”
Robb shot an amused look at the little Lannister and then looked at Jon, who was blushing.
“Jon,” said Father intently, “Is this true?”
“I don’t know, Father,” Jon said with an uncomfortable look on his face. “One moment I was kneeling before the Heart Tree and the next I was on my feet and Arya and Lord Tyrion were staring at me.”
“Oh, it’s true, Lord Stark,” said Tyrion Lannister and he wandered over to a side table and then helped himself to a cup of wine. “Every word of it. Your Old Gods – or perhaps given the fact that they talked to me that should be our Old Gods – talked to me. Told me to go, indeed, to the Nightfort. Not entirely sure why, but they seemed very intent.” He hopped up into a chair, drank what looked like half the wine in one gulp and then looked at Father. “So – I gather that this has happened before?”
“The night of the Direwolf,” said Father reluctantly. “And I have no memories from that night either.”
Tyrion Lannister swirled the remaining wine in his cup around and then looked at Father with surprisingly keen eyes. “Your Old Gods said that Lann the Clever – Lann Casterly much to my surprise as the full name of Lann has long been a mystery – was faithful to the Stark in Winterfell. I am guessing that our two Houses were once much closer.”
“They were,” Luwin said softly. “The oldest of the records say that Casterly Rock would send dragonglass – obsidian – to Winterfell whenever it was found.”
“But no more.” Tyrion Lannister drank the rest of the wine. “Lord Stark, I was convinced before, somewhat reluctantly, that the Others had returned. I am now fully convinced. The Old Gods are speaking. Perhaps we should listen very carefully to what they are saying.”
Robb looked around the room. Arya was serious now, whilst Jon was pale – as were Father, Mother and Luwin. It was Robb who broke the silence. “Why the Nightfort?”
The short man spread his hands. “I am to help a wandering man through a gate there. At some unspecified time, although apparently I will know when.” He peered at the map. “Well, my plan was always to visit the Wall. Given how long the Nightfort has been abandoned, I am guessing that it won’t be as hospitable a place as Castle Black.”
“It’s the oldest of the castles,” Luwin muttered, “With a black reputation. Some say that it’s cursed.”
“Of course it’s cursed,” Tyrion Lannister sighed. “That’s my lot in life. Cursed with too big a brain, cursed with too short a pair of legs, cursed with too large a… erm, let me end that sentence there.”
He hopped down to pour himself more wine – and then he paused. “Five days ago I had a dream, Lord Stark. A passing odd one. I was leading men South, into The Reach. The Bone Road was closed, Dorne had abandoned us, King Robert was missing and no word had come from Winterfell in a long time. The dead were marching from Casterly Rock, which had fallen to them and the Iron Islands were also gone.” And then he turned white as a sheet. “There was a Lord Greyjoy there – an older version of the boy I saw training your son Bran! Older and far more tired! Why did I suddenly only remember that detail of the dream until now? Surely it was just a dream?”
“Theon Greyjoy can tell you something about dreams,” Father said grimly. “He was marked by a dream. That dream of yours could be important, Lord Tyrion. Try and remember as much of it as possible. The son of Lord Reed is here. He’s a Greenseer and might see something in you.”
The Lannister man stared oddly at Father and then finally poured himself more wine. “I think I also need to word a very careful letter to my father. He will not believe any of this, so I must till the grounds with just the right words.” He drank a little. “I genuinely don’t know what to say in that letter.”
Jaime
The garden of the Red Keep was a beautiful place, Jaime thought as he wandered through the rose beds with Cersei on his arm. There were times when he could almost imagine what things would be like in a perfect world.
“That fat fool could have killed you!” Cersei spat the words with a venom unique to her as her finger traced the line of the cut. A Maester had cleaned the wound carefully and then sewn it shut with as fine a needle and thread as possible. There would be a fine line for a while afterwards he had been told, but with luck no permanent scar.
He raised a languid eyebrow at his sister. The touch of her finger left him burning inside, but they were in a public place and there were certain niceties to be observed. “The fat king can be blamed for many things, my dear sister, but this was not his fault.” He pulled out the corroded cross section of sword that he had been keeping in his pocket. “See?”
She took it and transferred her glare to the piece of metal. After a moment she frowned. “Odd. It was rusty inside?”
“It seems so. Peculiar because I never even suspected it. Seven Hells, I killed a bandit three weeks ago on the road with it. Felt fine in my hands then. Sounded fine as well.” He shrugged. “I’ll get a new one from the Street of Steel.”
“I know you will,” she smirked at him. “But from the Red Keep. I have a master smith here ready for you. You’ll need to attend to give them your measurements for your height and reach, but it will be better than your old one. Less rusty. And every time you plunge it into someone, you’ll think of me.”
There was something hot and rough in her low voice and he quivered with need for her for a long moment. Then he rubbed a finger under his nose and under the cover of it whispered: “Tonight?”
“Tonight,” she whispered back. “The tower.”
He smiled at her and then pocketed the piece of sword as they sat on a bench. “Father will be angry with the man who wrought this,” he said wryly. “Most angry.” Then he sobered. “I still don’t understand it though.”
“Pay it no mind, it’s just a sword,” Cersei said with a shrug and he was about to tell her off for such words when a scream of utter horror pierced the air. It was long and horrible and filled with such an unutterable pain that Jaime came to his feet in a trice, his hand on the sword he’d borrowed from the armoury, looking for a threat.
Another scream, one that was somehow even louder and more heartbreaking, and then he heard booted feet running past. He peered over a rosebush and watched as a man in Arryn colours dashed past, panting. “You!” Jaime called. “What’s going on?”
The man skidded to a halt and looked back, obviously annoyed, only to swallow and nod respectfully as he saw Jaime. “Your pardon Ser Jaime. Lady Arryn has just caught sight of the head of the traitor Baelish on its spike. She did not know that he was dead apparently.” He nodded again and then ran on, leaving Jaime looking at his receding back with bemusement.
“Well,” he said to Cersei softly, “It seems that Lysa Arryn is rather behind the times. She didn’t know that Littlefinger was dead.”
“She had more than a soft spot for him in her heart,” Cersei smirked a little. “Such a shame.”
But Jaime frowned. “She mourns him. No-one else did.” Then he shook his head. Ah well. He eyed his sister. And then he hungered for night to fall.
Benjen
When morning came he rolled his blanket back up, covered it with the oilskin cloth and then put it back in his bag. Breakfast was a rather stale roll and a few dried currants that he’d soaked in water from the spring in the lower part of the Overlook. He was memorising as much as possible about the place for the future. This was a place that the Night’s Watch desperately needed. Why had it been forgotten about?
Perhaps there was a clue in the solar, or at least that was what he’d named it in his head. The place was cluttered and untidy and he’d only had time to look through it once the previous day before the light had faded – and with all that dust in there he didn’t want to walk in with a lighted brand and set fire to anything.
The chair looked as if it was about fall apart, but the desk itself was huge and old. It was also weirwood, which hardened with age. He leafed through everything slowly. There were two huge ledgers, closed and fastened with metal binders, and another book that looked badly battered by the years.
He started with the ledgers. The paper was very old and yellowed and he had to handle the pages with care, but he could see to his fascination that was a series of accounts of patrols and sightings. The ink was old and faded and in some places the entries were in the Old Tongue. As he went from entry to entry over the crackling pages a theme started to emerge; one of neglect. Fewer and fewer men were sent to Overlook, none seemed to know what the place was for, other than to be used to watch for Wildlings. One phrase stood out. “Ye traditional weapons.” What traditional weapons? Apparently a final set of caches had been buried at the Fist of the First Men. Where? It didn’t say.
Then there was the other phrase. The Wanderer – was that Coldhands? – had been seen here and there, The Wanderer had been given fresh supplies, The Wanderer had been asked about the disappearance of the Children of the Forest… wait, what? The Rangers had once had dealings with the Children? He pored over the book more carefully. From what he could tell there had been isolated sightings here and there until… he blanched. Four or five hundred years before the arrival of Aegon (how old was this book? Was it a copy of a copy of a copy?). But if The Wanderer was Coldhands… then how old was he? What was he?
The last entries in the book were in the thin, spidery scrawl of an old man – and they spoke of neglect and abandonment. Few rangers knew about the place, pestilence of some sort had broken out back at the Wall, supplies were few. The last entry read simply: “My watch is done.” He ran a finger over the words with sadness and then frowned.
He went back to his saddlebags and hunted through them for his own small bound book. He used it to record eventful happenings North of the Wall whenever he could and he had a metal quill that his father had bought him a long time ago and a pot of ink. Opening the latter he peered into it, grunted with satisfaction at the sight that it was still liquid and then returned to the book. Selecting a new page he carefully wrote out a new entry: “I, Benjen Stark, First Ranger of the Nights Watch, did restart the occupation and usage of Overlook, paying homage to the memories of those who came before me.” Then he carefully dated it. It felt right to have done it.
Closing the journal he looked about. The second book was one of more formal accounts and supplies and he closed that after a few moments of silent pondering. Then he turned to the third one.
This was very different. It looked as if it had been hastily assembled out of whatever paper and parchment was around and… the first pages made no sense. All that was on it was a set of smearing scrawls, like the first attempt of a child to write. It was in charcoal and whoever had written it had smeared the page badly. He kept turning the pages. More scrawls, but with a hint of actual letters here and there. He went on a few pages and then stopped and stared at the page in front of him. No. Impossible? He flipped to the last page with writing on it. By now it was clear. Just the same two lines, but this time it was readable.
Benjen closed the book and replaced it. “Ned needs to know about this,” he said quietly. “And soon.”
It was then that the little cages caught his eye. They were set into recesses on the stone wall to one side and there were five of them. Oh and there was a sixth, much larger one. He eyed them carefully. These must be the cages that Coldhands had mentioned and he pulled one out of its recess, and gently blew the dust off it, before clearing the more stubborn dust off the runes carved along one side of it. ‘Cageproof’, or possibly, ‘Cage certain,’ he wasn’t sure which. The wording was old and archaic.
Then he looked at the larger one. Ah. Big enough to contain a head. Yes, that might be one way to convince someone like Tywin bloody Lannister, although the thought of riding through the Seven Kingdoms with a severed head that appeared to be alive gave him a shudder of horror. He pulled the cages out and then lined them up along the desk. Very well then. He had the tools for the job. Now he just needed to find some wights.
He strode back into the larger room, replacing his things in his saddlebags and then meticulously readied himself. His sword was already sharp, but he carefully honed it again, just to make sure, along with the short sword that he also carried as a reserve. And then he thought carefully about every legend he’d ever heard about wights. Fire apparently killed them, as even if you sliced them into pieces those pieces would still move about. Which was the whole point of the cages.
Hearing footsteps he tensed a little and then relaxed as Coldhands appeared in the door to the stairs. The other man nodded. “Brother, I have found wights. Six of them. We must be wary.”
Benjen looked at him. “Three to one are poor odds.”
Coldhands shrugged. “I’ve fought at worse odds. Besides, we have weapons here.” He walked into one of the rooms off to one side and pulled out an ancient looking bag, from which he pulled out some clay bottles that had been stoppered. “Oil. Wights do not react well to fire.”
Benjen nodded and then shouldered his saddlebags. “Will we be returning here? The cages are on the desk.”
“We shall. One last thing. If, when we are fighting the wights, it gets even colder than it already is – run. The cold means that one of the Others is approaching and unless you have dragonglass on you then you will die if you try to fight it.” Coldhands said the last words with a terrible intensity and Benjen nodded carefully.
They trotted down the stairs to the cave that also served as a stable, where Wanderer whickered at him in greeting. He gave him a small handful of oats, checked that his steed didn’t need water and then quickly saddled him. As Coldhands led the way out of the cave on his elk he pointed at the gates. “These should be closed at night. No night patrols, Brother, not now. It’s too dangerous. When the doors are closed then this place is safe. It’s warded.”
“I understand,” Benjen said quietly. “No night patrols and the gates to be closed.” And then they were outside.
Coldhands led then on a wide, swinging path, first East and then straight dead North. At one point he slowed and seemed to sniff the air. “The Free People are moving South,” he said quietly. “The Giants too. Things are moving faster than I feared.”
Benjen looked sideways at him for a moment. “I read the ledgers,” he said carefully. “There was talk in them of the Children of the Forest. Are they all gone now?”
His question resulted in a long moment of silence from Coldhands, before a sigh emerged from the man. “I cannot tell you.” He shook his head. “There are things about which I cannot speak, Brother. The Three-Eyed Crow could tell you, but that is for another day.”
Benjen absorbed this in silence as they rode along, now travelling down a long wooded valley. Coldhands had not said that they were gone, just that he could not speak of them. Perhaps some still lived? That was less of a surprise than he would have thought just a few months ago. A flash of red to one side caught his eye and he looked over to see a Heart Tree to one side, a very old one. Who had carved the face on that one? When? Had it been done by one of the First Men or a Child?
As they rode out of the valley Coldhands raised a closed fist and brought his elk to a halt. “Tether your steed to a tree, Brother. We go on from here on foot. We want no warning to reach them.”
Benjen nodded again and then slipped off Wanderer, before leading the horse to the nearest tree that he could find with a low branch to tie the reins to. His heart was beating a little faster and he shifted his grip on his sword a little.
The other man tethered his elk and then pulled out the clay jars, along with an old cloak and a pair of brands, which he carefully lit. “I hope that you can throw,” he said as he handed over one of the brands and two of the jars. “I will call out when and where. Once you do I suggest you use your sword to sever hands and arms. Heads too if you can.”
“I shall,” he replied. “Lead on.”
Coldhands led him down a snowy way until a clump of trees appeared around a corner at the end of the valley. “There.”
Benjen peered at the trees. “I can’t see anyone.”
“They are on the ground, covered in snow. Be ready.” And with that Coldhands started to stamp on the ground heavily as they approached the trees.
Benjen was about to ask when he was doing, but then he caught sight of slight movement up ahead. A mound of snow was... stirring? Yes, there was someone there. Several others were also stirring and then snow cascaded down and six figures were suddenly emerging from the snow. He stared at them as they slowly turned to face them and then started to shuffle through the snow towards them. Three were not long dead – he could see blood and terrible wounds on them – and they were wildlings, a man, a woman and most heartbreakingly a child of about 10. All quite dead. Two others had been dead for longer, judging by the rags and the skeletal faces. And then there was the one in front. The one dressed in black. He had been a member of the Night’s Watch once. The colour of what remained of the hair and the sword that was strapped to his back… it was old Ser Willem Glover, who taken the Black ten years before – and then vanished without trace on a ranging three years ago.
“A Brother of ours,” Coldhands said sadly. “I will take care of him. Throw your jars at the older wights. We need the fresher ones. Better proof.” And with that he threw his first jar straight at the wight that had once been Willem Glover. It smashed at once and oil splashed all down the wight – and then the brand was thrown straight after the jar and dear old Ser Willem Glover, or the silent thing that had once been his sworn Brother, went up in flames.
The terrible thing was that a live man would have screamed, but instead the wight never made a sound as it kept on walking. The clothes burned, the hair burned, the face burned, but the wight didn’t make a sound as it kept walking forwards – right up until the moment it stopped walking and fell over. Benjen swallowed and then threw his own first jar. And missed.
He cursed and threw the second one against the leading one of the older wights. If he had been unlucky before then he got lucky with the second throw, because not only did he hit his target but he spattered both wights so that when he threw his own brand by some freakish chance they both caught fire.
It was the silence that once again struck him as, other than the roar of the flames, there wasn’t a sound in the valley. It wasn’t like any other fight he’d ever been in. No shouts of defiance, no bellows of pain – no, no screams of pain. As the two older wights staggered and then fell, Coldhands drew his own sword and then swept forwards towards the three surviving wights. Benjen also drew his sword and followed him, being careful to stay out of his sword reach.
The female wight came at him, arms out stretched, a crude metal dagger in one hand. That was the hand that he targeted and he chopped it off her hand at the wrist, and then severed her left arm at the shoulder. That jarred more than a bit – his sword was ordinary steel, not Valaryian steel like Ice – and he knew he’d feel it later, especially when he kicked the wight in the stomach, so that it staggered back, and then chopped her head clean off. To his horror the body still kept staggering forwards – until he severed a leg with a grunt.
It was then that he sensed the child wight, which was coming straight for him. A girl, she had once been, and a pretty one. Well, pretty no more. Her lower jaw was gone and her throat was a red ruin. He swallowed and then hardened his head. A roll of his wrists brought the sword around in a double-handed sweep and her head fell from her shoulders. He reversed the sweep and felt the blade crunch into her spine – and then stick. He cursed, tugged at it and then was lucky enough to free it. Another blow and the child wight lay in two more pieces in the snow.
Panting he looked around. Coldhands was watching him, with the severed pieces of the other wight on the ground around him. Seeing his look the other man nodded. “Well done, Brother. Never easy, to face your first wight. But you need to beware what they can do – see?” he pointed with his sword and Benjen looked down – and then cursed and jumped back. A hand was on the ground by his foot, reaching for something to grab. And the other pieces of the wights around him were still moving.
Coldhands spread out the old cloak and then started to wrap various pieces up. A hand here and there, the head of the female wight and then three more hands. And then he threw the remaining pieces onto the smouldering remains of the wights that had been killed with the oil, before throwing the other clay jars onto what was now a pyre.
“Farewell, Ser Willem Glover. And now your watch is done,” Benjen muttered as he looked at the burning remains of the wight that he had once knew. “I knew him, Coldhands. I knew him.”
“Then he has been avenged,” Coldhands replied, before looking around. “We must leave this place. If we tarry we will be in danger.”
His skin prickled with fear. “An Other?”
“Not close, but approaching. Back to the Overlook.”
Wanderer shifted uneasily as they approached, but the elk just looked at Coldhands and then submitted to being mounted. And then they were off again, at a quick trot, away from the smudge of dirty black smoke behind them in the sky. As they went Benjen considered what had just happened. He was the first member of the Night’s Watch to battle a wight and survive in… centuries at least. He had to get back to tell the rest of them at the Wall and pass on what he now knew, he just had to. Fire was the weapon of choice against them. What would dragonglass – sorry, obsidian – do? Perhaps fire arrows? Catapults on the wall? More oil – but that had its own dangers, both to the wall and in the handling of it. Where would they get the oil? Fish oil? Rendered fat? Arrows on their own would not work. And his Brothers in the Night’s Watch needed to know that.
Before he knew it they were back at the Overlook, and as they threaded their way down the valley he looked at the sun as it shone down through a murky sky. If he started back now, then he could make it to the Wall in a few days, riding hard and risking Wanderer.
Perhaps it would be worth it. On the other hand perhaps he should be more careful with his horse. If he exhausted Wanderer on his way South then this would all have been for nothing.
As they arrived back at the Overlook and dismounted Coldhands turned to him. “You should start for the Wall as soon as you can. The Other will not miss those wights, but he might think that Free Folk killed them and seek them out.”
Benjen nodded as he thought about it. “I’ll avoid Craster’s Keep then.”
Coldhands stared at him sharply. “He must be avoided at all costs. That place is no longer safe. He cannot be trusted. He worships the Others.”
His stomach turned over. “What?”
“He worships the Others, he is accursed. He gives his sons to the Others, so that they leave him alone.”
Oh, this was not good. Craster was friendly to the Night’s Watch and especially the Rangers. Damn it. “Then I shall pass word to avoid him,” he replied grimly. “Or kill him.”
Coldhands nodded and then led the way back up the stairs with the slightly squirming bundled cloak in his hands. When they reached the main room he looked at Benjen. “Bring the cages please. I will keep the… pieces… separate.”
He nodded and strode into the study, where he stacked up the various cages and then brought them through. He could see that Coldhands had started with the hands, which were clenching and unclenching in an effort to…. what? Get free? Crush something? Kill them?
Coldhands took one of the small cages from him and then opened it carefully at the top. To Benjen’s surprise the hinges did not squeal and he peered at the cage. What kind of metal was it? He couldn’t tell. Coldhands then dropped one of the hands into the cage and then closed it quickly, before moving on to the others. He finished with the head, something that made Benjen shudder. The eyes were open and glared at them both through cloudy films, whilst the mouth opened and closed.
“The cages will slow the rot to a crawl, but not stop it completely,” Coldhands said quietly as he then packed the cages into a saddlebag. “But they will convince any doubters.”
“Some will doubt the very idea, but aye, you are right,” he replied as he took the saddlebag from Coldhands. Then he paused. “My thanks for all your help.”
From the crinkling around the black eyes the other man smiled. “It was my pleasure to help a Brother of the Night’s Watch. Especially the First Ranger.” He paused. “Which reminds me.”
Benjen watched as Coldhands strode off into one of the rooms and then returned with a small wooden box. “The last ranger who was here. His name was Jojen Blackwood, son of Eddard Blackwood. He was a good man. Get him safely home please Brother.”
He felt his throat constrict in sorrow for a moment. “I shall.” And then it was his turn to pause. “I… I read the ledgers. Updated the book. Rangers will return here.”
This pleased Coldhands, who nodded with looked like every happiness. “Good. Good.”
“And… I read the other book.”
Coldhands bowed his head slightly. “Ah. The book. Writing it…. helped me to focus after…. After what was done to me to help me. Then you have questions.”
“Yes… but I know there is no time. I will say this. When first we met I told you that my name was Benjen, son of Rickard. I did not say of what house. My full name is Benjen Stark.”
Coldhand’s eyes widened and then went to his face. “Yes,” he said after a long moment. “I think I see it in your face. A long time has passed since I last met a Stark. Long indeed.” And then he rubbed his gauntleted hands together, as if he was nervous. “Tell me… does Winterfell still stand?”
“Aye, it does. Winterfell endures, as it always has.”
“Then the crypts are maintained?”
“Always.”
“Then when you return there, find out the tomb of Edwyle Stark and tell him that his son Rickon still holds his mission above all else. I…. have a duty, you see. I cannot say more, other than I have a mission that I must one day complete. A burden I must share with my successor. And then my watch will be done.”
There was a tone in his voice that made Benjen’s eyes mist up for a moment, a weariness but also an absolute determination. Whatever was keeping this man – and he was a man, he was no wight even if he should have been long dead by now – going, then it was important. He knew that.
Benjen drew himself up. “Farewell Rickon Stark. You have a namesake in Winterfell, my brother’s boy.”
“Farewell Benjen Stark. We will meet again, I sense it. Because you know, as well as I, that Winter is Coming.”
He nodded and then he turned and passed through the door to the stable. The Wall called him. And he needed to forget the desperate scrawl on the pages of that third book. It ended: “My name is Rickon Stark. My hands are cold, but my heart is still mine.” But it started: “Name Rickon Stark. Hands cold. Coldhands.”
Chapter Text
Oberyn
He found Doran sitting in his chair in the middle of the Water Gardens again, staring at the distant horizon with a thoughtful look on his face and a lap filled with at least seven pieces of paper. As he approached his brother caught sight of him and then smiled slightly. “Brother.”
“My Prince,” he said formally and then sat with a slight smile. “You are well?”
Doran pulled a slight face. “More letters have come. Oberyn, another nine houses of the Stony Dornish have written to me telling me that they are sending men and food and supplies and coin to the Wall. They do not ask, they tell me. The eyes of the Stony Dornish are not on Sunspear. They are on Castle Black. And Winterfell.”
He felt a wince cross his own face. “I thought that might happen. It’s happening elsewhere. It’s shaking The Reach as well.”
Doran’s eyes flickered at him. “How so?”
“My young friend Willas Tyrell wrote to me today from Highgarden. He can walk again without a cane, the rumours were true. He cannot explain it.”
“Magic then.” Doran said the words with a slightly pained look at his own legs. “I wish that I could say the same.”
“There are… certain other things he says, or rather does not say, in his letter. I seem to detect the influence of the Queen of Thorns on him at the moment. He hints that perhaps any meaningful correspondence between Dorne and The Reach should be directed to him and not his father. It is just a hint, just a suggestion, but to me it is clear.”
Doran looked at him in first surprise and then some satisfaction. “If true, that would be excellent. Dealing with Mace Tyrell is like talking to a child at times. The man’s a fool.”
“You know my views on the Fat Flower,” Oberyn replied with a sly smile. “Willas Tyrell on the other hand is very different.”
His brother snorted with contempt. “Good. It would be hard to think of a bigger idiot for a Lord Paramount than Mace Tyrell. If his son is seeking to quietly supplant him then the collective intelligence of the nobility of Westeros will take an upward leap. Watching Mace Tyrell play at the Game of Thrones is like watching a blind man try to be an archer.”
He laughed at that. “Apt, brother. Very apt.” Then he sobered. “We will need our friends. Another letter came, from an old friend of mine at the Citadel. A Maester called Garin. An odd fellow, one who would rather look at the stars than at his own feet, but a good man. And he says that the stars are shifting. The Starks are always eventually right. Winter is coming brother, and this one will be a long one. And a bad one – or so Garin thinks.”
Doran frowned at him. “Do you think he is right?”
“I shall observe the stars myself. But I have to tell you that if Garin states something about the stars, there is every chance that he is right.” He shifted a little in his seat, a sign of slight nervousness that his brother immediately noticed by his upraised eyebrow.
“What else do you need to talk to me about brother?”
“We need more information. I was thinking about sending someone I trust to Winterfell to ask questions. Lots of questions. Someone I trust absolutely.”
“Who?”
“Sarella.”
Doran’s eyebrows flew upwards for a moment – and then lowered in thought. “An interesting choice. Of all your Sand Snakes she is the most… curious. Why though?”
“A long winter might be coming, and a bad one. The Stony Dornish are worried enough to send help to their kin far to the North. To the Wall. This… call that has gone out – it reeks of magic. Old magic, brother, a very old magic. I sense that something has changed in this world. And that all our calculations, all our plans, need to be placed to one side.”
This made Doran’s eyes widen for a long moment. “You would give up our plan? And our vengeance against the Lannisters?”
“No!” He snapped the word hotly and then made himself calm down a little. “Just… postpone it a little.” He looked at the horizon for a moment. “We need information. Sarella can get it, as can I. But we need to find out what’s going on.”
The Prince of Dorne leant back in his wheeled chair and then steepled his fingers under his nose, something he did when he was thinking very hard. Then he looked up. “Very well. Send Sarella. By a fast ship. Use what money you need.”
Oberyn leant back. “Thank you brother.”
“Thank me not just yet. The more you look at the stars, the less time you’ll have with Ellaria.”
He smirked at his brother. “How little you know me at times.”
Brynden
Brienne of Tarth was quite an agreeable travelling companion, he thought as they trotted down the road. For one thing she didn’t feel the need to fill the air with meaningless babble about everything that they were passing. He remembered old Ser Robar Tilly and mentally winced. A good friend and a doughty warrior, but by all the gods a man who couldn’t keep his mouth shut whilst riding. Dead now of course. Killed at the Ruby Ford.
Brienne of Tarth on the other hand kept any conversation down to the bare bones, such as just about the direction they were taking. And they had a better idea of that now. They were heading straight to the God’s Eye.
He mulled things over as they went down the road. What was this pull? Why did they both feel it? Did others feel it too? Why? Was it the blood of the First Men? If so, again, why? What was driving them?
They’d taken a pair of rooms in a small tavern in a village the previous night, a place that looked reasonably clean. There had been a certain air of nervousness over the place though, something that had puzzled him – right up until the moment that they had seen the Septon as they had left the village that morning.
He had been a strange man, that one. Simply dressed with bare feet that had callouses on them, or what could be seen through the dirt. A crown of grey, almost white hair, a look of piety – and the eyes of a madman, or at least the eyes of man deep in denial.
“Greetings, sons of the Warrior,” he’d started off saying. “Have you come to join our noble cause?”
This had been the wrong thing to say, because Brienne had snorted in derision. “I am no son, I am a daughter!”
The Septon had peered at her in what the Blackfish had to admit was some understandable shock at seeing a woman in armour. His next words confirmed this: “A woman with a sword? In armour?”
Brienne of Tarth had answered this by gripping her sword with one hand and then leaning forwards in her saddle to direct a hard stare at the bloody man, who had then looked uncomfortable for a moment, before looking back at the Blackfish.
“We seek men – and women – of the Faith. Ours is a holy task.” And then the people who had started to collect around them all nodded. “Most holy!”
“And what would that task be then?”
A strange light had filled the Septon’s eyes. “Why, to rid the land of the last vestige of heresy! The last symbol of the old ways!”
“Burn the heretics!” The growing crowd had shouted. “Burn them!”
“What heretics? What symbol?”
The Septon had looked them up and down. “Where are you bound?”
He had stared back at the man. “Where we are bound for is our business. And, with all respect due to a Septon, none of your business. So we will wish you a pleasant day and ride along.” He eyed the crowd and then kicked Longshanks in the ribs and rode off, with Brienne of Tarth at his side.
After a few minutes he had held up a hand in warning. “Don’t look back.”
She had shot a curious look at him. “I was about to. Why should I not?”
“Because madness is festering behind us. Religious madness. I’ve seen it before. Don’t look back. Too many eyes are watching us. I feel it. They were about to ask us stupid questions about which gods we worshipped.”
She had mulled this over for a moment. “I was brought up worshipping the Seven.”
“As was I. I wonder which gods sent the Call though?” And then they had rode on in silence.
That had been in the morning. Now the sun had passed the noon mark and was sinking into the West as they came to a crest on the road then slowed to a half. Ahead lay God’s Eye – and the island.
“The Isle of Faces,” Brynden muttered. “Is it there? Is that where we are drawn?”
“I don’t know,” his companion replied. “But… I feel as if I am drawn there. It grows stronger as I look upon it.”
This was a good point. “Aye,” he said. “But if that is where we are bound, then how shall we get there? There must be a village by the shore. People with access to boats. I’m not leaving Longshanks tied to a tree and it’s a bit far to swim.”
Brienne of Tarth nodded seriously and then they both rode down the road. Fortunately there was indeed a village by the shore, a larger place than he might have thought. And the moment they reached it something set off an distant… alarm, no, faint warning… in his mind. It was the Sept that started it. It was freshly painted but the path leading to it seemed to be quite thin.
And then they reached the square in the middle of the village and drew rein. There was a group of people working on some boats by the jetty. And there was a man sharpening a sword to one side as he sat on a bench. A very familiar man. He was dark haired, although greying and broad shouldered and there was a paleness to his face that showed that he had shaved off a beard recently.
“You!” Brynden bellowed the word so loudly that birds flew up in the nearby fields. Then he dismounted, tossed the reins to a startled Brienne of Tarth and strode forwards towards the equally startled man – who then blanched with shock at the sight of him.
“Robar Glovett! Gods damn you man, where have you been?” He stamped to halt and then looked the man up and down. “What happened to you? I had permission from the King himself to knight you after Pyke. And then you vanished!”
The old soldier sighed. “Ser Brynden. I am heartily glad to see you.”
“Damn it man! Where have you been? You and I fought together in the War of the Ninepenny Kings, and the Rebellion and then against the Greyjoys.” He smiled at last. “I thought you were dead.”
His old friend smiled sadly. “After Pyke… I had enough, Ser Brynden. All that blood. All that killing. I thought I found a calling. I became a wandering Septon.”
Brynden stared at the man in shock. And yet… yes, he was not too surprised. A man could only take so much butchery before they cracked. Then he stared at the sword and raised a shaggy eyebrow.
Glovett sighed and then looked at him – before raising an eyebrow at Brienne of Tarth. “Things have changed. Times have changed. Old certainties have shifted. I have heard…”
“A Call? ‘The Others come. The Stark calls for aid. You are needed.’” He smiled briefly. “I have heard it too. So has my travelling companion. This is Brienne of Tarth. Brienne – this is Robar Glovett, old soldier, old friend and a good man.”
She nodded and then tilted her head to one side. “A man who sharpens a sword is a man who knows that he might need to use it.”
Glovett had been gaping at him, but then shook himself like a dog emerging from water. “Well, that’s a surprise. The blood of the First Men runs strongly in us all does it not? Ah – the sword. I am indeed needed.” He looked over his shoulder at the gathering men and women who had noticed the two new arrivals. “We must protect the Isle of Faces.”
Something cold settled over him. “We rode through a village to the North-East this morning, filled with religious imbeciles. I seemed to hear the ghost of the Faith Militant rising from the grave there.”
Glovett set his chin a little. “The ghost? Nay, it arises red in tooth and claw there. And in other places. Many deny the Call – deny it to the point where they claim that it’s all a lie. And they will burn alive those who say that they heard the Call. Along with the Isle of Faces. It’s one of the last Weirwoods South of the Neck. It’s a symbol. And symbols have power. The Septon who burns it to the ground will have great power amongst the Faith Militant.”
He rubbed his chin and then looked at Brienne of Tarth, who was pale with anger. “We need to get to the Isle. Don’t ask me why, because I couldn’t tell you. But we are not a threat to the Isle. We will not harm a single tree there. But… we are drawn there. We have heard the Call and we are drawn there.”
The old soldier stared at him a long while. Then he looked around at the silent crowd that had gathered around them. “This man is the uncle to Eddard Stark, the Stark in Winterfell! He is Ser Brynden Tully! He is a good man! He and his companion, Brienne of Tarth, have both heard the Call! Shall we help him?”
And with that the crowd bellowed one word: “YES!”
Tyrion
Lord Stark was still reading the history of the First Men that the Surestones had been working on for so long and as a result Tyrion was starting to get antsy. He was quite sure that if he had been given the book then he would have finished it by now, and made notes.
But instead he had to wait. So he found himself in the Library of Winterfell, surrounded by books that were almost – but not quite – as good. Some were brand new – copies of volumes that had been kept in some secret place by old Rickard Stark apparently. And they were mostly enlightening.
The Maester here, Luwin, was a very civil fellow who knew his business, oh yes. And he also knew a fellow book lover by sight, based on the way that he had looked at the pile of books next to Tyrion and then added a few himself silently.
The more he read the more he could confirm the threads already in place in his mind. The old Kings in the North had been powerful indeed – power that came from influence more than power that came from swords or fear. He wondered what his father would have made of that kind of power. Probably curled a lip at the idea of someone not using fear as a tool. Perhaps he was being harsh on Father. Perhaps not.
He made a careful note in the notebook to one side and then closed it. His stomach was grumbling, it just happened to be dinnertime and he needed a goblet of wine.
As he reached the Great Hall he could see other trickling in. And then he saw more people hurry in to one side. He frowned – and then he saw that Lord Stark was standing at his place at the great table, with his wife next to him and all his children. A pale Robb Stark was just to his left and a solemn Theon Greyjoy was to his right.
Once the Great Hall was filled then GreatJon Umber stood and stepped forwards. He was an imposing man, huge and raw-boned. Oddly enough it was the man next to him who impressed Tyrion more. Howland Reed was smaller than the GreatJon but seemed to be more intense. Now they stood before the table, and were joined by Domerick Bolton, a lad besotted – and she with him – with Sansa Stark.
“Hear now the words of Lord Stark, Warden of the North!” GreatJon bellowed. “The North stands witness!”
Lord Stark took a step forwards. “House Stark has held its vows for many years. And its honour. We have also held Ice, the Valyrian Steel sword. But the Long Night comes. Winter comes, as do the Others, and it is time for old things to be renewed. From this day forwards Ice will be held by the heir to House Stark. And I now give it to my oldest son, Robb.”
He turned to Greyjoy, who placed the great sword in his hands, before turning to Robb Stark, who looked at him with eyes that seemed far older than his face. Tyrion still had questions about that boy. There was something odd about him, something that just couldn’t put his finger on. “This sword has been a symbol of justice for the North. Wield it with honour.”
“I shall – this I swear.” Robb Stark said hoarsely and Tyrion wondered what was going through his mind. He tried to imagine Father giving him something like Brightroar – and found his mind failing to picture to it. Frankly he envied Robb Stark at that moment. He could see how proud his father was of him – how proud all of his family were of him. Lady Stark was beaming at him and all of his siblings were also smiling, with the exception of Rickon who was also trying to see if he could steal the piece of bread left on Arya’s plate.
Robb Stark stepped back and then Lord Stark turned to the hall again. “From this day forwards I will wield the ancient weapon of House Stark – the Fist of Winter.” Mutters filled the hall suddenly, the sound rising as Jory Cassel walked in with the mace in his hands. There was something… ancient about it, something that told of and Age of Man long past – one that just might be returning. Cassel bowed formally to Lord Stark and then passed the mace over, before walking over to one of the tables, where Annah, a woman who Tyrion could tell at a glance was passionately in love with the man, shot him a brilliant smile.
The big mace was raised in the air by Lord Stark. “Winter is coming!” Lord Stark barked the words with a grim intensity.
“WINTER IS COMING!” The crowd roared back.
Lord Stark nodded and then held up his free hand. “Before we eat there is another matter. Just before I came in I received a raven from Kings Landing. Jon, can you join me here please?”
Stark’s bastard son frowned to one side of Tyrion but then stood and joined his father, who smiled at him. “I have a message here from King Robert himself.” He shot a fierce look about the hall. “Jon Snow is hereby legitimised, by the order of the King himself. He is Jon Snow no longer. He is now Jon Stark.” He placed his hand on his son’s shoulder, which seemed to calm the boy a little, as he was pale-faced and fighting back tears. “Join the family at the head table lad.”
Cheers went up as the boy numbly walked over to the main table, where Robb Stark greeted him with a hug, followed by the others, young Arya Stark being the second most enthusiastic. Even Lady Stark kissed him on both cheeks and smiled at him. Given what he had heard about her previous attitude towards him, Tyrion found this interesting. What had changed?
As everyone started to take a seat and the food started to appear Tyrion smiled slightly. Yes, he needed food. Wine too. And perhaps a trip to the whorehouse later? He needed to make up his mind about that.
“You look serious.”
He started slightly and then looked up at the speaker. Oh. “Lady Surestone. I apologise, I did not see you approach.”
“Hardly a surprise, given the noise.” She sat next to him. “You had a most odd look on your face when Ned gave Robb that sword.”
A steaming platter of meat was placed in front of them and he snagged several choice pieces with his fork and then transferred them onto her plate. She smiled at him and then watched as he did the same for his own plate. It gave him a moment to reflect on what to say. He went with honesty. It seemed the best path with this oddly observant woman.
“I imagined my father giving me such a sword. Sadly my imagination was not up to the challenge.”
“Ah,” she said carefully, a tone to her voice that made him raise an eyebrow. She noticed it and then shrugged. “My father rode South with Ned during the Rebellion. He met your father in King’s Landing. He was… not impressed, for various reasons.”
“Ah,” he replied, with a slightly different tone to his use of the same word that she had used. “Father can be… difficult. In many ways.”
She took a bite of meat and then chewed carefully. “Father said that he was a prideful, ruthless, power-hungry man with insanely good luck.”
He considered this for a long moment. “You know, I really can’t fault that description of Father. Your father was a very perceptive fellow.”
“You aren’t offended then?”
“On one level - slightly. However, on my own personal level not at all.”
She nodded at that and then seemed to be relieved. He wondered why. He looked back at the head table. “I do envy their closeness.”
“The Starks?” She smiled at her cousins. “They are the best people I have ever known.”
“I meant how much they mean to each other. I had heard that Lady Stark did not like Jon Snow – I beg your pardon, Jon Stark. I do not see any sign of that now. They are not close, but there seems to be no dislike there.” He shrugged. “Meals at Casterly Rock tend to be dominated by silences from my father, who disapproves of a great number of things.” He paused and wondered why he was telling her these things. Another shrug. “Family is family.”
“I wouldn’t know much about that,” Dacey Surestone said levelly. “As I grew up family was Father and Mother – and Mother died some time ago. Plus the odd visit from Ned.”
“No uncles or aunts?”
She smiled sadly. “Dead young. There were more Surestones once. I am the last of them.”
He ate from his own plate. “I have lost uncles over the past years. Uncle Tygett died. Uncle Gerion – we have no idea where his bones lie. He went looking for Brightroar, the long lost Valyrian steel sword of the Lannisters. Father traced his ship as far as Volantis. Apparently he planned to sail into the Smoking Sea. If he did – he never sailed out again.”
She stared at him a long moment and then seemed to be about to say something when a door slammed open to one side and Maester Luwin scurried in. “My Lord Stark,” he cried as he approached the main table, “The Direwolf is whelping!”
Jon Arryn
Lysa was worrying him. So much so that he had agreed for her to be sent away from the Red Keep. Riverrun perhaps. Yes, that might settle her nerves. Then he paused. Wait, that might actually make her worse. She and Baelish had been brought up there. The Eyrie then. Yes – but under strict supervision.
He made a note, handed it to Quill, who nodded and slipped out and then he left the Tower of the Hand and strode over to the Red Keep. Gods but he was tired. He had a sense that a great crisis was approaching, a storm that he hadn’t previously ever suspected was there. One that a part of him did not believe could possibly exist – but it still did.
Turning a corner and acknowledging the nod of Barristan Selmy he entered the meeting room. As he expected Robert was waiting there. He seemed almost pensive. He also seemed to be a little thinner – again. How hard was he driving himself? Why? That sword was strapped to his back again. It seemed to represent kingship for Robert, he knew that much. The Storm Kings had been mighty monarchs.
“Jon, how are you this day?” Robert asked softly. “You look tired.”
“Lysa has been something of a trial,” he replied. “The death of Baelish upset her greatly. I… I am having her sent to The Eyrie to recover her spirits.”
Robert looked at him for a long moment and then nodded. “I did wonder what you might do with her. Her screams at seeing his head… well, it made my toes curl.”
“I did not know that you had heard it,” Jon sighed. “My apologies Your Grace.”
“Think nothing of it, Jon. The whole Red Keep heard it I think.” He shook his head.
“Aye,” Jon replied. “She complains about Robin being so far away from her and demands his return. I will not have her anywhere near him. A raven came from Winterfell this morning. My son is free from the poison and is growing like a weed, Ned said. He said that young Robert is constantly asking questions and is learning to ride his own horse!” He smiled fondly. “I wish that I could see him.”
“You soon will,” Robert said with a smile. “We are going to Winterfell. I made my mind up last night. We are reacting when we should be acting. This business with Baelish is all but complete now, as we sort out the finances. More word has come of unrest from this Call that has gone out. We need to talk to Ned and we need to do it face to face. He won’t come South, I can feel it. So we’ll go North. To Winterfell.”
He thought about this for a long moment and then he nodded. Yes. And Winterfell was perfect for other reasons. “You are moving the Court there temporarily?”
“Aye. I have a lot of catching up to do with Ned anyway, but we need answers, and quickly.” He smiled slightly sourly. “The Nag won’t like the fact that young Edric will be there before we get there, but I don’t give a damn, as long as she doesn’t have anything to do with him. Oh yes, I met another of my bastards the other day, in a smithy. Gendry by name. He’s a big lad – the spitting image of me when I was that age.” His eyes clouded over a moment. “You know, I often wondered what kind of children Lyanna and I would have had. Gendry made me think of her for some reason. I dreamt of her again last night. The oddest dream – she was trying to tell me something, but the wind was howling about my ears. She was just as I remember her.”
Gods, but he wanted to tell Robert the truth about his ‘trueborn’ children, but that would have to wait until Winterfell, a place where Cersei and Jaime Lannister could be isolated, contained and brought to justice. And Winterfell was nicely isolated from the Westerlands. Tywin Lannister’s reaction would be one of angry rejection of any claims of incest, followed by an icy demand to release his children and restore his grandchildren to the line of succession.
If they handled it right there just might not be a war. The problem would be Robert, who would probably fly into a rage and try and remove the heads of the incestuous couple with his sword.
He made himself smile at Robert and was about to say something about young Gendry when he heard the puffing noise that heralded the arrival of Pycelle, who was clutching a rolled up map under one arm and who looked as excited as he ever did.
“Your Grace! My Lord Hand! I have the answer!”
Jon stole a quick glance with Robert. “The answer to what, Grand Maester?”
Pycelle had reached the table and was busy pinning the map down with weights. Jon watched him through narrowed eyes. He had his suspicions about Pycelle. There were times when the doddering fool faded away and a dangerously competent man loyal to the Lannisters shone through. At the moment he simply seemed very excited.
“I took most careful sightings of the exact direction that the statues of the Seven in the Great Sept were all turned to. Then I extrapolated the exact direction from points outside the Great Sept.” He preened. “It was most difficult. However, I have no small amount of skill in this matter and I was able to project a line – thus.” He placed a finger on the map and then gestured to a long red line that stretched North.
They peered at the line. “It misses Winterfell completely,” Robert said grimly. “Through the Haunted Forest, over the Shivering Sea, towards those hills there. So the Seven send us a warning against something along that line, North of the Wall.”
“It’s never a good sign when men stare at maps with such grim faces,” said a voice to one side. Varys had arrived, near-silently on those slippered feet of his. Then he caught sight of what was on the map. “Ah. The direction that the statues of the Seven were pointing towards?” He peered at the map. “Somewhere North of the Wall I see.”
“Has this been shown to the High Septon?” Jon asked.
“It has, my Lord Hand,” Pycelle said quickly. “I thought it best. There were a number of Septons there who were talking… somewhat wildly of a holy war against Winterfell. They seemed most put out when I explained my findings. In great detail. Very loudly.”
“Holy war,” Robert said grimly. “The Faith Militant. Godsdamnit.”
“They seemed less enamoured of their certainties after I talked to them,” Pycelle said quietly. “I was most thorough.”
They all stared at him and then Robert smiled. “Nicely done, Grand Maester.”
“Sadly,” Varys said quietly, “The High Septon needs to tell a lot more people as quickly as he can. There is word of more religious unrest elsewhere in the Seven Kingdoms. My little birds whisper to me that the Iron Islands are increasingly wracked with conflict over this call, and there is word of unrest in the Riverlands, especially near Harrenhall and the God’s Eye.”
“Bugger.” Robert spat the word furiously, before sitting in his seat. “I’ll have a word with the wretched man himself.”
“What wretched man would this be?” Renly asked as he walked in with Stannis next to him.
“The High Septon,” Jon sighed as he finally sat in his seat. He was more tired than he had first thought. “There is… dissension amidst the Septons. There should not be – Pycelle has traced where the statues of the Seven are facing now.”
The two Baratheons leant over the map. “Ah.” Renly finally said. “How odd.” He sat down. “What does it mean?”
A number of people looked at each other in mutual confusion. “We don’t yet know,” Jon said eventually. “But as the statues are not looking at Winterfell the Septons need to stop all this insane talk about fighting the heretics of the North. The faith of the First Men is alive and well South of the Neck, as we all know. The last thing we need is a religious war.”
Grunts of agreement and nods came from all around the table. “Well said,” Robert muttered. “Now – first things first. Jon and I have talked, and we intend to go North to Winterfell as soon as we can to talk to Ned Stark. Something is happening in the North, something related to this Call and the legends of the Others and we need to find out what.”
Pycelle shifted in his chair and looked mulish at this mention of the Others and Jon was sure that he heard an annoyed whisper of “Northern legends, harrumph.”
“Will you be moving the entire Court to Winterfell?” Stannis asked with a gleam in his eye that Jon understood perfectly.
“Cersei and I will be going, along with Jon. The children too. It’s about time that they saw the North, plus I have a marriage alliance with the Starks in my mind. Joffrey could marry Ned’s oldest daughter. It would strengthen links with the North at a time when – as we think now – the North needs as much support as possible.”
This was the first that he had heard of a possible marriage between Joffrey and… Sansa wasn’t it? It made sense. However, Robert did not know what he did about Joffrey. He’d have to be told before they got to Winterfell. He looked at Stannis, who flickered an eyebrow at him. Yes, Stannis thought so too.
“But the Kingdom cannot run itself when we are travelling, so we will leave the bulk of the Small Council here to keep an eye on things – especially if there is trouble in the Realm. Varys, you and Pycelle will remain. Stannis, I need you to make sure that the Navy is well prepared. We might be moving troops around by sea. Renly – how goes the unravelling of Baelish’s books?”
“Almost done,” Renly said grimly. “And some unpleasant things have emerged recently. It seems that Baelish had some fingers in some appalling places. He was a majority partner in an organisation that had dealings with…. with Slaver’s Bay.”
An appalled silence settled over the room, before Varys’ his face wracked with unexpected emotion, finally broke it: “What???”
“I’m afraid that you heard me correctly, Lord Varys,” Renly replied solemnly. “He had dealings with Slaver’s Bay. Meereen mostly.”
“I should have hacked his miserable excuse for a head clean off his shoulders the moment I saw him,” Stannis said through clenched teeth. “The animal. Was he that greedy?”
“He was,” Renly acknowledged. “The only good thing is that by liquidating his holdings the Crown will make quite a bit of coin – without profiting a single copper penny from the sale of slaves, I must stress.”
Unhappy nods greeted this around the table. “Gods damn that bloody man into the lowest hell that exists,” Robert muttered. “The man had no shame whatsoever. Varys – any news from you?”
“Some, and mixed Your Grace. There is, as I said, trouble in the Iron Islands, primarily religion based. Oh and the Company of the Rose has left Pentos, bound, I am informed, for White Harbour. The entire company. It is most… unusual. They are drawn home, as their leader, The Stone, said ‘to fight the Others’.” Then he coughed delicately. “They have been joined by another exile. Ser Jorah Mormont.”
Robert stared at the eunuch incredulously. “Mormont? The idiot from Bear Island who Ned discovered had sold poachers into slavery so that he could keep his Hightower wife in silks?”
“And also the man who has been sending regular reports from Essos about all manner of events there, including a number of things that allowed us to stop various… unpleasantnesses. He is the man who discovered that the Dothraki were moving Eastwards for some mysterious reason. And he was the man who has been keeping an eye on the Targaryens.”
“Are they still in Pentos?” Robert barked.
“Yes, Your Grace, in the mansion of one of the Magisters there, one Ilyrio Mopatis – a man who I know. Apparently it turns out that there is potential dissension there. It appears that Viserys Targaryen did not tell his sister about the… nature of their father. Namely the truth about the deaths of the Starks in the Red Keep. And other things.”
Robert snorted with contempt. “Why does that not surprise me?”
“It also seems that Viserys Targaryen has become somewhat… obsessed with a dragon egg in his possession.”
Various eyeballs swivelled. “Will it hatch?” Stannis asked.
Varys simpered slightly. “I have been reliably informed that it will not.”
“It had better not,” Robert rumbled. “Anything else?”
“Willas Tyrell appears to be taking a greater role in the running of The Reach Your Grace. It appears that he and his grandmother are taking steps to sideline his father.”
“I had heard something similar,” Renly said gruffly. “Loras Tyrell has been recalled to Highgarden.”
Jon looked at the youngest Baratheon out of the corner of his eye. He looked perfectly composed. Interesting.
“It might be refreshing to deal with a competent person in charge of The Reach,” Stannis muttered. “As opposed to that fat idiot.”
There was a loud drumming noise from Robert’s hand as his fingers hammered against the desk. “Is this linked to The Call?”
“Given the tale of Willas Tyrell’s sleepwalking and use of a sledgehammer in finding a hidden room in Highgarden, more than likely Your Grace.”
“Another reason to go North to Winterfell,” Robert muttered. “Anything else?”
“There is the matter of a new Master of Coin, Your Grace?” Jon asked.
“Oh Gods. Yes, I’ve been looking at the suggestions from various people. Cersei’s list might as well have had ‘LANNISTER’ written all the way through it. Ser Harys Swyft. Gyles Rosby. Good Gods!”
“Alester Florent.” Stannis muttered. “What about him?”
There was a pause as Robert pondered this. “Old, rich and clever. Ambitious too, but not so much that he’d be as mad as Baelish. Hmmm. Not a bad idea brother. I will think on it most carefully. Anything else?”
Various heads were shaken and then Robert stood up. “Good. Renly, Stannis, come with me. I need to spar again and I will kick your arses around the sparring ground, brothers.”
Renley grinned at his oldest brother and even Stannis cracked the slightest of smiles before they vanished off. Varys bowed and left on silent feet, whilst Pycelle rolled his map up and then hobbled off.
Jon sighed as he got to his feet and stared at the room. Winterfell. It would be a long trip. By road or by sea to White Harbour? He’d think about the logistics later. He picked up his papers and then strode out.
It wasn’t until he turned the third corner that he felt a frisson of alarm. He was being watched. But by whom? Who would dare? He looked about. No-one. Imagination? He strode on. Damn it, why did they have to have meetings in such a remote place? Paranoia?
He sensed rather than saw the dagger as it flashed out of the shadows and was just about able to turn fast enough that it glanced off a rib instead of plunging into his stomach. He groaned with pain as the blade sliced through robes, skin and flesh and he felt the blood start to flow down his side. One hand flailed out at the hand that held the attacking dagger and he felt the blade with a finger. More blood.
Whoever was attacking him didn’t know his business and he heard panting to one side. He pulled his left hand down to try and pull out his own dagger as he pushed against his attacker. The corridor was poorly lit and all he could see was a cloaked and hooded figure. He could feel his blood thundering through his veins. Too old, he thought, too old.
The dagger came down again and he barely deflected it as it sank into his side. Agony flared and he grunted in pain.
Only then did his attacker speak – and the words broke him with shock. “For Petyr! Die, old man! You horrible old man!”
Lysa. It was Lysa. His own wife. Why? Why was she doing this? Shock paralysed him – and then the dagger came down again. This time he got a hand to it and pushed it to one side, whilst jabbing almost by instinct with his own. Lysa groaned in pain as his dagger sliced her arm – but her own dagger had hit his ribs yet again. His vision was blurring, he was weakening fast. She kicked at him then and he felt his own legs wobble – and then he fell.
There was blood on his hands and somehow on his face and he wondered where his dagger had gone to. Lysa. Why was Lysa doing this? And then he saw the boot moving towards his face. He turned his head just enough so that it crashed into his forehead and not his jaw. And then darkness fell.
Lysa
She hurried down the corridor, trying not to sob with pain. The wretched old man had hurt her with his dagger, a long slash on her arm that was bleeding and which hurt. She sobbed for a moment – and then she remembered what it had felt like to see him die in front of her. She’d kicked him in the head twice, as hard as she could – and then pain had hit her.
As she scurried down the corridor she wrapped a piece of cloth around the wound and the hid it under her cloak. There was so much to do. She had a long way to go. Once she was safe in the Eyrie, once she had Sweetrobin back then things would be as they should be. He needed her. Only she could make sure that he got his medicine, only she could make sure that he was protected. He was a delicate boy – her delicate boy – and only she could take care of him. The medicine helped. Petyr had promised her that after she’d asked him for it.
Another wave of rage and grief shook her. Petyr. How could be gone? How? Why had the old man killed him? All those lies about money. Petyr would never steal! He was an amazing man. He should have been Sweetrobin’s father, not that horrible old man.
She slipped down another corridor and along a passage. She could smell fresh air – and then she was outside. Her party was waiting for her there, men and women that she knew could be relied upon. Petyr had found some of them and she wondered for a moment where he was.
Pulling up the hood of her cloak she got into the nondescript carriage. “To the Vale,” she snapped at her attendant, who bowed wordlessly. “At once!”
The reins were flicked and the horses started to first walk and then trot. Back to the Eyrie. And then a raven to her idiot sister in Winterfell demanding the immediate return of Sweetrobin. With him at her side… well, they could be together at the Eyrie, and no-one would ever bother them. Ever. They would be together.
She pressed the cloth tighter against the wound on her arm. Damn that old man. She’d killed him though. He was dead. A giggle emerged from her mouth. Who could she marry now? Perhaps Petyr, now that she was free of the old man?
Wait… no. Petyr was gone. A sob ripped through her. Damn that old man. She sat there, confused for a moment. Who was dead again? Wait, they both were.
The carriage rattled across the flagstones. And then they were out of the Red Keep. She was free. Free of everyone. But she had to get her Sweetrobin back.
He needed her. She was his mother. Only she knew how important his medicine was.
Robb
He was pale and trembling as he watched the great Direwolf keen softly as she whelped. A lot of recent events had been… well, he felt as if he had started something that would have a different outcome to the world that had been in existence at the moment of his death. But the arrival of the Direwolves was something else. It meant that time had caught up with him. It meant that the months ahead might see the fate of Winterfell balanced as if on a knife edge.
And then the first Direwolf pup. Despite the wetness from the birthing fluids and the odd bit of blood he knew who it was at once. Grey Wind. His Grey Wind. He felt his hands shake as he looked at the trembling little form, which was being nudged and licked clean by his mother. Yes, it was him. His beloved Direwolf.
The others seemed to follow swiftly, even though he knew that it took longer than that. The memories were too strong, the emotions too heavy. So many images thundered through his mind. The news that Father had been arrested. The calling of the Banners. The terrible day when the news had come that Father had been executed by that little shit Joffrey. Whispering Wood. Oxcross. Theon’s betrayal. And then… the Twins. The place where he had died.
He was shaking harder now – and then he felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked up to see Father standing there with a look of deep sympathy. “Memories?”
“Aye,” he replied with a wry smile. “Memories. Terrible ones – and worse.”
“Understandable,” Father said softly. “So – which one is yours?”
He pointed straight at Grey Wind, who was sniffing the air, his eyes obviously still shut. “Grey Wind.”
“And the others?”
“Lady. Nymeria. Summer. Shaggy Dog. Ghost.”
Father smiled. “Shaggy Dog?”
“Rickon was a bit literal. He’s still just a child.”
And then the world seemed to stop still and shake, because all of a sudden the Direwolf was shaking again and keening – and then another pup entered the world. Robb stared in shock. Another Direwolf pup? What was this? It was a little smaller than Ghost, who he’d always thought was the runt of the litter, and was small and light grey.
“That’s new,” he said dazedly. “There wasn’t another one.”
Father stared at the little direwolf as it was roughly cleaned by its mother. “The Old Gods are speaking to us again. I wonder who this one is for?”
He didn’t know. And that both challenged him and scared him. The future was in flux.
Shireen
Maester Cressen was in what he often described as being a brown study as she watched him sit in his usual chair in the great hall of Dragonstone. She had always wondered what a brown study was and he had always smiled and said that it merely meant deep in thought.
So it was with a little bit of reluctance that she approached him, the book in both hands. He had told her to tell him when she as finished with her translation efforts, but she still didn’t want to break into whatever it was that he was thinking about. “Maester Cressen?”
He looked up, almost startled. “Oh – your pardon my dear. I was lost in thought.”
“In a brown study again?”
He smiled fondly at her. “Indeed. How can I help you?”
She placed the book on a small table. “I’ve finished it.”
Maester Cressen blinked at her. “Already?”
She nodded. “It was very interesting.”
“I see,” the old man said as he leant back in his chair. “And what were your conclusions?”
She sat down carefully as she ordered her thoughts with equal care. “Is it bad of me to be glad that the Doom of Valyria happened and that those people don’t exist any more?”
His eyebrows rose a little. “Why do you say that?”
“They were… unpleasant. Slavery. Working people to death in their mines. Conquering places to get more slaves and more wealth. Killing each other to try and gain power. Incest. I wouldn’t want to live there, not the way that they were.”
“Ah,” Maester Cressen said with twinkling eyes, “But if you’d been brought up in Old Valyria, then you would have been brought up with their values – and you’d have thought them perfectly normal.”
She thought about this. “I’d rather not imagine that. I know that they built great things. Valyria. The Freehold. Dragonstone, here. But they built it all on blood.”
He looked at her and she could see that he was trying not to show too much pride. “Very interesting my Lady. You have a knack of seeing through things to the underlying truth. Very interesting indeed.”
She smiled impishly at him. “Thank you.” Then she paused. “Maester Cressen? The Valyrians built Dragonstone, but what was here first? The book said that they conquered it from the Lords of the Narrow Sea, but what did they want with the place? And who dug all the tunnels?”
“Ah,” the Maester said, “Now that’s a matter of ancient history. Let us consult the records.” And with that he stood and led the way to what had to be one of her favourite places in the word, the part of the library that held the oldest of the books. He pored over the serried ranks of books with the titles picked out in flaking gold leaf, before finally selecting one. “Let’s see how you are with High Old Valyrian.”
She took the proffered book and opened it carefully on a reading desk. Oh, this was old. And the writing…. She squinted at it as she shifted his mind into the correct frame to read such an old script. Oh. This was ancient.
“Erm… ‘And then… the Lord Velarys… did fall upon the… Sealord? Yes, Sealord Sarilt’ – odd name that – ‘and did kill a great many of his men and did… seize?... the island which he did…. Erm… recall? No, rename, Dragonstone. And he did… inspect yr – the – old tunnels and ask who had… delved? No, dug them and was told that the First Men had mined them for… dragonglass.’” She looked up. “This script makes my eyes hurt.”
“Good. Good that you can read it, that is, not good that your eyes hurt.” He sighed and took the book off her. “That’s the only reference I’ve ever been able to find. Obsidian was mined here by the First Men. The oldest tunnels are very old indeed. But there are no carvings in them. No names. And who is to say what was where Dragonstone was when the Valyrians used their magics to build it?” He ran a hand over his face and Shireen looked at him worriedly.
“Maester Cressen, what’s wrong? You’ve been worried for days now.”
He smiled at her again. “Concerned, Lady Shireen. Not worried. Just… concerned. The Citadel has said that magic has returned and that every Maester must watch for signs of it. Especially in a place like this. Built with magic. Old, Valyrian magic. I have been… looking all over this place. Asking people about feelings. Dreams. And then there is this.” He held up a small piece of paper. “From Winterfell. Asking about how much obsidian we can ship to White Harbour. As it was sent in the ‘Old Days’.”
She took the message and looked at it carefully. “Ah. What should we do?”
He shrugged. “Mining obsidian is… well, I’ve never known any obsidian miners, so I do not know how easy, or hard, it is. But I do know that in the lowest – and oldest – of the tunnels there are hundreds of rotted sacks filled with obsidian. Thousands of pieces that could be sent North. I have sent word to your Father, Lord Stannis, but I have already given orders for some of the obsidian to at least be placed in new sacks.”
She thought about this. “Why would they need obsidian?”
This question caused him to pinch the bridge of his nose with finger and thumb, a sign that he was curious – and worried. “I have a suspicion. Obsidian has certain properties in the use of magic – or so it is written. And there is another record.” He picked up another book and opened it. “This is a history of the Stormlands that I brought with me from Storm’s End. And… there. Read that.”
She looked down at the faint script. “It’s very faded Maester Cressen.”
“Aye. I’m having it copied out in a new book.”
She peered at it. “Ye oldest carving upon the wall is that of a pledge: ‘Glytterglass sent to ye Stark in Winterfell, in memory, warning and protection of ye ancient enemy’?” Shireen looked up. “Memory, warning and protection? What does that mean?”
He pulled at his nose once more. “I think it is something about the obsidian itself. I have been reading many of the older books.” He peered at her severely. “Ones that are dangerous in the wrong hands and which will not be read by you.”
Humph. She smiled slightly. “But-”
“Don’t tell me that your High Valyrian is better than mine, either!” He followed this with a slight smile. “Yours is quite good. But on a more serious note, the books I talking about are indeed dangerous to one of your age.”
She sighed and nodded. “I shall start on the next book you gave me then. Patchface has been very subdued of late and Mother has gone to King’s Landing to be with Father. She turned a bit pink after that letter from Father. Odd.”
Maester Cressen had turned slightly pink as well. “Your Father has had a slight… revelation apparently. I wouldn’t wonder too hard at that. It’s... complicated.”
This was odd, but she nodded. Then she paused. “Oh, and you wanted to know if people had any odd dreams?”
“Aye.” Then his gaze sharpened. “Have you had any?”
“I think so.” She paused to recall the details exactly. “It was last night. I was in a forest of odd trees. Weirwood trees I think. And it was winter – there was snow everywhere. A man who looked like a thinner version of Uncle Robert was running after a woman with dark brown hair and grey eyes, who was being pulled by – I don’t know exactly what. She was trying to tell him something, I know that much. And there was something else. Someone else, I think. It was… it was scary. White, with white hair and blue eyes, like stars.”
All of a sudden Maester Cressen was very white himself. “Shireen,” he said with real concern in his voice, “You need to tell me if you ever have such a dream again.”
Tyrion
Tyrion peered at the book and then pursed his lips a little. Interesting. The Nightfort had a fascinating history. And appeared in most of the North’s nastier folk tales. The one about the Night King – the one from the Night’s Watch, not the King of the Others – was a particularly nasty one. It could possibly be explained away as a man who had somehow turned against everything that he should have been protecting. Such things happened. And perhaps instead of a female Other – did such a thing even exist? – there were accounts that perhaps she had been from a Barrowlands settlement.
The oddest feeling stole over him at that point. When he realised what it was he put his book down, sighed heavily and then looked about the room. A grave lad with hair that was almost red-brown was staring at him as if he was committing his appearance to memory. Oh. It was Lord Reed’s son.
“Can I help you? You’re Jojen Reed isn’t it?” Wait, Ned Stark had said something about this boy hadn’t he? He wracked his brain for a moment.
“Aye,” said the boy, in a voice as grave as his face. “You are Tyrion Lannister.” He went back to staring at him.
This was unnerving and he shifted a little in his seat. “As I said – can I help you?”
Jojen Reed tilted his head a little. “I had a dream of a small man who became a larger one. I think that the man was you.”
He peered at the boy. “A dream?”
The boy nodded. “Father says that I have the Greensight.”
The Greensight. Shock roiled through him. Oh, yes, this was the boy with the Greensight. Prophecy. He swallowed. All of a sudden he wanted to run away and hide under the nearest bed. He’d already had one Northerner get possessed by the Old Gods and tell him to do something. He wasn’t sure if he could take any more prophecies.
“And what did you… dream about me?”
The boy tilted his head to one side again. “That you grew larger in spirit, with the help of someone.”
“Who was that someone?”
“I don’t know. Someone thought dead – but was not.”
He thought about this for a moment. It didn’t sound terribly reassuring. “I see.”
“No,” said the boy. “You don’t. But you will.” And then he turned and walked away.
“I suppose,” Tyrion muttered to himself after the boy had gone, “That I’ll grow after stepping into a magic mirror or something at the Night Fort.” He thought about the look on Father’s face if he returned as tall as Jaime and then chuckled, before returning to his book.
He spent a very interesting hour or so reading through the book, before finally closing it and sighing. He was going to one of the oldest castles on the Wall. And also the most infamous. Why? Well, that bit was a tad nebulous.
A memory gnawed at him and he bit his lip for a moment, before sighing and then pulling out the message that he’d written earlier. The problem with sending messages by raven was that they were, by necessity, somewhat limited. He wanted to send a massive book back to Casterly Rock, but that would take a team of specially trained ravens to carry it and sadly such a team did not exist. He could have sent an ordinary letter by messenger, but that would have been slower than a raven. So a raven it was. Perhaps he could devise some kind of code, or condensed script? It was an interesting idea.
But first this had to be sent. He got down off his chair and then stumped his way to Luwin’s office. He found the old Maester there, working through his mound of books. He had to admit that the Maester knew his business. He had a huge amount of information at his fingertips – and what Tyrion knew to be a giant appetite for more.
He liked the man enormously.
“Can I help you, Lord Tyrion?” Luwin asked as he looked up from his perusal of his own book.
“You can indeed, Maester Luwin,” Tyrion sighed. “I have a message to send to my father in Casterly Rock, so I require a raven.” He held up the piece of paper with a sigh. Well, the die was cast now. He was committed. He just had to hope that Father wouldn’t misconstrue things and think up some kind of plot about the threat from the North.
At least he was dealing with Father and not Cersei. She’d think all kinds of things about this, all of them dead wrong.
Robert
He was going mad waiting. He hated it. When Cersei had given birth to the children he’d always been off doing other things rather than wait. Especially when there were Maesters involved. They always hemmed and hawed and sucked their teeth and then looked worried when he waved a fist under their noses.
Sparring hadn’t helped. Normally it did, but his mind had been too busy to handle it correctly and he’d gone through the motions with a visibly worried Ser Barristan.
Pacing didn’t work either. He’d paced all over the Red Keep and now had a blister.
So now he had thrown himself onto a horse, told Renly curtly to send a message to the docks if the Maesters emerged from that damn room and then he’d booted the horse into a trot, out the gates and down the hill, Selmy following him.
He couldn’t die. Jon just couldn’t. He couldn’t imagine a world without that wise old man.
The docks were busy. Busier than normal, now he came to think about it. Then he sighed. Of course. Jon’s orders for the move North to Winterfell. He smiled sadly. Well, even if he lived he’d be too weak to go with him.
The horizon caught his eye and he glared at it. He had to confess that he didn’t like the sea much. He had been at Storm’s End when Windproud had sunk in that storm. Right in front of his eyes. Taking his parents with it. Old memories crowded through his mind. His parents. Gods, he missed them so much at times. But it had been Jon Arryn who had all but brought him up. He’d been a father to him. Steffon Baratheon… well, he’d been a good friend to the Mad King. Before he became as mad as he had in his last years.
He heard hooves behind him and he closed his eyes for a long moment and then opened them again before turning around. Ser Davos Seaworth was dismounting. He nodded seriously to Selmy, who nodded back and then approached and went to one knee, getting up again at Robert’s curt wave of a hand.
“News from the Red Keep?”
“Nay your Grace. The Goldcloaks have searched the city. Lady Arryn is not in King’s Landing. She must have been in one of the many parties that left the city that day. You know how large Kings Landing is, Your Grace. Dozens of parties leave every day. However, ravens have been sent to every town in the area. We’ll find her Your Grace.”
He nodded abruptly and then brooded again. “It was definitely her. It was her knife on the floor, with her own husband’s blood on it. And judging by his own knife, with blood on it as well, and the fact that Lady Arryn was seen with a cut to her arm… it can only have been her.”
A silence fell. Seaworth coughed. “I fear it was because of Baelish your Grace.”
He sighed and then nodded. “Aye. Damn the man. Damn that wretched bloody man. Even dead he’s a threat.” He looked back up at Ser Davos. “How goes your work with the Goldcloaks?”
The Onion Knight pulled a slight face. “Slow but steady your Grace. It’s still early days and the best thing that I can say of Janos Slynt is that he left a trail of slime everywhere.”
“Including his own execution,” Robert muttered as he remembered the filthy mess that the wretched man had left when he was dragged to the block. “Damn him as well.”
“Aye, but I am making some progress.” He shifted a little. “I shall return to the Red Keep your Grace. If the Maesters have any news I shall send word at once.” He bowed awkwardly and then mounted and left.
Robert glared again at the horizon and then paced up and down the docks. And then he heard the sound of metal on metal and a puff-puff of bellows. Looking over to one side he could see smoke rising from a chimney that appeared to be attached to a chandlers. A memory tickled his mind and he strode over to it. Startled men watched him approach and tugged their forelocks in some cases, bowing in others.
Yes, the boy was there, at the forge. Gendry was frowning at a piece of red-hot metal that he had been pounding on with a hammer. He started when he caught sight of Robert and then bowed clumsily.
“Don’t me lad – finish working your piece of metal,” he said gruffly. He was, he had to say, curious about how good the lad was. “Take a break after that though. I need to talk to you.”
Gendry looked at him carefully and then nodded and went back to the anvil, where he shaped the cooling metal with a few deft strokes. He peered at it again, put the metal back in the forge for a few minutes and then pulled it out again and hammered with what Robert could tell was carefully applied force. It took skill to do that. He was making… oh. A marlinspike. He paused. Of all the daft things he’d picked up from the Greyjoy Rebellion that had somehow stuck in his brain.
The boy looked at the piece of metal critically, nodded decisively and then placed it in the correct quenching bucket, before carefully putting everything in the correct place and then turning to Robert. “I’m done your Grace.”
He nodded and then jerked a thumb at the nearest quay. “Need to talk to you.”
The lad nodded and then followed him. When they reached a bollard he sighed and then turned to face his bastard son. “You probably have questions about your mother.”
This brought a flush to Gendry’s face, along with a choppy nod. “I… I do, M’Lor- I mean your Grace.”
He sat on the bollard and sighed. “She was a pretty thing, your mother. Her smile could light up a room. And lift your heart. She was funny and cleverer than she appeared.”
Gendry scuffed a boot on the planks of the dock. “I don’t take after her much then.”
“You can swing a hammer with a lot of skill. A fool can’t do that. Don’t be hard on yourself lad.” He sighed and then scratched at the back of his head. “And you take after your father a lot.”
The lad stared at him. “My father? Did you know him as well, your Grace?”
This was embarrassing. And harder than he ever thought it would be. “Erm… yes. In a matter of speaking.” He stood up and ran a hand over his face. Then he looked the lad in the eye. “There’s a reason that Lord Arryn and Lord Stannis came to see you. You look a lot like me. That’s because I’m your father.”
Gendry stared at him for a long moment, looking as if that marlinspike had walloped him on the back of the head. “Pardon, your Grace?” He said the words in a low, astonished voice.
He placed a hand gently on his son’s shoulder. “You heard me right, lad. And I’m sorry. Your mother never sent me word. I didn’t know that she was with child. That she’d had you.” He looked at his feet for a moment and then winced a little at the fact that he had to peer over his gut to do so. He had a lot of work to do. Then he looked back up again. “But I know that you exist now, so I can make up for some things.”
The lad was pale and trembling and he didn’t blame him. It was a lot to take in. After a long moment the lad asked: “What… what will happen to me now?” He said it in a dazed voice.
I try and make sure that my bloody scold of a wife doesn’t try and kill you, was the thing that he couldn’t say to the lad, so he didn’t. The history of the Blackfyres was long and complicated and bloody awful, and not something to be hinted at, so he didn’t. “You know how to swing a hammer,” he found himself saying eventually. “Have you ever held a warhammer?”
Gendry shook his head.
“Perhaps it’s time you learnt. And not here.” He thought carefully for a moment. He couldn’t send the lad to Winterfell – Edric was on his way there as well and the Scold would get suspicious. Hells, given the nature of this fucking city there was probably someone watching him right now and compiling a report, for Varys or the Scold, or Pycelle for all he knew. Dragonstone? Stannis might not like that. Right. He knew where now. “I’m sending you to Storm’s End. The place that your ancestors built. Get back to work now, but get your things ready. There’ll be a ship going there today I think, your Uncle Renly’s sending messages to his new Steward there.”
The lad gaped at a bit at this but then rallied. “But my work here…”
“Can be done by someone else. Who’s your overseer?”
“Master Tyrnbull. Over there.”
“Let me have a word with him. Now – back to work.”
The lad strode off and he watched him go with a slight smile. Gods, it was like looking at a younger version of himself. Then he walked over to have a word with Tyrnbull, who had been watching them with a look of uncertainty on his face, which vanished after Robert snapped out a string of orders.
He walked back to the docks and stared out at the sea again with a different kind of scowl. You did what you needed to do for family. How had he forgotten that? He pulled a face. Too drunk and fat and full of food perhaps in the past? Well by the Gods no longer. He mounted his horse and vowed to get the rest of this fat off him, if he had to spar all day and all night. And then he saw the messenger as he rode up in a cloud of dust. It was a Baratheon man, who reined in hard.
“Your Grace,” the man gasped, “Word from the Red Keep. Lord Arryn will live.”
He grinned fiercely. “Good man!” And then he spurred his horse and galloped up the hill, feeling more alive than he had for years.
Chapter Text
Kevan
He drew rein in the courtyard and then looked about. The place was abuzz with messengers, with the odd raven coming and going and he looked about quizzically. What was going on? Well, whatever it was it had been enough to recall him at once from his long-planned visit to Feastfires. Tywin’s message had been abrupt even for him, just ‘Return as soon as possible’, so he had.
He dismounted and walked over to the doorway, where a servant was standing with a bowl of water and a cloth and he quickly washed the dust of the road off his face and hands, before nodding at the servant and then striding off down the corridor that eventually led to Tywin’s solar.
There was an almost constant stream of messengers going backwards and forwards out of the room and he watched them with bemusement and no small amount of dread. But then he thought about it. If his brother was taking the Westerlands to war then why hadn’t he seen any soldiers on the roads that he’d ridden along.
Striding into the solar he saw Tywin almost hidden from sight behind a mound of books. Odd. They were ledgers and account books. His brother was perusing the books, glaring at a series of messages in one hand and scribbling messages with the other, messages that he was giving out to the messengers. When he saw Kevan he grunted. “About damn time.” Then he looked at the messengers. “Get out. Wait to be allowed back in.” They left, quickly, closing the door behind the last one.
“What’s happened? Why all the books?” Kevan asked as he sank into a chair and suppressed a groan as various muscles twinged.
Tywin sat back and glowered at him. “A message from King’s Landing. Robert Baratheon needs a new Master of Coin. Petyr Baelish is dead.”
He frowned a little. “Was he ill?”
“No. He was arrested and then all but executed by Jon Arryn.”
He felt his eyebrows fly up. “Arrested? For what?”
“Peculation. Thieving from the Crown,” Tywin growled. “Thieving from everyone. And thieving FROM ME!” The last words were shouted in a guttural roar of fury that made the room quiver.
Kevan looked at his brother worriedly. “He did what?”
Tywin calmed himself with a visible effort of will, before standing and striding over to a small table, where he poured two goblets of wine, one of which he handed over to Kevan, who sipped it carefully.
“The ravens came three days ago,” Tywin muttered as he sat at his chair again. “Messages, all. Baelish was arrested, then he was dead. And the list of his crimes… is a long one. He stole from the Crown. From the Iron Bank as well. And, of course, from me.” A brief and savage smile crossed his face, and Kevan realised that his own mouth was hanging open. “Ambitious wasn’t he?”
“He… stole from the Iron Bank? Was the man mad?”
“I suspect,” Tywin growled after sipping from his own goblet, “That he reached the point where he stole because he could. After so many years of not being found out, of diverting coin into his own pockets – and then his trousers and then finally his boots – I think that he threw caution out of the window.”
Kevan winced at his brother’s savage tone. “You said ‘all but executed’. How did he die? And who has replaced him?”
Tywin’s eyes glittered with malevolence. “I did not think that Jon Arryn had it in him to be creative. I was wrong. He sentenced Baelish to trial by combat, in heavy armour. Very heavy armour. A shame, because his opponent – Arryn’s champion – was the sea itself. He had him dropped through a hole in the dock. His head is now on a spike in the Red Keep.” He frowned again. “No replacement has yet been named. My idiot daughter has sent me this.” He waved another message. “She thinks that we can use the Crown’s debt to us to force Arryn to appoint someone pliable to the Lannister cause.”
This seemed like a good thing, but why was… oh. He looked at the books. “What did Baelish do with the money he stole?”
Tywin nodded approvingly. “Finally, someone else sees it! Very good Kevan. Baelish took the coin and invested it. He was a clever man. A man who realised that if you have a big bag of money hidden under your bed you are not rich, you are merely a hoarder. A rich man is one that lets the coin work for him.
“And Baelish was rich and clever. Foolhardy as well, but that’s an aside. He used the coin to buy interests in all the Seven Kingdoms. Counting houses. Trading posts. Trading companies. Shipping companies. Smithies. Masons. Lumberyards. Mines. Brothels. The list is a long one, as is the list of the false names he used to buy them with.” He held up a small sheath of messages. “This is the latest. I have been using it to find all the properties and holdings that Baelish had bought in the Westerlands.” Rage filled his voice again. “Which were MANY! The records show the wretched man had tendrils all over the place. All over the Westerlands. He was buying up properties under my nose. And he was investing it. Which makes things worse.”
Kevan frowned – and then a lamp of understanding was lit in his mind. “Making what he bought more valuable?”
His brother nodded again. “Yes. And Arryn has written to say that we can appropriate what Baelish owned in the Westerlands. How honourable of him. Oh – and of course any such appropriations will of course be set against the Crown’s debt to us. So when my idiot daughter writes to me of using that debt as leverage – what leverage? What debt?”
His mouth was hanging open again. He closed it with a snap. “Baelish’s properties are worth that much?”
“Oh yes. Baelish chose well. Invested wisely. We will reap the benefit. In fact we will profit mightily. Which we will have to thank the Crown for! Clever of Arryn. Cleverer than I thought he was capable of.” He picked up a letter and then then threw it to one side. Kevan could see Cersei’s characteristically flamboyant signature at the bottom of it.
Tywin pinched the bridge of his nose and then sighed slightly. “Why is it,” he asked softly, “That the only one of my children with even half a brain is the one that I cannot stand to look at sometimes? Cersei is spiteful and not as clever as she thinks she is, Jaime thinks ridiculous things about honour and hones remarks that he regards as being clever. Tyrion at least uses his brain at times.”
“You are too hard on Tyrion,” Kevan said softly. “He has a brilliant mind. I see you scowl a little, but Tyrion is clever in a way that few others are.”
“He drinks too much and frequents whores.”
“He would do less of that if you gave him something meaningful to do.” He paused. He was on delicate ground here. “You should have made him your heir years ago.”
Tywin stiffened, as his face worked slightly. “I am… considering the matter.” Which was the same thing that he had said on the matter in question for years.
There was a moment of silence and then Tywin leant forwards with a sigh and started looking through the books again. “Well now, I must continue. Now that you are back I have a job for you. The one place nearby that I have so far not appropriated is in Lannisport. Baelish had a factor there, a man with something of a reputation for… violence and duplicity. I want you to take a hundred men and arrest the man before he has a chance to falsify any of his records. If we are to profit from the fall of Baelish I wish to profit in full. This will take care, tact and the appropriate use of the threat of violence. So I need your talents.”
Kevan stood up. “A compliment, brother? I’m touched.”
“An accurate description, nothing more. Let me know when it’s done.” And then he gestured at the door. “I need messengers. Apparently Baelish owned property near Golden Tooth. I would know where and why.”
“And Cersei’s message?”
“Is to be ignored. She will soon realise the truth of the matter. If she bothers thinking about it, that is.”
Kevan winced slightly but then nodded and strode from the room, leaving the door open for the messengers to re-enter. Well. It seemed that he had a little more travelling to do that day.
Ned
The direwolf was nursing the pups as he looked into the expanded stall. The little mewling bundles didn’t look like much, but based on what Robb had told him of Grey Wind’s exploits on the battlefield they could be formidable fighters. They’d been suckling on the direwolf’s teats earlier and now they were a slowly subsiding heap of sleeping figures. He smiled down at them. He’d assign to the children in a few days, once they were a little older. The issue of that final pup was still niggling at him, but he thought he had the answer.
The great head of the direwolf swung towards him and he once again engaged in one of those staring competitions with the creature that he’d been having recently. It was almost as if it could read his mind at times – and then gave him pause for thought.
“The blood of wargs runs through my veins,” he said softly. “But how did they do it? How can a man swap minds with a wolf?” The direwolf tilted its head to one side slightly, before making an add ‘huff’ of noise, before carefully standing. It nosed the pups, sniffed at them and then padded over to the door way and looked into his eyes – before looking to one side.
He also turned his head and saw Jory Cassel hurrying towards him. “My Lord!”
“What is it Jory?”
“Horsemen approaching! They bear the banner of the Dreadfort!”
Ah. Roose Bolton. “Admit him. And have you seen Robb anywhere?”
Jory pointed at Robb, who was sparring with Jon and Theon again.
“Good. ROBB!” He followed the roar with a wave of his hand to join him.
His eldest son stepped back and stared at him, before throwing his practice sword at Theon (who almost dropped it) and running towards him. “Father?”
“I need you to go to my solar and get the Fist. Clear your head at the same time, because Roose Bolton has arrived.”
Robb’s eyes flickered and he set his jaw a little, but he then nodded shortly and took off at a run. Good. The lad had a good mind for such things. He sighed and then set his own jaw. This would be an interesting conversation. Then he paused. The direwolf was walking by his side. He looked at it for a moment and then shrugged a little. Yes, that might help.
Roose
He had to admit to being a little nervous as he rode in through the main gates of Winterfell. There was a lot riding on this. The future of the Boltons was at stake. It was just him and Domeric now – no other Boltons lived. Oh, there were some cousins here and there that might make a claim if he and Domeric were both killed right there and then, but they didn’t bear the name.
He dismounted – and then he froze, just for a heartbeat. Ned Stark was walking towards him – with a direwolf at his side. A huge direwolf. He’d read Domeric’s letter about the night the creature arrived several times, mostly with bemusement. It sounded almost too bizarre for words.
He no longer thought that. The direwolf walked next to Ned Stark as if it was his protector, as if he had raised it from a pup. But it was full-grown. On the other side stood young Rob Stark, who normally looked like a Tully but who today looked like a stone-faced image of his father. He schooled his face as he stepped forwards to meet them, before going down on one knee, his awestruck men following his example.. “Lord Stark, House Bolton stands ready to face the Long Night. Command us.”
“Rise, Lord Bolton.” He stood. Ned Stark was looking at him, with a look on his face that seemed to be concealing something. “Welcome back to Winterfell Roose.” It was only then that he saw the huge mace at Ned Stark’s waist, and he thought furiously for a moment. What was that? Where was the usual sword he bore?
“Thank you Ned,” he replied as they clasped forearms. Whatever it was Ned Stark was thinking, the look on his face had gone. “I think that we have a lot to discuss.”
“We do indeed. But perhaps not with my friend here.” He turned to look at the direwolf, which tilted her head at him and then huffed a little. Before it padded off back to wherever it was going to it stared at him, a long and intent stare. A stare that made him nervous for some reason.
“My solar, I think," Ned Stark said and then led the way there. As they walked Roose looked about and at one point caught sight of Domeric in the far distance, talking to a small boy on a horse.
"Why the new mace?" Roose asked as they entered the room. Then he paused. There was a doorway to one side that he didn't remember from previous visits to Winterfell, and every table seemed to be covered in books.
Ned Stark pulled it out and hefted it in front of him and as he did, by some trick of the light, Roose seemed to see a flash of red in his eyes for a heartbeat or two. "It's not new at all," he said quietly. "It's old. Very old. This is the ancestral weapon of the Starks. This is the Fist of Winter."
Roose stared at it in disbelief. No. No, that was impossible. That had been lost, long centuries ago - hadn't it? No Stark had bourn it in.... how long again? He cleared his throat. "Truly?" He hated the way that his voice seemed to catch a little. He was Roose Bolton. He made people nervous with the quietness and intenseness of his own voice. He did not get all shaken up by the presence of the weapon that the Starks had once wielded in battle against the Others - and also the Bolton Kings of old. It was the weapon that had united the North. And it was a symbol of Starks authority.
"Truly," Ned Stark said with a certain amount of quiet intent. He placed it to one side and then sat at his desk, before leaning back and fixing him with stare that made his skin crawl for a moment. "We need to talk, Roose. As you know your son Domeric has asked for the hand of my daughter Sansa. I have to tell you that I considered the matter most carefully before giving my consent. Especially given this other matter. The one involving your bastard son, Ramsey Snow."
Roose nodded shortly. "A bad business, that."
Ned Stark leant forwards a little. "More than bad, a crime in every sense of the word. His actions were unforgivable."
He made himself unclench his fists a little. "He was mad." He stated the words simply, but with the feeling that he was treading on very thin ice all of a sudden, that there was a lot at stake right at this instant. "I found his journal in his lodgings. If it can be called that." No, it had been a collection of mad scribblings. "He wrote out his plans. He hated Domeric - wanted to kill him if they ever met. He envied him his position as my trueborn son. He resented me as well. He wanted the Dreadfort. And wanted to be... powerful."
He said the word carefully. Oh yes, Ramsey wanted power alright. And the crown of the Bolton Kings. Mad - but a dreamer. And dreams like that were very dangerous, especially on a day like today.
Ned Stark looked at him, his eyes searching Roose's face for something in it... and then he leant back again. "Well. He is dead now. So the circumstances of his life should be laid to one side. Such as the matter of his birth."
Part of him wanted to snap that the honourable Ned Stark had a bastard of his own, but the more sensible rest of him buried that part hastily. So instead he just nodded shortly. "Roose," Ned Stark continued, "I wrote to Lord Redfort about Domeric, asking his opinion on him. I would have done the same of anyone who sought to marry one of my daughters. He replied that Domeric was a good and honourable young man."
Perhaps more Redfort than Dreadfort, Roose thought wryly and then buried that thought as well. He still had that feeling of thin ice under his feet. Yes, Domeric was a good lad. "I am glad to hear it."
"You should be, for it was part of what convinced me to allow the marriage. The other was the fact that Domeric swore an oath that he would never harm or betray Sansa. And he swore it on the Fist of Winter, of his own volition. I did not suggest it at all and was surprised when he did so. But he still did it."
Shock and then nausea roiled through him. Domeric had sworn on the Fist? Something must have broken through the impassive look he usually wore on his face, because Ned Stark raised an eyebrow at him. He mulled it over and then replied. "There are... tales... about the Fist of Winter, Ned. About the import of oaths sworn on it." He hesitated for a moment. "A Bolton once swore an oath on it and then later broke his word. He died inside a month."
A second Stark eyebrow was raised and then lowered. "Well then. Domeric knows the potential cost. I am satisfied though. Are you?"
He thought very hard and very fast. Here was the danger point, the moment that he had been thinking about. His son wanted to tie himself to House Stark in such a way that would make it very hard to unbind. And the news of the oath... well, Domeric was now committed. And he knew that his son had different views on the future of House Bolton than he had. Did that matter? Should it matter? There was a weight of history and tradition and influence behind him, but on the other hand there was the very survival of House Bolton at stake. And the other threat as well. "I am."
For an instant he thought that he could hear a howl outside the walls of the solar and he wondered if the direwolf had uttered it.
Lord Stark smiled briefly and then leant back in his chair for a moment, before standing and pouring wine for them both. "Then we are agreed."
They clanked goblets and then he drank politely. He seemed to be on surer ground again and he was glad that sweat wasn't roiling down his face, because when Ned Stark had stood, then for a moment his face had been in shadow - and red fire had blazed for an instant in his eyes. The Old Gods were here. Here in this very room.
"We need the North to be united," Ned Stark said quietly after drinking some of his own wine. "Especially as the Others have returned."
"Aye," Roose muttered, shivering a little. "What is the latest news? And how did you hear of it?"
Ned Stark paused and seemed to think very deeply for a moment. "It's a long story," he muttered after a moment. "But to cut a part of it short... nay. First I must tell you something. I saw you staring at the doorway over there. It leads to a room that my ancestors built. A place that held records and artefacts from the days of the First Men."
He coughed a little. "There is a similar room in the Dreadfort," he confessed. "Filled with things that I don't understand."
"My father never told me about the room." Ned Stark said the words with a certain amount of gritted teeth and he stared at him as a consequence.
"He didn't..."
"Oh, he told Brandon, on his coming of age, or so we think. But I came of age in the Vale, at the Eyrie. And then..."
"Your father and brother died," Roose breathed. "Murdered by the Mad King." He felt paler than he had ever felt in his life, as shock took over. Oh, by the Old Gods. Damn that mad man. Damn him to the lowest hell that existed. "Then you knew nothing? About what to look for?"
"Nothing. But... I had had a warning. From the Old Gods themselves. The Others awaken. I have seen their home, in a vision. GreatJon Umber brought the Hearthstone to Winterfell. And that allowed me to send out the Call."
He nodded, remembering the moment that he had heard it. The shock of it. Oh, the shock. He'd almost thrown up. And the impact on his retainers... well, the Call had been heard in the Dreadfort. But... the Old Gods? Domeric's letter.... oh, why had he not believed it more? Was his pride such a burden?
"We heard in the Dreadfort. What do you plan to do?"
Ned Stark sighed. "A good question. The Call seems to have been heard in many places. Volunteers have been flocking to the Wall to help the Night's Watch. But it will take more than that. Far more." Then he gestured at the map on one wall. "You have a mind for strategy Roose. Come and give me your thoughts at what the map says."
He strode over at Ned Stark's side and then stared at the map. Wait... "What are all those settlements North of the Wall?"
"Wildling villages and settlements," the reply came. "More than we ever thought - or feared."
He swallowed some more wine in what he hoped was a nonchalant manner. "Ah. Yes."
"A few weeks ago Mance Rayder, the King Beyond the Wall, sat in here and told me that if needed he could call upon a force of a hundred thousand Wildlings." The number rang through his head a few times as he desperately forced his mind to get back up to speed following its moment of paralysis.
"A hundred thousand?"
"Aye."
"I take it that Rayder was here because the Wildlings are moving South?"
"Being forced to. By the Others."
He looked at the settlements and came to an obvious conclusion. "Then I hope that your plan involves letting them through the Wall and into the Gift and New Gift. Because that's the only possible option open to you that makes the least bit of sense. "
Lord Stark nodded grimly. "Aye. That number of men and women - and the others that must be there to support them - means there is no other way. If the Others sweep South, transforming dead Wildlings into wights... well, then the Night's Watch will be overwhelmed. The Wall will fall. And we will be fighting for our very lives against the dead."
Roose nodded. "Does the King know yet?" "I think he suspects. I think that he heard the Call, in a way. He wrote from Storm's End and then Dragonstone, saying that he had found the ancestral sword of the Durrandons. Leastways, I intend to meet him soon, perhaps at Moat Cailin. Howland Reed is here at the moment, and he said that he had started to rebuild parts of it. People to the South are... restless. Even the Ironborn have started to fight each other over who heard the Call. But first I intend to go to Castle Black and talk to Jeor Mormont. The Wildlings must be allowed safe passage South of the Wall."
"He will not like it. Nor the Umbers or the Karstarks. No-one will."
"GreatJon Umber is here still and has been persuaded. The Karstarks... again, will be persuaded. The same with the other Houses. The numbers speak the truth. The dead march on the Wall."
"Aye," Roose breathed as he looked back at the map. "They do." He took another gulp of wine. Then he committed himself. "House Bolton will back you to the bitter end, Lord Stark. As you said - the dead march. The living must fight them. And the North must be united. You are the Stark in Winterfell. Lead us."
Brynden
The fisherfolk of the village had a ship that was big enough to take two horses and their riders. He looked a little askance at that, but then shrugged when Robar Glovett had just grinned at him and mentioned that the Isle of Faces had many friends. Secret friends. He looked at the horizon to the North-East and sighed. "Are you prepared for your enemies, if they come?"
"We are. A lot of people hunt near here. A handful of men with bows can cause carnage if you're not expecting it."
He eyed the man carefully. "A handful?"
The grin came again. "Well, perhaps more than that. As I said, the Isles of Faces has many friends. Some are secret - some are not. Now - let's get you on your way."
He nodded and then paused. "Robar - I meant what I said. King Robert gave me permission to knight you. He did not rescind that, he just told me to knight you when I saw you next. If it will help..."
The other man went pale for a moment, before shaking his head. "When you return perhaps. Not yet. The ones who come... well, they will not listen to any kind of knight. I think that it would take the intervention of the Warrior himself, and even then it might be nip and tuck."
"Later then," he said, hoping that this would not be the last time that he met the man, alive at least. There was a fight coming, he could almost smell it in the air and he was sorry that he could not be there for it. Robar insisted on them leaving at once however. "Stay alive Robar. The world needs stubborn old bastards like you."
"And you, Ser Brynden. I hope you find what you're looking for on the Isle of Faces."
"So do I, given that I have no bloody idea what I'm doing here." "Eat the paste." And with that enigmatic statement Robar Glovett went striding off, to chastise a young man who seemed to be holding his sword 'like a bloody stick'.
Brynden jumped over the side of the ship, assessed the wind, nodded approvingly at the way that the horses had been guided into the belly of the ship, grinned tightly and then tied his long hair back in a queue. "Let's be about it then!" The captain seemed to know his business, because he eased the ship away from the jetty with little enough assistance from anything other than the wind and then sent the vessel heading straight West across the lake.
The wind was set fair and as the boat surged across the water he found himself remembering the last time he'd seen the lake this close. It had been after the Trident, a day of blood and triumph. Brienne of Tarth appeared at his shoulder. She seemed sombre. "What do you think we'll find there?"
"I don't know," he said after a long moment of deep thought. "I just know that I have to go there. You?"
"The same," she said tersely, before sitting down on a stanchion and gripping a rope tightly. "Why here and not the North?"
"We'll soon find out."
The Isle of Faces was drawing closer and closer and as they approached he could see the weirwood trees ahead of them. They docked in a little cove, where what looked like an ancient stone jetty jutted out from the shore. Ancient it may have been, but it looked well-maintained, and he wondered who had been doing the maintaining. The fisherfolk got the horses ashore with little fuss or bother, and when Brynden asked how they could send them a signal when they wanted passage, the captain of the ship shrugged. "We'll know," he replied. "We'll know." And then he had reset his sails a little and then taken his ship off to the South-West, ready to beat up before the wind back to the village.
As they led their horses up the worn stone path from the jetty that disappeared between the trees they both fell silent. This was... a place for quiet. The white trunks of the trees and the red leaves made the place unlike any other he had ever seen. There was no sound in the trees, other than the noise of leaves rustling in the wind, with the occasional movement as a squirrel leapt from branch to branch. The air felt close and he had the oddest feeling that he was not merely being watched, but closely inspected. By what though?
The answer, he discovered was by whom. Brienne spotted him first and then nudged him in the ribs. He looked to one side and then saw the man. He was old, very old, and he was sitting at the base of one of the trees that lined the path. He was also wearing a green cloak, green breeches, a green tunic and large black boots. Something appeared to be attached to the hood of his cloak, but he couldn't quite work out what. He was also either asleep or dead, and it was hard to tell which.
Brynden swapped a confused glance with Brienne. Then he finally coughed slightly. This made the eyes of the old man flicker open. He looked around at the path and then he noticed the two figures. "Ah," he said in a wheezy voice that grew in power as he spoke. "You're here. About time. I was just resting my eyes." Then he turned to look at the tree and frown. "It's true! I wasn't asleep. Well - not all the way."
Brynden swapped an uneasy glance with Brienne. The old man did not seem entirely in his right mind, but he made an effort anyway. "Good sir, I am-"
"You are Ser Brynden Tully, also known as the Blackfish. And you are Brienne of Tarth. Welcome both. Your arrival was foreseen." The old man stood up and then smiled toothily at them. "I am Tallard, son of Rickon. The Old Gods have remade the gameboard and the pieces are moving. Good. You have a lot to do."
He stared at the man. "Are you the reason why we were called here? Why we felt this pull?"
"Pull?" The old man seemed to consider this. "Nay, I did not send out the Call. The Stark in Winterfell did so, and it was right that he did. The Others come. There is much that needs to be made right. You and your wife are a part of it."
Brienne turned pink with embarrassment and he sighed. "We travel the road together. We are not married."
"What?" The old man scowled at the tree again and then sighed. "Oh stop laughing! Bloody tenses." He turned back to them. "Your pardon. You'll learn, soon enough. Follow." And with that he lead the way up the path. He swapped another confused look with Brienne, who shrugged, and then followed the old man, who was tugging at his cloak a little, before pulling his hood up onto his head. It had antlers attached to it and the pieces finally clicked together in Brynden's head.
"You are a Green Man then."
"I am."
"I thought that you had all long since passed from this world." The path crested a slight ridge and then went down, giving an excellent view of a clearing within the forest. There was a long building there, made of well-crafted timbers of weirwood, which looked ancient. Men and women were carrying out various activities around it.
"You thought that, did you?" the old man said with a slightly unnerving grin. "Well now - you were very wrong. Welcome to the Green Hall. Welcome to the old heart of the lands of the First Men. The Old Gods have you in the palm of their hand now. As I said - the Others come. The Stark has called for aid. And you.... you are needed. But for other reasons."
Robert
He glared at Pycelle, who looked… oddly calm. “Say that again, Grand Maester?”
The old man spread his hands. “I cannot predict when Lord Arryn will awake your Grace.”
“Why not? I thought you said that he’d live from the dagger wounds?”
“The wounds in Lord Arryn’s side are healing nicely your Grace, with no putrefaction. Lady Arryn’s vicious attack did not penetrate his ribs. However, it is the blow to the head that I am most concerned about. She seems to have kicked him several times there. And as you yourself know, your Grace, head injuries can be… unpredictable. I believe that two names in particular will remind you of this. Lord Harys Tamber and Ser Orys Emble.”
Ah. Robert paused and pulled a face. Yes, he remembered them both. They had both taken blows to the head at the Trident. Tamber had fallen into a deep sleep for fourteen days and then woken up at Kings Landing, scaring the life out of him when he had reeled into the throne room, half-dressed and shouting orders, convinced that he was still in battle. As for Emble, he had apparently shaken off the blow but then dropped dead in mid-song at the feast after the battle, with blood gushing from his nose and ears.
“Ah,” he said tiredly. “So we have to wait in other words?”
“Yes, your Grace, I fear so. However, the fact that Lord Arryn has been asleep this long is perhaps a good thing. I simply cannot tell how long his sleep will go on for.”
“Is his skull intact?”
Pycelle smiled slightly. “It is, your Grace. It’s the second thing I ascertained after his other injuries.”
Robert absorbed that and then nodded. “Very well. Thank you Grand Maester.”
The old man shuffled out and as he went Robert eyed his back carefully. There were times when Pycelle seemed to be more than he appeared. Odd, that. It was worth keeping an eye on the man.
He turned back to the door to the room where Jon Arryn lay sleeping – and then he looked at the man standing guard there. He knew the signs of exhaustion – the man was pale and wan, almost shaking on his feet with fatigue. He sighed and took a step closer to the man, as he searched his mind for his name.
“Quill, isn’t it?”
The Valeman nodded choppily and then seemed to recall who he was talking to and bowed. “Yes, your Grace.”
“How long have you been standing guard?”
“Some time, your Grace. Can’t remember how long.”
“Aye, I’m not surprised. When did you last eat? Drink? Sleep?”
“Ate – erm, some bread and ham not too long ago, and some small beer. Slept…” His eyes flickered from side to side in thought.
“If you can’t recall when you last slept, then you need to sleep,” Robert said almost gently. “See sense, man. If Jon Arryn woke up now, how much use would you be? I remember you from the Eyrie. You’ve done good service for him. See sense now and get some sleep.”
Quill seemed to almost quiver for a moment. “But your Grace,” he said hoarsely, “I need a guard to relieve me from the Tower of the Hand and I cannot leave Lord Arryn unprotected and unattended and-”
Robert raised a hand and cut him off. “Go and send for your relief. I shall stand guard.” He stood in front of the door facing outwards, drew Stormbreaker and placed its point on the stone floor, his hands on its hilt to balance it. “No-one will pass me. You have my word.”
The Valeman stared at him for a long moment and then swept him a deep bow. “Honour to serve Your Grace.”
Robert watched the man walk – no, almost stagger – off with a slight grimace. Loyalty like that was without price. Unfortunately it came at a different cost. Men like that would exhaust themselves without thinking.
He shook his head and then fell into deep thought, only pausing to nod appreciatively when Ser Barristan Selmy, who had watched the whole thing, joined him at the door, sword in hand. “If your Grace will permit me to join you?”
“Of course Ser Barristan.”
As it happened they didn’t have to wait too long before three men in Arryn colours, all of whom he’d seen before, strode quickly in and then all knelt before him. “Rise,” he rumbled. “Guard this room. Guard Lord Arryn.”
“Aye your Grace,” they all but chorused. “We will.”
He nodded fiercely at them, sheathed Stormbreaker and then strode off. As he strode he came to the conclusion that he’d been fumbling towards for several days and sighed, before hailing a passing messenger. “Send word to my brothers at once that I need to meet with them in my antechamber.” They’d know where he meant – not his actual antechamber, but a place just off it, a small and easily secured room that had few places for eavesdroppers to listen in.
Ser Barristan Selmy guarded the one door into the place and there Robert waited, his mind more at peace now than it had been for days. Oddly enough his brothers arrived almost together, both looking grimly curious and when he saw their faces he smiled and shook his head.
“Jon Arryn lives. He sleeps and Pycelle is unsure when he’ll wake again, but he’s alive.” He sat down and laid a hand on the table in front of him. “I need to talk to you both. I will be issuing orders today to complete preparations for the move to Winterfell. Renly – as I said before I want you here to complete what needs to be done with Baelish’s damned mess. Stannis – I need you to find me a replacement as Master of Ships.”
Stannis, being the awkward bugger that he was, bristled. “Have I not done enough a job for you your Grace?”
He did his best not to bristle back. “Stannis, with Jon Arryn injured I need a new Hand. Not an acting Hand – a new Hand of the King. And you are the best person I can think of for the job.”
This seemed to stun both of his brothers. “Me?” Stannis gasped eventually. “Why?”
“Even if Jon awoke today, right now, he cannot take up his duties again any time soon. And I need a Hand now. Whatever it is that’s coming, it’s coming soon, I feel in my bones.” He paused. The next words came haltingly. “I… I have not been the best of brothers to you two. Renly, I have not been there enough for you to learn what it is to be a Lord. And Stannis… I have not acknowledged your efforts enough. You have done much for me. I have not done much for you. And I apologise for it. But now I need you as my Hand. Will you accept the position?”
Stannis stared at him, an odd light in his eyes. He seemed to almost be choking on something. And then he nodded choppily. “I accept it, your Grace. There is much to do therefore?”
A weight lifted off him. “Aye, there is. But first – take note of this. We are Baratheons. Our children aside, we are the last of that name. We must trust each other. We must stand together. Because unless we do, we will die apart. There has been too much division of late. I would have us united again. Baratheons against the world if need be, but Baratheons united!”
His brothers stared at him for a long moment. And then they nodded. He grinned fiercely. “Good. Now – I have a voyage to plan!”
“Is Cersei going with you?” Stannis asked for some reason.
“Aye,” he grunted. “She’ll not like it, but she’ll come with me. For one thing I mean to betroth Joffrey to Ned Stark’s oldest daughter, Sansa. She’ll have to come, just for that.”
“Very well,” Stannis nodded in what looked like satisfaction, and Robert remembered how his brother disliked Cersei and her whining nags. “It shall be arranged. We can send a proper Baratheon honour guard with you, quiet-like.”
“Good!” He beamed at them again. There was nothing quite like having your family around you.
Jory
There tended to be a silly grin on his face at the oddest times, or that was what his grumpy uncle had told him. He couldn’t help it, he was too busy being happy. That said, he had a duty to be serious when going about his duties for Lord Stark and he schooled his face to solemnity. Besides, he had a lot of thinking to do. Annah had no family in Winterfell, obviously, so who could he ask for her hand in marriage? Was he moving too fast for that matter? He resolved to have a quiet word with Lady Stark. He needed to do this right.
He strode up the stairs to his post in the main gatehouse. He was going to succeed his uncle one day, but until then he had a lot to do at Winterfell already. Lord Stark relied on him a lot, especially as he was spending so much time researching how to kill Others. The thought still made his breath catch a little. the Others. They had been gone for so long, but now they were back. He had no doubt on that matter, he had heard the Call.
A sigh ripped his way out of him. And then there were the other monsters. The human ones. He didn’t like the fact that Roose Bolton was in Winterfell. He’d heard some odd rumours about that man and his unlamented bastard son. He knew that Lord Stark was suspicious about how Ramsey Snow had come into existence. That said, the boy was dead now. Besides, Domeric Bolton was a far better man.
A horn blast above his head made him stare at the ceiling for a moment and then he was out of the room, hurrying up the spiral staircase that led to the highest part of the gatehouse. There was a guard there, Rickard by name – named after the murdered Lord – with the new Myrish glass at his eye.
“What’s amiss?” Jory gasped.
Rickard passed the glass over and then pointed at the distant shadow that marked the nearest part of the Wolfswood. “Over there.”
He focussed carefully and then paused. Ten people were walking towards Winterfell. They were all leading horses and one of them was holding a banner of parley. As they came closer he frowned. They were a combination of men and women and they were all dressed in the oddest armour he’d ever seen, all mismatched, or that was what it looked like from a distance.
“Strange,” he muttered, before striding over to the other side of the parapet and looking down at the courtyard. His uncle was standing there staring up at him. “Riders on foot! Ten of them, bearing a banner of parley!”
“What house?”
“None! They look like Hill Clans though.”
His uncle nodded and then hurried off. Jory watched him go and then turned back to the odd collection of people approaching Winterfell. He had an odd feeling about this.
Bronn
He had left King’s Landing as soon as he was able to. He’d secured his money carefully with a representative of the Iron Bank at King’s Landing, with everything written out in triplicate – a copy for the bank, a copy for him and a copy for the God of Paperwork, presumably.
After that he’d saddled Seeker and left the city. He’d always hoped one day to have a hold somewhere. Even just a small one, a tiny place. Somewhere safe. Somewhere to raise a family eventually. He needed to work a bit on that last part.
Foxhold was a small town, as Lord Arryn had said. It straddled a road that led to the High Road. The castle overlooked it all and the more he looked at it the more he liked it. It was on a crag, had one main gate that looked as if a man with an bow could defend it with his eyes closed. As long as the gates were closed and he had enough arrows, admittedly, but it looked like a strong place indeed.
There was a guard at that gate, a grizzled veteran by the look of him, leaning on a spear with a shield hanging from a hook by the gate right by his left hand. As Bronn approached the sentry shifted his grip on the spear and then called out: “Who approaches the Foxhold?”
Bronn reined in Seeker and reached into his jerkin to pull out the precious scroll with Lord Arryn’s authorisation. “I am Bronn Cassley, by order of Lord Arryn the new Lord Foxhold.”
The sentry’s eye widened for a moment and then he pulled his spear up into a formal salute. “Enter my Lord!”
My Lord. The words rang like a bell in his head and he had to admit to being a little dazed. He really was a lord. His father, had he been alive to see this, would have been grinning like a fool now. He missed the old man, with his tales of the things he had seen.
Bronn rode through the gate and into the courtyard to one side. Several men and women were standing there, as if frozen in place. They must have heard the sentry. On the stairs that led up to the main keep was a black-haired woman in her mid-20’s, dressed in an almost formal grey dress and who was directing what appeared to be a look of pure hate at him. To one side stood a Maester who was possibly old enough to shave, not that he would have bet any money on it.
He drew rein again at the bottom of the stairs and then dismounted. An old man with only one eye – the other was sewn shut – came out to take Seeker’s reins and lead her away after he had pulled off his saddlebags. Only then did Bronn turn to the woman and the Maester.
“Maester…?”
“Haster, Maester Haster,” the boy gabbled. Understandable. What an unfortunate name. “I mean – who are you?”
Wordlessly Bronn held out the scroll. The Maester’s eyebrows went up and down like a drunk seagull in a gale before he took it and then, as the woman scowled at it over his shoulder, cracked the seal and opened it. After a long moment they both looked at Bronn, one with resignation and the other with what seemed to be redoubled hatred. “You are Bronn Cassley? The new Lord Foxhold?”
“I am,” Bronn said with a slight sigh. A lord. He was a fucking lord. “As appointed by Lord Arryn, under his authority as the Lord of the Vale.” He paused. The woman was actually inspecting the seal carefully, followed by Lord Arryn’s signature. “Something wrong?”
“Just checking,” she replied, before finally adding: “My Lord.”
“And you are?”
“Ursula Stone,” she said in a voice that sounded rather like her last name. “My Lord. I am the Steward of Foxhold.”
He felt his own eyebrows flicker a little. “Steward?”
“Aye, my Lord.”
The hate-filled gaze wasn’t lessening at all. Very well. “Well now. I am the new Lord Foxhold. I have little in the way of possessions at the moment, so I would be obliged to you if you could show me to my quarters. I need a bath, a meal and then a briefing on my holding.”
He was mildly surprised that her glare didn’t reduce him to a small pile of ash. “Very well my Lord,” she said eventually. “Please follow me.”
He followed. It was time to become a lord.
Theon
He still wasn’t sure why Lord Stark had asked for him to be there, in the courtyard by the kennels. There had to be some reason, he just couldn’t think of one. Perhaps as a witness?
Lord Stark looked at his children with what looked like a carefully weighted stare. “What’s on our banner?”
The children – the younger ones anyway – looked confused, whilst Theon shot a grin at Robb, who looked at the young ones with an eyeroll of his own, before Theon and the three oldest Starks chorused: “A direwolf!” Bran, Arya and Rickon joined in towards the end, making it a bit ragged.
“Aye, and in the old days – as you’ve seen in the crypts – Starks were accompanies by direwolves. Their own direwolves. You’ve all seen the direwolf pups.” Lord Stark sighed. “Now listen, all of you. This is important. Winter is coming. I know that I keep saying that, but it’s true. There is a winter coming. A terrible one. So – you’ll need to be protected.”
He led them over to the kennels, where the female direwolf was waiting. There was an odd bond between those two, something that had been there since the night that the creature had arrived in Winterfell. The direwolf huffed a little and then moved to one side to reveal the pups. They seemed to grow a little every day and their eyes were open already. Dog puppies gambolled and played. Direwolf puppies – well, they had the odd wrestling match to be sure, with growls and yelps as ears were tugged at, but these puppies seemed to be almost as grave as their mother to be honest. They even seemed to be almost lined up.
Lord Stark looked at the direwolves, smiled slightly and then swapped a look with Robb. Ah. This had to be something from Robb’s memories. He smiled slightly inside and then wished that… no. That door was shut now. He would never have the same level of friendship with Robb as he once had. Not after what that other him had done.
“You, my children, are to have direwolves all of your own. The grey one at the far end is Robb’s direwolf. Robb, I understand that you already have a name in mind?”
“Grey Wind,” Robb said without a moment’s hesitation. Ah. That was Robb’s direwolf from that other future. “That’s his name.”
Lord Stark smiled a little. Then he pointed at the next one, which was grey with yellow eyes. “Sansa. That one is yours. Take care of her. She looks to be a little lady.” He placed the slightest stress on the last word and Theon supressed a slight smirk. Subtle.
Bran got the next one and then Arya. From the way that her eyes lit up he could tell that she already had visions of wargs bounding through her head. Rickon got the next, but was told to think of a good name, and then Jon was given the white one with the strange, almost Weirwood-like red eyes.
That just left the little one at the end. The little, light grey one with the eyes the colour of the sea. He’d been wondering who that direwolf was going to go to. Lady Stark perhaps? Or Benjen Stark? He’d need a direwolf at the Wall. That said, could he take the time off being First Ranger to bring the pup up?
Lord Stark reached down and picked up the grave little direwolf – and then he looked at Theon. “Theon,” he said, “You have been like a son to me at times, and a brother to Robb. I know that you have seen much recently – and turned to the Old Gods as a result. You are more of the North now than the Ironborn. You have sworn to protect Winterfell and the North. Will you accept this direwolf as a symbol of this?”
His heart seemed to stop in his chest for a moment and then hammer as if he had been running a race. “I’d-“ He stopped speaking. He was being squeaky. That was a bad thing. “I’d be honoured, Lord Stark.”
Lord Stark handed the little direwolf over to him and he cradled the little creature in his arms. It was a boy pup and it looked up at him with a pair of almost intent eyes, before yawning hugely and then seeming to fall asleep.
He realised that he was staring at the pup when a hand descended on his shoulder. Robb was there, next to Lord Stark and he was smiling at him. “This almost makes you a Stark, you know.”
It took him a long moment before he could find the right words. “I would like nothing else than to be Stark. There’s… there’s more for me here than I’ll ever find at Pyke.”
Robb looked at him intently. “That other future is gone now,” he said in a voice pitched barely enough to reach Theon’s ears. “It’s gone.”
“Aye, it has,” Theon replied. Then he smiled. “I’d rather be a Greystark than a Greyjoy.”
“Not a bad thought,” Lord Stark said as he approached. The others were dispersing, with many a backwards glance at the pups, who had merged into a sleeping mound of fur and whiffling noses. “One to keep quiet, although now you have a direwolf… well. Let them talk. You need to think of a name for the pup though. He’ll be ready to leave his mother soon.”
“Does she have a name, Father?” Robb asked with a frown.
“Aye, I’ve been thinking about that. I need to talk to Jojen reed about it. He almost said a name when he arrived and as that lad has the Greensight I want to make sure that my hunch is a right one.”
Theon thought about it for a long moment. “Mist,” he said firmly. “His name is Mist.”
Lord Stark nodded firmly. “A good name,” he said quietly. “A good name.” He opened his mouth to say more, but then a horn sounded from the gates. A few moments later old Roderik Cassel appeared, puffing slightly.
“My Lord,” the older Cassel panted, “Ten people approach the main gate. Jory says that they look like Hill Clans. And with a flag of parley.”
Theon strode over to the heap of pups and gently deposited Mist there. And then he hurried after the others – who were accompanied by the direwolf. Something was happening.
Ned
He frowned to himself as he strode towards the gatehouse. Hill clans? Now? They had all sent ravens pledging support to him against the Others. So why would ten of them appear before the gates of Winterfell with no word of their arrival beforehand? Why a flag or parley? And why was his direwolf padding at his side. She looked at him for a moment and let out a ‘huff’ of air that almost sounded amused for an instant and then she looked ahead again.
The gates were creaking open and he could see others starting to approach. Roose Bolton was there, next to GreatJon Umber, with Howland Reed following from what looked like the path to the Godswood, his children following him. All nodded gravely at him and he acknowledged them with a nod of his own.
The ten people that came through the gates were… an odd collection. They were dressed in a shambolic collection of pieces of armour and it took him a moment before he realised that the party was comprised of both men and women. One was a huge man with two axes strapped to his back, carrying a chest and the proud owner of a beard that even Lord Karstark, had he been there, would have found to be impressive.
The moment that they all caught sight of him they stopped dead in their tracks, several with their faces working with emotion. And then the man carrying the banner of parley, a grey haired man with a beard, stepped forwards. He grounded the banner and then turned to glare at the others, before going almost hesitantly down on one knee. The others followed his example.
After a long moment the man looked at him. “You are Lord Stark. The Stark in Winterfell.” It was not a question, it was a statement of fact. And the accent…
“I am,” he answered. “I am the Stark in Winterfell.”
The man nodded. “I see you – and your direwolf. It is as it was foretold. I am Rhys, son of Daner.” For some reason one of those names rang a bell in his mind, but then the man was speaking again, his voice tight with emotion. “You called us. We have come. We are First Men, all. We remember the tales of the Long Night. You have our swords.” His eyes flickered at the massive man to one side of him. “Aye, and our axes. But we are here. We are the Free Folk of the Vale, those who did not bend the knee to the Andals.”
Ned stared at them. “You are the Mountain Clans of the Vale.”
“So they call us. We are the Free Folk.”
“Lord Stark,” Howland called out formally, “These must be the people who crossed the Neck without us knowing.”
Rhys smirked a little. “Old ways,” he said almost lightly. “Old paths.” The smirk vanished. “The Others come again, as it was foretold.”
“Foretold by who?” Roose Bolton asked intently.
The Clansman shrugged. “A seer, long ago. They said that word would come one day to return to the Wall, that Stark would need us. We are First Men. We know the stakes. We remember. It is our curse and our strength. We will always fight the long war against the Andals, who took what we had. But we will always remember the other war. The war against the Others. You are the Stark in Winterfell. Your ancestors were Kings in the North. Command us. You have our banners, such as we have. Shagga – the chest.”
The huge man nodded and then stood. He looked almost nervous as he lifted the chest and then stepped forwards to place it at Ned’s feet. Then he ducked his head nervously and returned to his place.
Ned eyed it. It seemed to be made of weirwood – and ancient weirwood at that. There was dust on part of it and it looked as if it hadn’t been opened in years. He reached down - and then saw the faded shape of the painted symbol on top of it. No, it couldn’t be… his hand shook a little as he reached down, undid the ancient bronze clasp and opened the chest.
Inside was an old linen sheet that served as a dust cover, but beneath that… he picked it up with reverence, feeling the odd touch of the cloth with his fingers. “This feels… peculiar,” he muttered. “It should have crumbled to dust years ago, should it not?”
Rhys shrugged. “The First Men had their ways, Lord Stark. This was saved, when everything else was lost.”
He unfolded the banner, letting it fall over his hands. “The banner of the Griffon King. The last First Man king of the Vale.” His voice shook a little. “We could not come in time.” He looked at the Clansmen. “You would march under this banner?”
Their heads came up. “We would. We will.”
He looked back the other lords. Lord Bolton had an odd, almost shocked look on his face. Howland looked…. well, like the quiet introspective crannogman that he was. But the GreatJon… well there was look of deep thought on his face.
“The North welcomes the Free Men of the Vale,” he said eventually, after a long moment of hard thought. Oh, Jon Arryn would not like this. But it was not as if he had a choice. They were First Men and they were here to fight for the Wall. Fight for them all.
He had a sudden terrible feeling that Westeros would never be the same after this.
Asha
She was getting tired of sailing into harbours and then being stared at by various people who had various attitudes towards this damned call that everyone had heard. It had been bad at Harlaw and Old Wyk. It was worse in Great Wyk. There hadn’t been a dead man on the breakwater of the little harbour that she’s sailed into, which was a relief. But there was a dearth of anyone who looked like a Drowned Man. Where were Damphair’s men?
She shrugged it off as she strode down the gangplank after issuing orders to her crew to revictual the ship and stay close to the nearest tavern. Then she dickered with an ostler over the hire of a horse and finally rode up the hill, taking her bearings from the headlands.
It was an unpleasant thing to admit, but she wasn’t looking forwards to this. It was already bringing up a lot of old memories, memories of Father’s disastrous war. Mother had started to go downhill from that point.
Old Gram had helped to fill the gap a little. She had been a nursemaid and at times almost a mother to her and Theon. She’d always been there to tend to a scabbed knee or mend a broken toy. And she’d always had the most amazing stories, ones about ghosts and sprites and mischievous sea imps.
But there had been the other tales. The odder ones. There had been the one about the talking trees, the one about the antlered man and other one, the one that had made her come here. The one about the golden writing on the wall. That couldn’t have been a tale plucked from the air.
Old Gram’s real name was Elys Stonebrow and she’d been with them at Pyke for almost two years, until Father had abruptly dismissed her and sent her packing. She’d once asked him why, not many years ago. He’d just stared at the nearest wall (a frequent victim of his stares) and then grunted something about the woman filling her head with Greenlander nonsense, which had confused her given the fact that Old Gram had been born and brought up on Great Wyk.
The Stonebrows were an old family, or so she had heard. They had always been on Great Wyk and judging by the way that people glared at her as she approached their home they were respected. Perhaps even loved. She had that scratchy feeling about the eyes that she got when imminent potential violence was in the air. This part of Great Wyk had a reputation for being… clannish, even by Ironborn standards. Old too.
When she reached the house she dismounted. Two men were at the doorway watching her and she could tell at a glance that they were related to Old Gram. The same nose and chin. Much younger though. Both had their hands on the pommel of their swords. “Who are you and what business do you have here?”
“I am Asha Greyjoy. I want to see Elys Stonebrow. She was my nursemaid when I was a child.”
The two men stared at her and then stared at each other and she watched their reaction, confused. What was going on?
The older of the two scratched his head and then took his hand off his sword. “She sent word for you to come, yesterday. But she said that you might just arrived on your own tide.” He shook his head. “How… ah. She’s inside. Wants to see you.”
She blinked at them both and then strode through the doorway. There were others in there, people who must have heard the exchange outside, because they made way for her. Many looked as if they were on the verge of tears – or ready to kill. From the high pitched noise that occasionally could be heard from the rear of the house someone was sharpening something. Probably a sword.
She found Old Gram in a large bed, with a large number of her relatives around her. She looked older and more frail then Asha could ever remember. But there was something else about her. There was a gleam to her eye and a set to her head that she had never seen before. Previously she had been almost cautious. Now – well, she was looking at Asha in a most considering way.
“Well,” Old Gram finally said to the man next to her bed, “It seems that one of our possible futures has been removed from us. She is here. The Gods have spoken.”
The man – who looked eerily like her – squinted slightly at Asha. “Asha Greyjoy. You are here too soon for it to be in response to our summons.”
“I came straight from High Harlaw,” she replied. “I need to speak with you.” She shifted slightly, feeling uncomfortable.
“Ben, you stay. Everyone else – out. We need to talk to Asha Greyjoy,” Old Gram said, sounding more like a matriarch than a former nursemaid. “Off you go.”
Once the others had left she settled herself into a slightly more comfortable position. “This is my oldest son, Benjen. I sent for you because I am dying. Oh, don’t look so surprised! Death comes like an old friend, taking away the pain and loss of so many things like being a widow. Bunions too. And you can take that look off your face. I’ll take my time dying, I’m stubborn that way. Besides – there’s a lot to be done. Now – you are here before you got my summons. Why are you here?”
Asha ran though the words that had just been said in her head and then looked at the two of them. They were… staring at her intently. “I was at High Harlaw, as I said. My Nuncle Rodrik has found a room in it with… old runes.”
To her surprise Old Gram grabbed her son’s hand with one of hers. By the way that her knuckles whitened and his eyes crossed she might have been dying, but she still had a lot of strength. “Were they glowing?”
“Aye.” She paused. “Sort of. Someone had cut through them, so that they only glowed in patches.”
They stared at him again. “Cut through?” Old Gram said in a low voice. “Damn it. Bloody Harlaws and their own cleverness. Lord Harlaw sent no word to us. He will need the Stone. Why has he not sent for it?”
She stared at them. “I came because I remember the story you told me once about Edric and the golden runes. The runes on the wall. Was that a tale of High Harlaw? Old Gram – what’s going on? How much do you know about this?”
They both stared at her again and then Old Gram levered herself up a little. “It depends on who is asking. Do you ask as a Greyjoy – or as a Harlaw?”
She thought about this for a long time. They watched and did not say a word. This was it. This was the decision that she needed to make. The decision that she’d been avoiding for so long. And the one that would define her fate. “I ask as a Harlaw.”
Old Gram – no, Elys Stonebrow – looked at her for what felt like an age, her eyes searching Asha’s face. Eventually she leant back. “Good. Then you must know this. The Iron Islands are old, but they were once known by another name, before the Andals came with their knack of making iron. Digging for it too. But a change had come even before that. Lord Harlaw will find out the truth of it, once he can read the runes. Perhaps he was never told about them.”
Asha nodded. “Aye – he was agonising over reading them, desperate to know what was said in them. He did not know that the room where the runes were even existed.”
The old woman sighed. “Men die. If they do not tell their sons or their daughters their secrets then those secrets die with them. Such men are idiots.”
“What name were the islands known as?”
“Many names. The oldest was the Blue Isles, perhaps for the rocks that were later seen to bear iron. But my point is this – the First Men were here first, and they worshipped the Old Gods. Later the worshippers of the Drowned God arose and they destroyed all signs of the Old Gods. But there were always those that hid their devotion to the Old Gods and kept to the old ways. We hid. We hid in plain sight, but we hid. And we have always been here.”
From the way that her son shifted his stance a little and tossed his head, she had an answer to who had kept faith. “Such as the Stonebrows?”
“Amongst others.” The old woman tilted her head a little at her. “So, you understand why I asked who was asking. Your father would not like the fact we even existed. He would view us as a threat to the Old Way, the Iron Price.” She spat the last five words bitterly. “A threat to the power he has. That and his brother. Damphair would kill us all.”
“Then why tell me?”
“Because I saw you in… call it a dream. I knew that you were important, but that two destinies lay ahead of you. In recent months one has waned and the other has waxed. You hold the fate of our people in your hands, child. Because war is coming here. Men against men – and men against darker creatures.”
There was a long, tense silence, and then Elys Stonebrow sighed and then passed a hand over her brow. “I will leave word of what I have seen. No secrets will be lost when I die. In the meantime, know this – the Harlaws are the key to this. They once knew this and they hid what they knew. The runes. The key is in the runes. But they deliberately hid this. The runes look the way they do to disguise this, in case a Drowned Man stumbled on them and destroyed them. The fact that they glow means that magic has returned. Magic will be needed to make the runes readable again.”
She nodded to her son, who sighed a little and then walked over to a chest to one side and rummaged through it. After a long moment he picked up something and then brought it over to her, placing it in her hand. She peered at it. A… stone. It had runes carved on it. “What is it?”
“Something that you must guard, no matter what the cost. Something important. Something that a Harlaw had sent to us, long ago. A very long time ago. Tell your uncle to place it at the slot near the start of the runes. And tell him to tell his own sons.”
“His sons are dead, killed in the war.”
A wintry smile greeted her. “Off you go, child. Back to High Harlaw.”
She stared at the old woman. She could feel tears forming in her eyes and she angrily suppressed them. “But – you’re dying! I might never see you again!”
A long finger was crooked at her and she strode over to the side of the bed. Elys Stonebrow smelt of lavender and rose petals for some reason and she had a wistful smile on her face as she patted Asha’s cheek lightly. “Oh, child. You always were the clever, sharp one. You inherited all the brains that the Greyjoys ever possessed, although I have some hope of your brother. Your dead brothers – they were animals. But you, clever little Asha, you have something that they never had. Something your father never suspected. You have a heart. And what a heart!
“Now – you have to go. You will see me again, in one way or another. The Call from the Stark in Winterfell woke something up, you see. Many more are aware of it now. Many more will see. Your father and his brother wish to close people’s eyes. Well – you and Lord Harlaw must stop them. Because otherwise death will come to Pyke. “
The hand left Asha’s cheek. “Give my regards to your brother by the way. Him and his wolf.”
Asha opened her mouth to ask what she was talking about, but she seemed to have fallen asleep. Ned Stonebrow looked down at his mother and then led Asha out of the house. As she left she saw that something of a crowd had gathered, one that fell silent at the sight of her. The moment that Ben Stonebrow smiled at the people around them a tension seemed to lift. “The Lady Asha has a voyage to make – back to Lord Harlaw in High Harlaw.”
“Is the Harlaw awake?” The shout came from a man at the back of the crowd.
“Soon,” Ben Stonebrow cried. “Soon.” As the crowd dispersed he turned to Asha. “We’ll give you an escort down to the harbour. What you bear is important. Tell Lord Harlaw to believe. And that help must be sent to the Wall. The Others return. The Stark has called for aid. We are needed.”
She nodded and mounted her horse. As she did various Stonebrows trotted up on their own horses. “Very well – we ride!” She spurred her horse on and they rode down the path, down to the sea.
Aemon
He was in a foul humour as he listened to the doorway being broken down. He had suspected that the room was there, he just didn’t know where. Or, for that matter, why it had been bricked up. Castle Black had been searched from top to bottom for something – anything! – that hinted at filling in some of the gaps in their knowledge.
Along the way they’d found some old caches of supplies, more hobnails than could ever be used in a man’s lifetime, some weapons that were now more rust than steel, several barrels of what had possibly once been preserved lemons, but which were now merely extremely nasty and a few small caches of coins dating back to the early Targaryens, which had many people wondering who had left them and why. They’d been used to buy more supplies however.
And then they’d found the bricked up doorway, in a room next to the library, behind a bookcase. He’d been coldly angry about this when it had been discovered and he was coldly angry now. Why had that room been bricked up? When? And what was in it?
He heard a clatter of bricks, a gasp of exertion from one of the men who were doing the demolishing and then a pause. “Maester Aemon? I can see inside now.”
“Describe what you see – exactly.”
“Wait, I need a torch.” There was another pause. “By the Gods, it’s dusty. Brick dust though. Not much other dust. Erm – there are chests everywhere, covered in what looks like… canvas? Yes, canvas. Wait, let’s clear the rest of this doorway.”
He heard a muttered conversation about the bricks, before there was a clattering and thumping, followed by some stifled sneezes. Then he heard footsteps and more muttering, before the footsteps returned. “Ten large trunks, Maester Aemon, and twenty smaller ones. All covered in canvas. They’ve been here for some time. And there’s a seal on all of them, pressed into wax.”
“What seal?”
“That of the Lord Commander. Wait… there’s a slight difference. The tower looks different.”
“Describe it exactly, if you please.”
“It’s larger… and the battlements are more extended. Five instead of three.”
“That is the old seal, the seal of the Lord Commander when they were at the Night Fort. Is it on all the trunks?”
Another pause. “Aye, it is.”
He sighed. “Very well. Bring them out and stack them in the library.”
Floorboards creaked to one side and he turned his sightless eyes in that direction. “Who approaches?”
“A worried Lord Commander,” Jeor Mormont groused as he walked up to him. Then he caught his breath. “These were in that room?”
“They were,” Aemon said grimly. “Why the room was bricked up I do not know. Look at the Seals though, Lord Commander.”
Mormont walked over, a sound of creaking leather and old bones. And then a huff of surprise. “I wonder why they were sealed up.” There was the sound of shuffling feet as yet another chest was produced. “By the Old Gods – how many are there?”
“Ten large and twenty smaller ones, and that is just an initial estimate of the contents.”
There was a pause and he sensed that he was being looked at closely by the Lord Commander. “You do not sound happy, Maester Aemon.”
“I do not like the idea of vital knowledge that is hidden. I do not know what is in these chests. I do not like the thought that all of this will have to be sifted through, taking valuable time. And never before have been so ashamed of the loss of my eyesight. I am old! I am weak! I am useless!” He raged the words as he beat at the table next to him with a clenched fist. He was angry, more angry than he had been since the fall of his House. “The dead come and we flail and scrabble for scraps of information hidden by our ancestors! I am supposed to be the Maester of the Citadel and I feel ashamed!” He took a deep breath of air into his lungs and found his point of balance again. “Your pardon, Lord Commander. I did not mean to lose control like that.”
The floorboards creaked as Jeor Mormont approached and laid a hand on his shoulder. “I feel your shame,” he muttered in a low voice. “Never have I felt the shame I feel now as to how low the Night’s Watch has fallen. But we still live and where there is life there is hope.”
Aemon lifted his head. “Aye. You have right of it. I will need more assistants, men who can read. I wish that I had the expertise of Luwin and young Robb Stark, but we will have to make do.”
“Men – and women – arrive every day. I will ask amongst them.”
Another set of feet sounded on the floorboards, feet that stopped dead. “By the Seven! What have you found, Maester Aemon?” Alliser Thorne said, sounding astonished.
“Long hidden secrets,” Aemon replied dryly. “Secrets that should not have been hidden. Perhaps. We’ll need to open them all.”
“Aye,” Thorne said wryly. Then he paused. Aemon heard a crackle of parchment and then a rustle of what might have been a quill. “Lord Commander – this was found by a patrol this morning, by the gate.”
The parchment crackled again. “Ah,” Mormont said thoughtfully. “Interesting. Maester Aemon, this is a message from Mance Rayder. He says that he visited Winterfell and has talked to Lord Stark. He says that the Wildlings will not raid anymore – but that we must treat with him most urgently. The dead are rising at the behest of the Others and the Wildlings are fleeing before them, burning their dead when they can. And… he says that he has met with a Child of the Forest.”
There was a long silence. It was broken by Alliser Thorne. “I’ve been here since the fall of the Targaryens. I’ve seen a lot of things in my life. These past months… well, I’ve stopped wondering what I’m going to be surprised about next. Legends are coming to life before my very eyes.” He paused. “There is a war coming like nothing we have ever seen before, isn’t there? A war between the living and the dead. A war that we will have to win.”
“Aye,” the Old Boar sighed. “And if we don’t… well, let us prepare.”
A horn wailed from the distance and he heard Mormont shift on his feet a little. After three more trunks were pulled from the hidden room then he heard a thunder of boots outside, before someone burst in. “Lord Commander! The First Ranger has returned!”
“Thank the Gods,” Mormont growled. “Bring him here at once.”
Benjen
He was bone-tired, rather dirty and famished, but the moment that he cleared the tunnel and saw the faces of his brothers he grinned at them. He dismounted Wanderer as soon as he could and cast an eye over the horse. “You look in better shape than I feel,” he muttered and then hauled off his saddlebags, before starting to unsaddle Wanderer.
“First Ranger, the Lord Commander wants to see you at once, in the Maester’s Library,” a panting man said as he ran up. He wasn’t wearing black and Benjen had never laid eyes on him before, something that oddly gave him hope. “I can take your horse to the stables.”
“Thank you,” Benjen muttered as he shouldered his saddlebags, those precious, precious saddlebags. By the time he got to the Library he was almost shaking with tiredness, but he pushed it to one side. He’d made excellent time to get here.
As he entered he stopped and stared. There was a small mountain of chests, both large and small, on the floor. There was also a door that he had never seen before, behind the spot that had once held a bookcase. To one side he could the Old Bear, Thorne and Maester Aemon looking at a rather familiar, if dust-covered, shape. It was a small cage.
“-must be good for something, ‘else why would they have locked it away with all those chests,” Jeor Mormont was saying. “’Tis the oddest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Oh, no. I’ve got odder things on me,” he said with a wry smile. “Far nastier too.”
“Benjen!” Jeor Mormont smiled at him. “Thank the Gods you’re back!” Then he looked him up and down. “You look like shit, man. When was the last time you ate?”
“Or slept, come to that,” Thorne said with a thin smile. “Welcome back First Ranger.”
Benjen tilted his head at the chests and the doorway. “What’s all this then?”
“Secrets,” spat Maester Aemon, with a bitterness that surprised him. “Long hidden for reasons we know not.” He shook his head. “We were just pondering the meaning of this small cage, which was found at the back of a shelf. But what of your mission First Ranger?”
“I succeeded,” Benjen said softly and noted how all three stiffened and looked at him, or in the case of Maester Aemon in his general direction. “I found wights.”
There was a long silence as they all looked at him. All were pale. “Truly?” Jeor Mormont asked. “You have seen wights?”
He unbuckled one of the saddlebags and pulled out the canvas bag that contained the largest of the cages, before walking over to it and then placing the cage on the table. “Truly. Mind your fingers.”
The Lord Commander and Thorne both peered at the head of the wight carefully. And then it opened its very blue eyes and hissed that them. Their reaction was everything that Benjen had anticipated – they both flinched back violently.
“Fuck!” Thorne muttered. “So that’s… that’s…”
“The head of a wight, Alliser. The head of a wight. And this-” He pulled out one of the smaller cages and placed it on the table next to the larger cage. “This is the hand of a wight.”
The hand twitched and then scrabbled around the cage, almost as if it could hear his voice or sense his presence. This time the reaction wasn’t as bad.
“Would mind describing what you are seeing?” Aemon asked drily. “As my own eyes are somewhat lacking.”
There was a moment of silent tension and then the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch ran a shaking hand over his face. “A cage with a severed head of a woman. With blue eyes, as the old tales told. Eyes that open and shut, as does her mouth. A head of a wight. And the other cage… is of a severed hand. That still tries to grasp at things.”
Maester Aemon nodded slowly. “Then we have our proof,” he said slowly. Then he paused. “You said that they were in cages. Where did you get the cages from, First Ranger?”
Benjen sat down with a sigh. “A place called Overlook. By the Fist of the First Men. Originally built by Rangers of the Night’s Watch, but long forgotten by us. Long forgotten indeed. I only know of it because I met someone who knew of it.” He paused. “I am not sure what kind of man he is. Long lived for some reason. He now goes by the name of Coldhands, but… his original name, mad as it sounds, was Rickon Stark. Son of Edwyle Stark.”
If the previous silence had been a long one, this next one was longer still. It was broken by Maester Aemon. “Edwyle Stark, if I have my genealogy right, died many centuries ago.”
“He did. I have seen his tomb in the crypt of Winterfell.”
“Then how the bloody hell can you have met his son?” Alliser Thorne asked.
Benjen shrugged. “He rode an elk and never showed the lower part of his face. He said that he had a duty to perform and that his watch was not yet done, that something had been done to him. I do not think that he is entirely alive, but he not a creature of the Others. He found the wights for me and helped me kill them. Oh – one of them was a brother of ours. Ser Willem Glover. His hand is not amongst the others I brought with me. We burnt his body. Fire kills wights. Arrows would be useless – the wights I saw had to be chopped to pieces and even then the pieces still move. Fire is best.
“As for Coldhands - he took me to Overlook, where I read the records there. They spoke of the Night’s Watch starting to weaken, of fewer men being sent to the Overlook, of pestilence on the wall – and of a man called the Wanderer. I believe that it was Coldhands. The last Ranger at Overlook, until I arrived there, died at his post. Coldhands cremated him.” He pulled the little box of ashes out of the saddlebags. “His name was Jojen Blackwood. I thought to send him on to his family.”
The Old Bear’s eyebrows, which had been arched as high as they could physically get, came down again like a pair of caterpillars falling off a branch. “The Blackwoods would appreciate that,” he rumbled. “You trust this ‘Coldhands’ then?”
Benjen thought about this carefully. “Yes,” he said eventually. “He knew that the Others were stirring. Apparently they know the Fist of the First Men all too well, especially as it is no longer defensible. The walls are unrepaired and Coldhands said that the caches are too well hidden.”
“Caches? Caches of what?” Maester Aemon asked.
“My guess would be obsidian. I was also warned against approaching Craster. Coldhands said that he secretly worships the Others. Which might explain a few things now that I think about it. I always wondered what happened to all the sons he must be getting on those ‘wives’ of his. I’ve never liked the bloody man, there’s something about him that puts my teeth on edge. Now I know. I think that he’s sacrificing his sons. That would explain why he only keeps the women there around him.”
“Hmmm,” Maester Aemon said as he tapped a long finger on his chin. “There was a record in Winterfell that told of those who worshipped the Others in the Time of Heroes. They sacrificed babes to the Others. The First Men hunted down and slaughtered such men wherever they found them.”
“We’ll have to send a patrol to Overlook at reactivate it, to leave supplies there. And to watch most carefully. I think that patrols as a whole will have to be curtailed. With wights and Others around then it will be dangerous to send patrols out as normal. And yet we must know what’s happening. What news of the Wildlings?”
The Old Bear pulled a slight face. “They come South, according to the latest patrols. And they left word from Mance Rayder. He has been to Winterfell, or at least so he says, and talked with Lord Stark. He wants to talk to us, to broker some kind of peace.”
He nodded. “Wise of him. The Others threaten us both. And every fallen Wildling can become a wight. We must remember that.”
Alliser Thorne pulled a face. Benjen watched him gravely. The man was bitter and sour all too often. But there was other metal in him. He could fight. And when presented with all the facts he could be surprisingly shrewd. “Doesn’t feel right, allying with Wildlings.” He sighed, looked at the head of the wight and then pulled a slightly different face. “Don’t see that we have any other choice though. Not with these… things headed our way.”
“I need to talk to Ned Stark as soon possible,” the old Bear rumbled. “How many cages with pieces of wight did you bring us?”
“Six – the head and five hands.”
“We’ll send half to Winterfell and half to Eastwatch, to take ship for King’s Landing and perhaps the Citadel. We need to show the South what’s coming. Benjen, get some food, some sleep and a bath. You need to ride for Winterfell.”
“And I will need some eyes to read whatever records are in these books.” Maester Aemon’s face lengthened for a moment. “Time is our enemy now, my Brothers. The Starks are right – Winter is coming.”
Chapter Text
Jonos
He sat on Bess and stared blankly at the horizon. The view was good up here. It wasn’t a big hill, ‘else it would have been fought over and fortified at some point, but it was a place that commanded a good view. Perhaps one day it would have a name. Truce Hill, or Parley Hill. Bess snorted a bit and he reached down and patted her neck. She was a good horse. Steady. Reliable. Not that clever, but brave. He smiled slightly. A bit like him really.
He looked back the horizon. The Sun was close to noon by the shadow the tree behind him was casting on the ground and he calmed himself a little. There was too much riding on this to remember the past. He had to put that past behind him, to move on – difficult as that was. They needed to meet to make sure that all was well, that the truce held. He sighed, dismounted and then tied Bess up on the tree to one side.
Seeing motion to one side he squinted down the hill. A small knot of riders had arrived, their leader mounted on a black horse. After a moment the leader trotted up the hill towards him, leaving the others behind. He smiled slightly. They were keeping to their agreement. The smile ebbed a little. This damn feud of theirs… well, enough. It was over. There was something far more important at stake.
As the other rider approached he slowed and then dismounted, before leading the horse up and nodding shortly at him. “Bracken.”
He nodded back. “Blackwood.”
Tytos Blackwood tied up his own horse next to Bess and then stood next to him. There was a long moment of silence. “News came from Kings Landing,” Jonos said eventually. “The King will go to Winterfell.”
“Aye,” Blackwood said eventually with a slow nod. “We heard that too. Long past time.”
There was another silence. Blackwood seemed to be struggling to say something, so Jonos let him. But then something occurred to him. “’Tis said that the Faith Militant rise again, in places at least.” The words came hard to him, but they had to be said. He followed the Seven, but recently… well, he had doubts of late.
Blackwood nodded again and then seemed to continue to struggle with something. After a long moment he finally succeeded. “There are red buds on the Heart Tree at Raventree Hall,” he said in a rush.
He froze. After a moment he looked at the other man. “What did you say?”
“You heard me right. There are red buds on the Heart Tree at Raventree Hall.” There was another long silence.
Eventually, his mind whirling, Jonos nodded. “That explains a report I had which I had scorned. ‘Tis said that there are red shoots on the stumps of High Heart.”
Another long silence. This time Blackwood broke it. “There will be those,” he said carefully, “Who will say that this is proof of the Old Gods. I… will just say that things are moving that are beyond our ken. The Call has gone up from Winterfell that the Others come. Who knows what else will happen?”
He opened his mouth for a moment and then closed it again. “I… cannot disagree with that,” he said softly. Then he paused, as an unpleasant thought skittered through his mind. “If the weirwood trees stir again at the same time that we hear of the Faith Militant rising again…” Horror kindled in his heart.
From the startled look that Blackwood sent in his direction the other man had had the same thought as he had. “They will move against all those to worship the Old Gods, or who are seen to be sympathetic to them. And against the symbols of the Old Gods. Raventree Hall. High Heart. And the Isle of Faces.”
“We must warn Lord Tully. A raven with a joint message?”
“Aye. There is a small keep not too far from here that is loyal to me. That message from us both can be sent from there.”
“Agreed.” He paused and then he extended his hand. “You have my word on this, that the Faith Militant will not harm any worshipper of the Old Gods on my lands, not if I have anything to say about it.”
Blackwood stared at his eyes intently and then slowly reached out his own hand and shook his. “I thank you. Now – we must ride!”
Jonos nodded, strode over to Bess, and then waved to his own party at the other side of the hill. Startled faces stared up at him and then he mounted Bess. “RIDE TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HILL!” he bellowed and then waited until Blackwood was also mounted before thundering down the hill towards the Blackwood party. There was not a moment to be wasted.
Robert
When he had been a young man he’d been able to lift a log as thick as his head (Ned had always joked quietly about that part) and as long as he was tall onto his shoulders and then walk ten times around the sparring ground of the Eyrie with it.
Today he had made five circuits of the Red Keep’s training ground with the same kind of log, before finally rolling it off his shoulders and standing there and panting. Well. Yesterday he’d gotten four and a half times around. He was improving. Still wasn’t good enough, but better than yesterday.
There was a bucket of water to one side and he poured it over his head. Gods, but he ached. It was a good ache though. It meant that he was doing things right. The fat was going. The muscle was coming back. It was slow, but it was there. He made a mental note to talk to Selmy about how they were going to train him onboard the ship to White Harbour. The last thing he needed to do was to fall behind in his plan to get fighting fit again. A sea voyage was a poor excuse.
He wiped the water that had dribbled into his eyes off and strode over to Stormbreaker, which was leaning against a wall to one side. The sword felt like a part of him these days, as if he had always wielded it. It was enough to make him wonder about it, wonder about it a lot. Selmy had been told so many stories about it when he was a child. Robert had not. Why? Was it because Argella Durrandon had been unable to trust her husband? What had Orys Baratheon been like? Had he been capable of listening?
Hearing the pad of soft feet approach he looked up and was unsurprised to see Varys approach and bow. “Your Grace.”
“Varys.” He stretched and then winced a little as something popped somewhere in his back. “What news?”
“Preparations for your departure to White Harbour go on apace, your Grace. I regret to say that Lord Arryn has not yet awoken. And it has been confirmed that the Company of the Rose has sailed from Pentos, bound for the North.”
He eyed the eunuch carefully. The man had put some odd emphasis on the last four words. “And?”
“Ser Jorah Mormont has joined them.”
Mormont. Oh yes, he remembered the man now. He’d had it all on a plate. He’d been Lord of Bear Island, he’d been the first man through the breach at Pyke, Robert had knighted the man himself. And then idiot had thrown it all away. Marriage to Lynesse Hightower, someone who was used to the comforts of Oldtown, had broken him financially, so he’d tried to make ends meet by selling poachers into slavery. Ned had found out of course. He’d wanted to execute the man himself, but he’d escaped into exile.
He eyed Varys again. “Then Ned will execute him when he sees him.”
“Your Grace, Ser Jorah has been working for the Crown during his time in Essos,” Varys admitted in a quiet voice. “He has given us valuable intelligence on a number of matters.”
“Such as?”
“The affair of the White Stoat in Lys.” Oh bugger. That had been him? “And many other things. He has reported from the Free Cities many times on what they were up to and as a sellsword he has reported on what the various sellsword companies were up to – and who was paying them. He has given us valuable insights into the movements of the Dothraki – including their mysterious disappearance – and also the movements of the Targaryens.”
He sighed. “Has he been promised a pardon?”
“He has been working towards one, your Grace. He is aware of the scale of his crime and knows that a pardon would take time.”
“And now he’s coming back anyway, before getting a pardon? Man’s got balls.”
Varys hesitated for a heartbeat before clearing his throat for a moment. “Word reached me that he has heard this ‘Call’ that so many of the descendants of the First Men have heard.”
Robert stared at him and then closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose with a finger and thumb. “Bugger.”
“Indeed, your Grace.”
He placed a hand on Stormbreaker and thought long and hard for a moment. Then he made a decision. “Issue the pardon. Send word of it to White Harbour and also to Ned at Winterfell. Tell Ned I’ll talk to him about it when we reach Winterfell. Make it clear though that the pardon does not make Ser Jorah Lord of Bear Island again. I think that Ned said that Mormont’s aunt is in charge of the place now and is doing a damn sight better job of running the place. Ser Jorah Mormont must know that we forgive for expediency but we do not forget.”
“A merciful decision, your Grace.”
He thought about it. “Merciful? Not really. There’s a war coming Varys. All I’m probably doing is delaying the moment of his death.”
The eunuch peered at him carefully. “Who will we be fighting your Grace?”
This was a surprisingly hard question to answer. “I think that Ned Stark knows better than I do at the moment,” he muttered. “And perhaps not who, but more what.” He looked over at the log. He had a lot to do and he strode over to it and hoisted it back onto his shoulders. Looking back at Varys he could see that the eunuch had gone quite pale. “What?”
“You said… that we’d be fighting a what, your Grace?”
He shifted the log a little so that a slight knob of wood didn’t press so hard into his shoulder. “Buggered if I know. My dreams have been bloody odd of late. I keep dreaming of a white man-like creature with eyes like blue stars.” He shrugged, no easy feat with a log on your shoulders and then grinned at Varys. “This Call’s gone out, I feel a pull North, Stormbreaker’s been found, the Seven are giving warnings and the Company of the Rose is returning. There’s a war coming, Varys. Best I get ready for it.” And then he strode off around the yard. Six turns around the yard perhaps?
Daenerys
She leant back against the cool stone just behind the bench in the alcove and stared out to sea with almost unseeing eyes. Somewhere out there was the fleet of the ships that had taken the Company of the Rose away. And Ser Jorah Mormont of course. The man who had told such terrible lies about her father.
Lies that were true.
She thought about the book she’d discovered in the Magister’s library, the book that she’d read secretly. The book that she’d cried over. The book that had told her, in the mercilessly dry and clinical language of the historian, that her father had been raving mad by the end of his life. That her father had ordered men to be burnt alive, for ‘crimes’ that existed only within his own head. The book that she had carefully hidden after she had read it. Viserys could not be allowed to see it. He’d scream and shout and probably order it burnt.
She closed her eyes for a moment and then looked back at the sea. There was something else that she had to admit. Her brother was starting to scare her. He’d been increasingly erratic for the past year, but recently he’d gone past that and into obsession. It was that dragon egg. Viserys was obsessed with it.
Her brother was more than obsessed. He’d tell her in endless detail about how he’d fly Balerion the Greater Black Dread to the Red Keep and then hunt the Userper down… and tear him limb from limb… and roast him… and then crack the bones open… and then eat the marrow.
She wasn’t entirely sure who was going to eat that marrow. Which worried her. The way he spoke about it…
She sighed and then got to her feet and walked back to the building. All was not well there either. Magister Mopatis was still puzzled as to exactly why the Dothraki had vanished. And he was also angry about the spy that had been uncovered – a trusted servant had vanished, someone that the Magister had trusted. The fact that he had vanished was not good, and security had apparently been stepped up.
From the scraps of conversation that she’d overheard the Magister was also worried about her brother, albeit more in a “the boy is mad” undertone to the man with the gurgling laugh that he occasionally met on the path that led down to the sea.
As she entered her chambers she looked at the three little dragon eggs fondly. They weren’t as large as her brother’s egg, but she was still fond of them, with their beautiful colours and the ridges and whorls on their surface.
It was then that she heard a footstep to one side. She turned her head to see who was there and had just enough time to register Viserys and the anguished but intense look on his face before something slammed into the side of her head and she knew no more.
When she awoke it was to find that she had a terrible headache and felt as if she was about to be sick. It was then that she realised that there was something in her mouth and her eyes opened as wide as she could when she then also realised that she couldn’t move her hands. She looked down, her mind screaming with pain and confusion. Gagged. She was gagged. Her hands were tied together - and then also tied to her waist. Her feet were tied too.
She was quivering with fear as she looked about her. Where was she? A room, somewhere out of the way, the air musty and stale. There was a table to one side and barrels beyond it. There were lit lanterns on the barrels, six of them in a row.
It was then that she saw it. On the other side of the table was a stone slab of some kind. And there was a man spread-eagled on it. His unseeing eyes were staring at the ceiling and his throat was a red ruin. She recognised him. It was the Magister’s missing servant.
And Viserys’s egg was resting against his throat. Along with her three eggs.
A muffled sob reached her ears and she looked on her other side. Oh Gods. One of the other servants – Tirys was it? – was lying on the stone floor next to her, also gagged and bound. And from her eyes she too was terrified out of her mind.
A door creaked to one side and then booted feet hurried in, before hands pulled her to one side roughly. Viserys. It was Viserys. His hair was disordered, his clothing was untidy and his eyes… his eyes were mad.
“Dany!” Viserys almost crooned the word as he stared down at her. “I’m sorry. I really am. But the Dragon King needs a dragon. I have a destiny.” His eyes were lit from within with a terrible light. “I need a dragon. The egg isn’t hatching. So I need to give it a boost. Blood boost.” He giggled at the last word.
Madness. This was madness. “Whhhghhh?” she tried to scream through the gag and he glared back down at her.
“What? Oh – ‘what’? His blood wasn’t high enough. Wasn’t enough. I need more. So I found this slut near your room. And then I had a thought – what about you? You’re royal. You aren’t as good as me, you’re not a king like me, but you’ll do.” He reached out with a trembling hand and stroked her cheek. “I’m so sorry. But it’s for the best. After I hatch my dragon you’ll see that it’s for the best.”
How can I see that it’s for the best if I’m going to be dead? She wanted to scream the words in his face.
Viserys stood abruptly and then paused. “A bowl. I need a bowl. For the blood.” And then he seemed to shamble off, as if his limbs were only loosely connected to him all of a sudden, through a small door to one side.
She peered down at her hands, almost cross-eyed with effort. The knots were tight, but if she wriggled a bit…. Perhaps she could get loose. She had small hands and thin wrists and she worked frantically to try and free herself. It wasn’t working. She tried harder – and then suddenly the door opposite her was thrown open and a man rushed in. She peered up at him, before wanting to suddenly burst into tears. It was the Magister. He looked dishevelled and dirty, with a lantern in one hand and a dagger in the other.
“Princess!” Mopatis cried and then darted over to her, moving surprisingly fast for such a large man. He gently pulled the gag from her mouth and then cut the roped tying her hands together. “What happened?”
She coughed and then reeled as she tried to re-order her jagged thoughts. “Vis… Viserys. It… it was my brother… he killed your servant… Blood magic I… I think.”
The Magister stared at her in horror and then looked at the body to one side. “By the Gods…” Then he sighed, suddenly looking years older. “He’s mad. Why didn’t I listen?”
“To… to who?”
The Magister opened his mouth – and then suddenly a pottery bowl smashed against the side of his head and he staggered – and then collapsed onto his back, his face suddenly bloody.
The Viserys who reappeared by her side was no longer her brother but a howling lunatic. “Mad??? Mad am I! Peasant! Merchant! I AM THE DRAGON!!!” He quivered and then almost seemed to jerk in place for a moment – and then he threw back his head and burst into hysterical laughter.
“More blood!” Viserys said eventually. “More blood! More blood for Balerion the Greater Black Dread! He’ll be strong and fast and big and he’ll crunch everyone’s bones and suck the marrow from them. Crunch, crunch! Won’t it be glorious Dany? Yes, very glorious.”
She stared at him, terrified out of her mind. She was about to scream for help, when suddenly Viserys was kneeling by her, his knife in a trembling hand by her neck. “Most glorious, yes. I’m sorry Dany. I really am. But it’s all for the best. You’ll see. I’ll hatch your eggs too. They won’t be as good – you’re just a girl, so your eggs won’t be as fine as mine – but I am the Dragon and all dragons belong to me you see.”
She was about to take a deep breath and then scream for help when a mighty hand suddenly clamped down on the back of Visery’s neck and pulled him away violently, so much so that the knife fell from his hand. Illyrio Mopatis was somehow on his feet, his face covered in blood and his legs trembling, but he had Viserys in what looked like a grip of iron.
“Stupid… little… BOY!!!” The Magister roared the words. “Mad… boy! To break… guest’s rights… Kill my servant… try and kill your sister…”
Viserys yelped with pain. “I am the Dragon!” He wailed the words. “I am the KING!”
“You’re a lunatic!” Mopatis roared.
“I shall hatch my egg! And have him eat you!”
Mopatis smirked at this. “You can try,” he panted. “I… had a mason carve… that egg out of stone. You were too stupid to… tell the difference!”
Viserys went still – and then he went berserk. “NO!” The word was howled and he shuddered out of the other man’s grip and turned on him. But fast as he was Mopatis was faster, grabbing Viserys around the neck with both hands and squeezing, his knuckles whitening.
Dany watched this with horror – and then her mind seemed to snap back into the here and now. Where was the knife? She looked around desperately and then saw it. Grabbing it she sawed at the rope around her feet desperately.
When she looked up again she saw that her brother was going purple in the face and beating ineffectually at the great hands that were choking the life out of him. And then something seemed to occur to him and he slapped a desperate hand at his side. She watched him – and then she saw his hand find his dagger, draw it and then punch it deep into the side of the Magister.
Mopatis didn’t make a sound – but he did reel after a long moment, pulling Viserys with him. They both smashed into the table, jolting it hard enough to send one of the lanterns sliding across the surface and then fall to the ground. Something broke inside it and suddenly flames shot up. The Magister seemed to recover for a moment, letting out another roar of anger, this time mixed with pain, and the two went around and around in a quick orbit of desperate violence.
Viserys pulled the dagger out and then sank it in again and this time Mopatis screamed in agonised pain. Again the two whirled around and this time they slammed against the barrels. The lanterns there shuddered and two fell, breaking apart. More flames.
I have to get out of here, she thought desperately, I have to get help. The rope yielded to the blade – and then she heard the desperate whimpering to her side. “Tirys,” she muttered, “I’ll free you.” She crouched over the girl and hacked at the bindings quickly, her heart still singing in terror. It wasn’t easy and her hands were slippery with blood from her desperate frenzy and the way that her grip slipped.
And then something caught with a roar. She looked over her shoulder. Something in one of those barrels was now alight and there were flames everywhere. Mopatis and Viserys were swaying backwards and forwards on the edge of it – and then suddenly the Magister collapsed into the flames, pulling her brother down with him. One of them or both of them were screaming and she looked away and kept sawing at the bindings of the servant. It seemed to take an age. Hands first, then feet and, and then they were both pulling themselves upright, sobbing with terror.
“Get out of here – get help!” Dany urged. “I have to help them!”
“Princess… they’re dead.” Tirys choked the words out. “They’re dead.”
She shook her head and looked over. And then she saw movement in the flames. A smouldering figure shakily stood up, garments aflame, hair gone, face blackened and cracked, eyes that were no more than red holes in his head. It was Viserys. Her brother reached out with smoking and blackened claw, gabbling something in a hoarse voice – and then he collapsed back into the flames.
“Go!” Dany sobbed as she pushed the servant ahead of her. And then she remembered the eggs. The dragon eggs. Something stubborn sparked in her heart and she darted back deeper into the room and grabbed them, holding them close against her chest. The three were real, she knew it and she pulled a face at the black stone that had driven her brother mad.
“Princess! Come!” Tirys was at the doorway now, with a what seemed to be a wild-eyed guard, but as Dany took a step towards that doorway something else seemed to catch and then burst and all of a sudden there were flames creeping over the walls and floor by the door. She shrank back. It was too dangerous. And then she saw the door to one side. She darted through it – and then stopped dead. It was small and had what looked like the underside of a flight of stairs to one side. There was crockery stacked in places and she realised that this was where Viserys must have been when the Magister had found her.
She crept into the void under the stairs and waited for the end to come, cradling the eggs with her bloodied hands. Yes, this was the end.
Rhaello
He was having the most amazing dream. He was walking through the shattered remains of Braavos, choosing which of the many naked women that had been paraded in front of him that he would sleep with that night. So much choice! So many humiliated Braavosi! So many amazing tits!
It was then, naturally, that he came awake. He looked around wildly, his hand under the pillow where he kept a dagger. There was someone in the room with him. Who?
It was then that someone coughed gently from the door. “Magister?”
Oh. It was Raf, his steward. “There had better be a good reason behind you waking me up.”
The man nodded seriously and he felt his heart sink a little. Yes. He would not have done so otherwise. “There is a fire in the city. Magister Mopatis’s house is aflame on its lower Southern floors.”
Shock roiled through him and he jumped out of bed. There was a robe nearby and he put it on quickly as he hurried to the window and peered out. Sure enough there was a glow coming from the building at the top of the hill. Then he realised which direction the wind was coming from and he knew in an instant why Raf had woken him up.
“The wind’s blowing in the direction of the harbour,” he said tersely and then hurried back to where his clothes were kept. “Rouse the household. Every servant you can find. Send word to the city watch. I want a chain of buckets set up, from the sea to that house.” He was pulling on clothes almost without thinking about what he was choosing. There was a time to be fashionable. That time was not now.
Raf absorbed his instructions – and then ran off. Good. The man knew what was at stake. If the fire took full hold on that bluff above the harbour… well, it would be a disaster. Ships were notoriously prone to fire. All that canvas, all that sailcloth, all that tar, all that wood. A fire near the harbour, with all those sparks and hot ash drifting down…
He finished dressing himself and then left the room at the closest he’d come to a run for many years. As he passed down the corridor he could hear Raf shouting orders and the sound of feet running in all directions.
“Magister, the Watch have been told – many are coming!” Raf shouted and he nodded in response.
“Buckets. We need buckets. Anything that can hold water.” Thank the Seven they were near the sea. The gardens of Mopatis’s manse would not look doof afterwards, with so much sea water, but he didn’t give a damn about that. And so he flung himself onto a horse and rode off up the hill.
Looking back on it later he was amazed that was not more hoarse by the time that the sun finally started to show itself in the East. The previous hours had been filled with shouting and not a little swearing; of frantic decisions made after periods of thought that measured bare heartbeats; of desperation and anger and sadness when reports came of losses.
But it had all worked. Yes, a third of the manse was a gutted shell and another third had fire damage in many areas, but the remaining third was still intact and above all nothing had caught fire in the harbour. Some of the ships closest to the danger had been warped out by worried captains, but no ship had burns, nor any other building.
He’d had casks of clean water and some of cold ale brought up for the men and women around him and now he was holding a tankard of ale in one hand and a piece of bread and ham in the other. The bread was fresh, the ale was cold and even though this was food that he would normally have scorned, by the Gods today it felt like the finest meal he’d ever had.
As he finished the food and swigged the last of the ale he saw Raf approach. With his was a smoke-blackened man who looked like one of the Unsullied here and also a young woman. All bowed as they reached him. “Magister,” Raf said, “We have confirmed that Magister Mopatis is dead.”
He nodded shortly. This had been what he had suspected for some time, after seeing that Mopatis wasn’t present anywhere at all during the fighting of the fire. A man like Mopatis would have been everywhere, bellowing orders. His absence had meant only one thing. “How?”
Raf looked at the girl. “Tell him.”
“I am Tirys, Magister,” the girl all but stammered. She looked tired beyond words and had a look in her eyes that he had seen before. A look of someone who had seen terrible things. “Magister Mopatis was killed by Viserys Targaryen.”
He stared at her in astonishment. “The Beggar King? For what reason?”
“The Magister said that he was mad. And he was. Halys vanished, the Magister’s under-steward. Fled, we thought. Then I… last night The Beggar King found me near his sister’s quarters. I turned to the door and… he must have hit me. When I awoke I was in a room. And Halys was there too. But he was dead. Throat cut.” The girl looked down at the ground, her face working with memory.
“Go on,” Raf encouraged her gently. “All of it.”
“Then… then the Beggar King came in again. He had his sister! She was tied up and lacked her wits. He laid her down next to me. When she woke up he said… he said that he needed our blood. That… he needed dragons and that he didn’t care how he’d get them. Even blood. He was mad, Magister. He made no sense. Then he…. he went off to get something to collect our blood.”
Horror had overtaken him and he stared at her. Everyone in earshot of the girl was doing the same thing. He’d known that Mopatis had been getting worried about the stability of the boy king, but this? This was beyond madness.
“The Magister found us then – he’d been searching after discovering the princess missing. He cut the bonds on her hands. But then her brother came back and hit the Magister on the head with a bowl or something and knocked him out. He was saying mad things again, mad, mad things. But… then the Magister woke up. He was so angry with the Beggar King! He started to choke him. But the boy had a dagger and he fought back and they fought – oh how they fought! – and they knocked over lanterns. And something caught. The fire started. And… they fell into it.”
He shuddered at that. Death by fire… that was no way for anyone to die. That was too horrible for words. “And the Princess?”
Tirys shook her head, tears spilling down her face. “She freed me, Magister. She picked up a dagger that had been dropped and she freed me. Got me out. But then she went back in for her dragon eggs. And the fire cut her off. I last saw her in a room to one side.”
“We’ve cleared a way to it. Magister,” Raf said quietly. “There… there won’t be much to see there by now. The fire was fierce there. We think that oil for cooking was being stored there.”
He nodded slowly. Well. This was a fine kettle of fish. Still, what could one expect from the only remaining son of the Mad King? Death by fire. How very apt. Historians would make bad puns about it in their books. It was a shame that Pentos would be mentioned but…
Running feet brought him out of his ruminations. “Magister! Come quick! You must see this!” It was one of the guards and he looked… well, terrified.
“Come and see what?”
“We’ve found Daenerys Stormborn!” And then he was gone again, running like a madman.
Frowning he followed, walking, with Raf and Tirys behind him. The passed through a still-smoking doorway, past a pile of blackened timbers that was still steaming slightly from the water that had been poured over it and then along what had once been a corridor. The room that they entered lacked a roof and also three walls, apart from a stone one that marked an internal buttress. Some stone steps arched up to one side and… oh. There were two bodies there. Or what might have been bodies. He could see that one pile was a little bigger than the other, but that bone had splintered and skulls had cracked from the heat.
There were a few men and women staring at something under the stairs though and he sighed and strode up. And then he saw what was there and his mind refused to accept it for a long moment.
Daenerys Targaryen was sitting there. Ashes had streaked her bare skin – she was as naked as the day she had been born – and her arms were crossed in front of her chest. Her eyes were closed and she appeared to be asleep.
Tirys gasped to one side and he heard Raf say something under his breath, but it was at that point that the world tilted still further. Her arms had been hiding something. On the underside of her right arm was a little green and bronze creature. On the underside of her other arm was a little white and gold creature. Both seemed to be suckling from her nipples. And then a small form seemed to register their approach from her shoulder, where it had been hiding under her hair. A black and red creature that hissed a little and then flapped its wings.
Dragons. He was looking at Dragons. The word rang through his mind and he resisted the temptation to let his jaw drop open. Instead he rallied. “Princess?” No reaction. “Daenerys Stormborn!”
Her eyes flicked open. And just for a moment he saw nothing but silver light in those eyes.
Robert
The trees were flying past again. Was he running or was he being pulled by some means or other? He could not tell. All he knew that he was so close to catching her. Lyanna. She was just in front of him, hair over her face, screaming something at him. She was terrified of something. Was it Rhaegar pulling her? Where were they? Was it in the North? There were just the trees to go by. And the snow. He stretched his hand out in a desperate effort at grabbing her. So close – less than the span of a man’s hand. So close.
“LYANNA!” He reached again – and missed.
Her face worked with terror again and then suddenly she was gone, pulled an unimaginably long way in front of him in an instant. He slowed and looked about wildly. For an instant he thought he could see a little face amidst the trees – and then he turned around and looked at the blue-eyed thing that might once have been human that was peering at him in what looked like horror.
“LYANNA!!!!!” He came awake in his bed with a shout, his chest heaving as if he had been running for hours. His hands were shaking and he was covered in sweat.
After a long moment he sighed and ran his hands over his face. The third time that week. Why? What did it mean? He got out of bed and strode to the window. Dawn was close. He could try to sleep again – at least Cersei wasn’t there, with her sharp elbows and sharper tongue – but he knew that it would be folly to try and sleep again.
He dressed quickly, picked up Stormbreaker and then strode from the room. Outside Ser Boros was asleep on a chair by the door and Robert glared at him with contempt. Cersei’s man, he was. A Lannister man. Why had he agreed to have that craven lazy fool on his Kingsguard again? Well, he would be hopefully shamed by the realisation that his King had left the room without him noticing.
He strode off down the dark corridors. It was quiet at this hour. A man could think that this hour. He reached the stairs and padded down them quietly. More training today. More arrangements. Cersei wasn’t happy about the move to Winterfell. He’d been tempted to shout her down. Instead he’d just coldly told her that it was happening, no matter what she said, and that it had to happen. She’d been puzzled by that, before moving on to how much she hated the cold and how much dear Joffrey hated the cold and so on and so forth.
Not that it had made a damn bit of difference, just as her protests about Stannis becoming Hand had also not made the least difference. All of her shouted comments about Tywin Lannister being an excellent Hand in the past had not worked and she’d eventually stormed off.
He reached the throne room. Had he meant to come here? Or was it simply where his feet had led him? He peered at the throne itself and then shook his head and leant against the nearest pillar. Why was he dreaming of Lyanna so much? What was happening with those dreams? Were they just dreams or something more?
The Iron Throne squatted there in the half-light, looking like a demented vision of a normal chair dreamt up by a madman. He often wondered how much blood was on it, from the nicks and scratches that the swords it had been made from. And how much of that blood had been that of Aerys?
He stared at it with blank eyes. For how long he could not say - and then he looked, almost unwillingly, at the place where the bodies had been deposited by Tywin Lannister’s men. When he looked back at the throne again he saw that someone was watching him. He squinted a little and then relaxed. “Ser Barristan.”
“Your Grace.” Selmy smiled wryly. “You’re supposed to be escorted by at least one member of the Kingsguard your Grace. I was most annoyed with Ser Boros when I found him asleep in front of your room.”
Robert chuckled a little. “He was sleeping too peacefully for me to wake him!” He sobered a little. “I am sorry that my wife insisted on his appointment.”
Selmy shook his head a little. “The Kingsguard make do your Grace.” He paused. “You seemed deep in contemplation – I hope that I did not disturb you?”
He sighed and then paced over to the dais where the throne was and sat down on the bare stone, Stormbreaker next to him. “I could not sleep. Not after dreaming of… well, I could not sleep. So I came here.” He shifted a little. “Tell me, Ser Barristan, what would Aerys Targaryen have made of all of this? This call that went out, the talk of the Others returning, the statues of the Seven and… well, everything?”
It was Selmy’s turn to sigh, as he seemed to think very carefully. “It all would have been a plot, your Grace. Directed at him, naturally. Oh and your discovery of Stormbreaker would have been an especially… treasonous part of that plot.”
“I thought so,” he said softly, before smiling sourly. “I always thought that I’d make a better king than Aerys. Perhaps I have not been the best of kings, but at least this is something that I can take action on. Whatever it is exactly. So hard to tell. Echoes from the past, eh?”
The old Lord Commander of the Kingsguard smiled slightly. Then he paused, as if he had something on his mind before finally saying: “May I ask a question your Grace?”
Robert peered at him. There was something odd about his tone. “Of course you can Ser Barristan.”
“Have you been dreaming a lot recently?”
He seemed to see Lyanna hanging in the air again amidst the trees for a moment. “Yes,” he said hoarsely. “I have. That same damn dream of Lyanna trying to tell me something – and then being pulled away from me.” He looked back at the spot where the bodies had been placed on the day that he had entered the Red Keep as King. “If only she’d lived. She had a fire in her, you know! Such a fire!” He looked down at his belly. “She wouldn’t have let me go to fat the way that I did until of late.” And she would have been horrified at the bodies of the Targaryen children, he knew that without even thinking about it. Not that he could say anything about it.
Selmy seemed to think very hard about something, before finally taking a step forwards. “Your Grace, after Stormbreaker was found I wrote to Harvest Hall, to my great-nephew Lord Arstan Selmy, about certain records that my father had once mentioned. I remembered his tale of them only in passing, after much thought. T’was said that House Selmy was close once to House Durrandon, but I did not remember the full details. Arstan sent me a copy of the history of my house. The private one, known only to we Selmys. And… it mentioned Stormbreaker.”
Curiosity kindled in his heart. “Why didn’t you say anything of this before?”
“I mentioned it in passing your Grace, but all I remembered was bits and pieces of what my father told me. Arstan’s copy of the history arrived yesterday. I was up most of the night reading it. I might have some answers for you your Grace, but I am still puzzling some things out.”
Robert beckoned him over and Selmy sat on the raised dais by the throne, Robert with Stormbreaker now over his own lap. “Go on,” he said eagerly. “What answers?”
Selmy ran a hand over his chin and then seemed surprised for a moment, as if he had only just realised that he needed a shave. “My ancestor, Ser Emrys Selmy, was swordbearer to King Argilac Durrandon himself, your Grace, sworn to be near him at all times,” he said quietly. “But he did not die at the Last Storm. According to the record that Arstan sent me, King Argilac sent him back to Storm’s End.” Then he paused. “The record stated that the day before the battle King Argilac had a dream. A very terrible one. He never told my ancestor what exactly he had dreamt of – just that he had seen his own death. That Stormbreaker deserved a better fate. And that it was all down to his daughter now to preserve the line of the Storm Kings. So he sent Emrys Selmy back to Storm’s End. With a sword.”
“Stormbreaker?” He ran a hand over the hilt. “He gave away his own sword?”
“Aye, your Grace.”
He paused. “You asked about dreams.”
“’Tis said that the Durrandons would often have dreams. Prophetic dreams. I do not know if there is a link to Stormbreaker or not but… if you are dreaming strange dreams when you did not before then there might be some link there.”
Robert stroked his own chin, discovering that he too needed a shave. “That Stormbreaker deserved a better fate… what might that mean then? I won...” He stopped in mid-word and stared at Selmy – and then he stared at the Iron Throne, that monstrosity of melted steel swords. “Could he have meant that?” He choked the words out.
Selmy went white. After a moment of silence he nodded jerkily. “Perhaps, your Grace. Perhaps.”
“What else did the book say?”
“Just… that one day a Selmy would be swordbearer again for a new Storm King.”
Robert snorted. “Swordbearer is too low a title for you, Ser Barristan.”
“If my ancestors served the Storm Kings of old then I will be glad to serve the Storm King of now.” An odd look crossed his face. “We live in times that are almost out of a song, your Grace. Strange times.”
“Strange times indeed,” he replied. What did it mean though? He stood. “Keep reading Ser Barristan. Keep reading. Now, I have an appointment with a log and the training yard. After which we will spar for a bit!”
Tyrion
He looked at the page in front of him and then made yet another note on the parchment to his right. It was yet another unpleasant legend about the Nightfort. What fun. At the rate he was collecting them he’d be unable to approach the place due to the number of dead bodies surrounding the place.
Why there though? Why was the old headquarters of the Night’s Watch so important? And why were there so many terrible stories about the place. Was it haunted? He thought about grumpkins and snarks for a moment and came close to scoffing – but then he remembered the red fire in the eyes of Jon Stark. That had been no mummers trick. If that could happen… well, what else was there? Ghosts?
He sighed and then turned the page. It was then that he sensed that he was being watched and he looked up. Dacey Surestone was standing there, one eyebrow raised and a plate of food in one hand. “You missed lunch,” she chided. “So I brought you some.”
He stared at her and then looked out of the window. Oh. Yes, the Sun had passed its zenith. “Oh my,” he muttered as his stomach took the opportunity to complain quite loudly. “Yes, I am hungry. Thank you, Lady Surestone.”
The plate contained some fresh bread and some ham, as well as some kind of pickled thing. It was remarkably tasty. As he ate Dacey Surestone looked through the books he had scattered around him. She was making noises of interest and possibly concern by the end of her perusal, which ended as he swallowed the last crumb and repressed a belch.
“The Nightfort. You’re researching the oldest castle on the Wall?”
“I am,” he sighed. “I will be travelling there soon. Well – soonish. Thank you for the food by the way.”
“Ned noticed that you weren’t at lunch.” She peered at his notes. “As did I. You didn’t miss much, apart from the leaders of Mountain Clans of the Vale doing their best to eat in polite company. Lady Stark’s face was a picture.”
He stared at her as if she had grown a second head. “I beg your pardon???”
“Mountain Clans. Vale. Here. They even have a banner. That of the Griffon King.” She sniffed a little. “I wish my father had been here. He would have been taking notes for a week though.”
He was still staring at her. “The Mountain Clans of the Vale came all the way to Winterfell?” Then his brain caught up with his mouth. “First Men – of course, they’re First Men. But…” Then further pieces clanged into place in his brain. “The people who forded the Green Fork! That was them? They came all the way up here? To fight the Others???” His voice was heading upwards, as were his eyebrows.
“Yes,” she replied. “To all of your questions.”
He leant back in his chair and reeled, mentally at least. The implications were astonishing. If such people were leaving the Vale to fight for Stark against the Others… This was something that Father would find deeply alarming. He needed to think very hard about if he should tell him. “Fascinating,” he muttered. “Fascinating.”
“Yes indeed.” She was staring at him. “You seem to be taking all of this in your stride. Well, sort of. Why do you need to go to the Nightfort?”
After a moment of furious thought about the Mountain Clans her question finally trickled into his brain and he looked at her. “Ah. Did you hear about my little encounter with Jon Stark?”
“I did.” She looked at him very solemnly as she sat down to one side. “The Old Gods spoke to you.”
“They did. I very nearly needed the privy in a hurry, but at least it proved that they existed. Exist. Whatever.” He paused to marshal his thoughts, failed for a moment, but then pressed on. “It seems that I, as a descendent of Lann Casterley – Lann the Loyal & Clever or something and can’t you just hear the capital letters there – need to go to the Nightfort. Hence the research. And also the quiet panic.”
“You certainly seem to be intermittently loquacious, which is unlike you.” She looked at the next set of books and then pulled a slight face. “Oh dear. ‘A Hystorie of the Infamous Night’s Queen at the Nightfort’ by Archmaester Ch'Vyalthan. Not a bad historian. Horrible writer. Better than his book on sieges though. Spotty at best.”
His eyebrows flew up again. “You have read very widely.” Then he saw her own upraised eyebrow. “Ah. Of course. Surestone has a large library?”
“Very large.” She sobered a little. “Bootle at least saw no profit in books. I was able to get it sealed up tightly. No damp shall damage those books.”
“Is there any word from Riverrun?”
“Not yet. When word does come… well I will have to set things right at my home. And Bootle will pay. Ned said that he’d made sure of that.”
He nodded at her. “I think that Lord Stark will make very sure of that. As indeed he should.” He fidgeted a little for a moment. “Has Lord Stark finished your father’s book yet?”
“Almost. Ned’s not much of a reader. Or at least he wasn’t much of a reader. I think that a lot has changed recently.” She said the words almost carefully. “The sad thing is that it’s almost a good thing that Ned’s in charge in Winterfell and not Brandon. He could be… temperamental. And not much of a reader at all.”
“So I have heard,” Tyrion said judiciously. Then he sighed. A lot of people seemed to be doing that around him of late. “So, when this Bootle person is brought to justice you will return to Surestone?”
“Perhaps. Ned needs my help on some of the older records.” She shivered just a little. “The Long Night comes. So I will advise and copy out records if need be.”
“As the last Surestone.”
She rolled her eyes. “Aye. Cat keeps dropping hints that she can matchmake for me. Folly!”
He peered at her with upraised eyebrows. “You doubt Lady Stark’s abilities at matchmaking?”
Dacey Surestone leant back in her chair. This time she rolled her eyes the other way. “Cat has been here in the North for many years now, but she is still a Tully to her fingertips. A Southerner. I doubt that she understands our ways properly at times. I love her dearly, she can be very kind, but… she is still from the South. She has two daughters and… well, see the contrast there. Sansa has been brought up to a Southern flower, whilst Arya…. Arya is Lyanna come again. If she is a flower, then she is all thorns.” She snapped her fingers. “I forgot. You missed something else. Sansa Stark is betrothed to Domeric Bolton. Ned made the formal declaration at lunch, with the Leech Lord standing next to him.”
More peering. “You are not fond of Roose Bolton then?”
She laughed a little. “Once you have read about the Stark-Bolton wars for the tenth or so time then a certain amount of dislike can be detected. Especially as I am part Stark myself. Although I must admit that Domeric Bolton seems very unlike his father. He may resemble him in looks, but in character – not at all.” She paused and then nodded a little. “As a sign of unity it’s well-needed. And perhaps Domeric will remake the Dreadfort, with Sansa at his side. It’s good to be optimistic, is it not?”
He thought for a long moment about Casterly Rock and his father. “Yes,” he said softly. “It is good to be optimistic.” He looked at her for a moment and then smiled a little. “So – perhaps you can help me sort out what is real and what is legend from all of this. Why does the Nightfort provoke such fear and fantastic stories? I mean – look at all this! Tales of the Rat Cook and a, erm, ‘prince and bacon pie’, my, how lovely. And… a madman called Mad Axe, who killed his brothers of the Night’s Watch. And the tale of the apprentice boys against something very eloquently called ‘the thing that came in the night’. Oh and the Night’s King. That’s a tale to make your eyebrows go up and down!”
Tyrion sighed and then ran a hand over his forehead, before frowning. “Actually, that last tale is the oddest. There is no reference anywhere else to even the existence of female Others. They were always referred to as having the appearance of men, except in this one specific case. Why?”
Dacey pursed her lips a little in thought. “Father wondered the same thing,” she said eventually. “He theorised that the Night’s King did not have a consort who was a female Other, but that instead he fell in love with a woman who worshipped the Others.”
He stared at her. “Why would people do that?”
She shrugged at him. “It might go back to the Long Night, the last time that the Others were as widespread as they ever were. Worshipping them might have been seen as a way to try and appease them – well, perhaps make them attack non-worshippers first.”
Hmmmm. An interesting thought. “And the other stories?”
There was a pause as she stroked her chin for a moment. “I think that the Nightfort is a place that gathers such stories because of its history. I think that something terrible must have happened there once, something terrible enough to leave an impression that has lasted many centuries. That said, it was in use until just a few centuries ago.”
He directed a long look at her. “I am not entirely sure if I should be terrified or reassured at the thought of going there now.”
“Both, I think.” She looked back at him. “When are you going there?”
“I am not entirely sure.”
She pursed her lips a little and he could tell that she was pondering on this. “I am willing to bet that it will be sooner than you think. I have a feeling that things are starting to happen. And that they will take a lot of people by surprise.”
All of a sudden he needed a very large goblet of wine.
Cresson
There could be times when it was hard to sleep in his chambers. When the wind came from the North in a certain strength then sometimes it set up a low rumbling shriek through certain passages. Tonight the wind was shrieking more than usual and eventually he gave up and got up.
As he dressed he cocked his head to one side. Yes, the wind really was howling and perhaps there was a storm coming. He sighed and then padded down the corridor, opened the small door at the end and then entered the main passageway. Yes, there was a storm coming. The wind was strong and he hurried down the corridor and turned the corner to the stairs.
He was getting old. He had to admit that as he huffed up the stairs, his knees and ankles complaining more than a bit. He paused what he reached the top, took a deep breath of air and then walked down the corridor. Opening the door at the other end he peered out at the dark room beyond and the great stone arches. The wind was roaring outside, and a gust wrenched his hair all askew. He could hear the sound of waves breaking somewhere not too far away. A high tide then, higher than he had predicted. The fleet should be alright though. Dragonstone was a good anchorage for a storm from the North. He looked at the opening to the outside world. On a fine day you could see for miles. Tonight was different. The moon would appear and then disappear, as clouds scudded over its face. Occasionally something flickered on the Northern horizon. Yes, there was indeed a storm there.
It was only then that he slowly became aware of the noise. Someone, somewhere was screaming in the far distance. Disconcerted he turned and looked behind him. There was something terrible about that scream. It was the scream of someone who was in torment. Moreover, it was a scream that came and then went as if that person was… running around?
As he pondered whether or not to investigate he heard booted feet approach. It was Harys, the second under-castellan, and he looked like a man who had reached the end of his tether. “Maester Cresson!”
“What is that noise? Who is making that awful noise?”
“It’s the jester, Maester Cresson! The Fool, Patchface! He’s gone mad! Running all over the place and screaming all kinds of wild things!”
He winced. He had been long afraid of this. He had always wondered what might happen to set the poor creature off. He was bad enough at the best of times, with his nonsensical songs and shouted rhymes, and of late he had been odder than usual. He had barely been eating for a start and his skin was starting to sag on him. “Take me to him.”
They found Patchface in the Great Hall, the idiotic place that had been built in the shape of a dragon. A small group of servants and guards were huddled by the main doors whispering amongst themselves. They fell silent as Cresson approached – but he could still hear the whoops and curses and shouted nonsense within the room. Patchface.
“What is going on?” Cresson barked as he looked through the doors carefully.
The others looked at each other and one of the older guards took a step forwards. “Beg pardon Maester, byt the Fool’s mad. Well – madder than usual. Ran past me screaming something about dragons waking up and then turned around like a child’s top and screamed something else about the old cold ones coming. Next thing I know he’s gone, screaming as he went. We finally forced him into here.”
Cresson finally caught sight of a slumped figure at the base of the chair where Lord Stannis normally ate. He nodded. “Stay here,” he said softly. “I’ll talk to him. He seems to have quieted now.”
He walked in slowly, watching the motionless Fool carefully. His clothes were dishevelled and his head hung low, his chin almost on his chest. As Cresson approached he looked up, his head shaking. “Do you hear them?” The fool spoke in a voice almost too low to hear.
Cresson paused and then sat in a seat. “Hear who?”
“Cresson. Oh. I hear them, Cresson. Oh oh oh. Sharp teeth and narrow eyes and flames in their gullets. They are awake again at last. Dragons. Oh. Dragons.”
He peered worriedly at the man. Patchface’s eyes were closed and he seemed to be weeping. “Dragons?” He said the word carefully.
“Dragons.” It was a whisper. Then his head snapped up and his eyes opened and Cresson swallowed as he saw the eyes of the Fool. They were very wide - and very mad. There seemed to be little sanity in them. “And that is not all. He fights again, he twists, he scowls, he weakens, he hears the other voices, the voices that he thought he killed. Oh, so many voices. He denies them. Denies, denies, oh, oh, oh.”
“Who, Patchface?” Cresson asked gently.
The Fool twisted his face away a moment, and then back and force, before wrenching himself to one side and then pulling himself to his feet. His face worked and then something seemed to ripple through it, just for a moment. “Can’t you hear them all??? All the VOICES! They sing, oh, no, argue. Dark things come, terrible things from the North, from the prison, from the place no-one can ever see! And in the depths the white things come, to slither and quiver and wail at what has been done to them! Wail and rail against their collars! Pushed South! South to the Wall and death!” The fool was almost shouting now, panting as he spat the words out.
“Calm yourself!” Cresson said as soothingly as he could. “Calm yourself!”
“NO!” Patchface howled as he clawed at his face for a moment. “There is not time! No time Cresson! They come and they press and they scream! The other power waxes, in the hidden places, even here, the roots and the branches, but is it enough? Is it? Trees heal and stone kills and North talks to South! Is it enough? I do not know! No-one knows! Everything has changed! The Young Wolf lives! The White Wolf will not take the black! I don’t care if he’s a bastard, Ned Stark’s blood runs through his veins! Greenseers!”
The Fool clawed at his face again, leaving bloody red marks as his nails bit into his skin. “They come! They come by snow and ice! They must be beaten back! Swords! Swords for the North! The East fails! Eyes North!” And then he screamed and clawed at his temples, before stumbling around – and then he ran. He ran like a madman, arms flopping everywhere, gait uncertain at first, but then he tore out of the doors, bowling people over by the sound of the startled oaths.
By the time that Cresson made it to the doors Patchface had vanished from sight. “Where did he go to?”
“That way,” Harys said, pointing a trembling finger. “He’s gone mad, hasn’t he?”
“Aye. Find him! Find him before he harms himself – or anyone else!”
They went, scattering as they fanned out down the various passageways and doors. Cresson paused – and then he thought hard, before walking off down the corridor that he had used to get to the Great Hall. He had an inkling. There were times when he had found Patchface in the room that he had been in earlier.
And true enough he was right. The Fool was standing in one of the great stone arches. He was as still as a statue, even though the blood was trickling down his face from his self-inflicted wounds.
Harys had followed Cresson and seemed to be about to take a step forwards when Cresson held up a hand and then gestured for him to step back. Then he himself stepped forwards. Thunder rumbled somewhere to the North and lightning jabbed into the sea a long way away.
“Patchface? Come down from there please. The Lady Shireen is very fond of you. It will upset her if you fell.”
“It matters not,” Patchface replied in a voice that almost sounded sane and normal. “It’s too late.”
“What is too late?”
“Even if glued back together a broken jug cannot contain water again. Tell Shireen to seek out the Godswood.” The Fool turned his face to look at Cresson. “Thank you. You have been a good friend to me. I know that others told you to let me die. But it’s time to go now. A life for a life, you see.”
Cresson’s eyes widened and he darted forwards – but it was too late. The Fool stepped forwards swiftly, into the air – and then fell into the darkness. Cresson and Harys dashed to the archway and stared down into the depths below as the wind howled around them, but of the Fool there was not a sign.
Robb
Grey Wind was still a little unsteady on his paws at times, especially when he was tired. Robb looked at him fondly and then ruffled his fur on his back, before scratching. The little Direwolf closed his eyes in ecstasy for a long moment and then seemed to almost fall asleep, because when Robb stopped scratching he didn’t react. After a moment though he seemed to awaken, opened his eyes to give him a sorrowful why-have-you-stopped? look, sneezed and then shook himself.
He grinned for a moment and then ambled down the corridor towards Father’s solar. The door was open and he peered in. Father was working at his desk, the large amount of paperwork that never seemed to diminish to one side. He knew that it was always new and never old, that Father worked steadily to keep it that way, but when he tried to imagine himself doing it… well, his imagination failed him.
The closest he’d come to that had been in the last days of the war, before the wedding at the Twins. So much to organise for the counter-attack against the Ironborn, so much to arrange to keep Tywin Lannister off his back. He sometimes wondered, with a wince, what must have happened after his death in that terrible world.
Enough. Time to return to this world. He knocked on the doorframe and then entered at Father’s gruff “Come!”, before closing the door behind him. Grey Wind ambled over towards the fire, yawned again and then fell asleep.
“You sent for me Father?”
Father leant back in his chair and stretched. “Aye. I’ve come to a decision about the Mountain Clans from the Vale.”
“An interesting collection,, are they not?”
“Aye.” He was silent for a moment. “When I was being fostered in the Vale, what feels like a very long time ago now, something happened that I’d forgotten about until now. I was travelling to Gulltown on business for Jon Arryn, when I was approached by a lone Clansman from the Mountain Clans. Said he had a message for me, from the head of the clan, whose name was Daner.”
Robb frowned. “One of their leaders is Rhys, son of Daner. Could it be the same man?”
“I think so. I mean to talk to him before he leaves for the Wall. The thing is – I was never able to talk to this Daner. There was always something else to do, Jon Arryn didn’t want me anywhere near the Mountain Clans… and now I wish I knew what he had to tell me?”
A short silence fell. Eventually Robb broke it. “You are sending the Mountain Clans to the Wall?”
“Not quiet,” sighed Father. “I’m sending them to the Gift. They won’t be ready for the Wall just yet and the Gift…. Well it will need to be restored. The Mountain Clans will be able to make a start on that. Besides, I can use them there to prove a point to the Night’s Watch. First that First Men are being drawn towards the Wall and that we’ll need the Gift and the New Gift to help prepare before another Long Winter is on us. We need men – and women! – there to restore centuries of neglect. And they can pave the way for the Wildlings.
“That’s the second thing. We need the Wildlings now. We need their numbers, we need their hardiness and we need their skills in existing North of the Wall. If we sent Southerners to the Gift and told them to restore it, half would be dead by the end of the first month of even a short winter. And the Mountain Clans are near enough to be like Wildlings to prepare the way.”
He stared at his Father. This was thinking on a strategic level that he had only partially thought about before. Something of his thoughts must have shown on his face, because Father leant back a little further in his chair and smiled at him.
“We need to think on a different scale, my son. And we must have plans beyond plans. I’m not just having the Broken Tower quietly repaired because of… well, something that might never happen. I’m also getting the tower prepared by be fully restored. If disaster strikes, if the Others break through the wall, then they will come here. Why, I do not know, but all the oldest tales tell of the Others assaulting Winterfell, or the place where Winterfell was founded. Why? Is it the hot springs here? If the Wall falls – and may the Old Gods stop it from happening! – then we will need to defend Winterfell. And every tower, every scrap of wall, every storeroom will play its part.”
He stood up and then walked over to Robb, before placing his hands on Robb’s shoulders. “We must be ready for anything. And… there is something that you must be aware of. I’ve sent for Jon. You need to be aware of who his mother was, just as he needs to know that the Old Gods sent you back. All three of us have been touched by them. There must be a reason for that. Especially as you and I have a journey to make.”
Robb stared at Father quizzically. “Where to Father?”
“Castle Black. I am summoning the Lords of the North there.”
Ice seemed to slide up and down his back for a moment. “You are calling the Banners?”
“Nay – not just yet. I am summoning the Lords there to tell them of my decision. That the Others do indeed come. That the Wildlings must be allowed South of the Gate and into the Gift. That the castles on the Wall must be repaired and reoccupied. That I am ordering this as the Warden of the North, before the South can come to our aid. And that the Night’s Watch must accept this.”
“You doubt Lord Commander Mormont?”
“The Old Bear? Never! The man’s a Mormont and they are Northern down to their toenails. I just doubt some of those men under his command. How many heard the Call? I know not. They have to know that they have not been abandoned by us. That we will help them to the best of our ability. But the Gift must be made ready, the Wildlings must be brought South of the Wall. And we need proof of wights. I’ll be taking that cage with us. Hopefully Benjen has carried out his mission.
“And yes, I said us. You are coming with me. You fought well in that world that you saw. Now I need to complete your education in other respects. The GreatJon, Roose Bolton and Howland Reed all know how important this is and will be coming with us. The Karstarks will need to be fully persuaded, as they are cussed beyond belief. The Glovers and the Cerwyns will be easily persuaded, Maege Mormont alike. House Dustin… well, I have had ravens from both Barbrey Dustin and her father, Lord Ryswell, promising every support. I will know the measure of their words. I will summon both to Castle Black.”
Father walked back to the map. “Tyrion Lannister will come with us as well. He has a part to play in this, given the message from the Old Gods to him. He must go to the Nightfort. Why? I know not – just that it must happen.”
A silence fell, which Robb eventually broke. “When will we go?”
“In a few days. And we will travel with all speed. Luwin is sending out the ravens even as we speak.”
Robb nodded. And then knuckles rapped against the door. “Enter!” Father barked. The door swung open to reveal Jon on the other side.
“You asked to see me Father?”
“I did.” He paused and rubbed his chin. “Jon – Robb – you both have secrets you must tell each other.”
He sighed and looked at his half-brother. Well. This would be… interesting.
Jon
He stared at the closed door for a long time. He had an odd feeling that he knew what this was about. Father had hinted a little about it and he had then worried about it ever since. Robb may not have been his actual brother, but he felt as if he was. He had promised to fight at his side. Someday Robb would be Lord Stark of Winterfell and on that day Jon would lay his sword at his feet and swear to obey him, no matter what.
He’d thought long and hard about the revelation that his real father had been Rhaegar Targaryen. And he’d come to one conclusion: he wanted nothing whatsoever to do with his father’s family. They had brought nothing but death, fire and madness to Westeros. Yes, they’d united the Seven Kingdoms. But the cost…. Oh, the cost…
And then there was the fact that one of his grandfathers had killed his other grandfather. For nothing, other than the wings of madness that had been fluttering through the mind of Aerys fucking Targaryen.
No. No, he would never accept anything that came from his father’s side. He was a Stark now. He’d have a hold somewhere in the North, he’d marry some woman that he would hopefully grow to love and he would keep his head down – and ready his sword to place at Robb’s feet one day.
And he needed his brother to be his brother and not to treat him any differently. Which was why, if this was the meeting that he had been dreading, he was so nervous.
Ghost, who had been sitting by his foot and regarding him gravely, butted his head against his leg, as if to encourage him. Jon sighed before looking back at the door – and then finally knocking on it.
“Enter!” Father barked from inside and he opened the door, Ghost scurrying on before him. As he closed the door behind him he could see that his Direwolf had run up to the fire, where Grey Wind was already asleep. And yes, Robb was standing with Father. He walked up to them.
“You asked to see me Father?”
“I did.” Father seemed to hesitate for a moment, as he rubbed his chin. “Jon – Robb – you both have secrets you must tell each other.”
And this brought a sigh from Robb, which was odd. Jon looked at his brother. Robb looked as if the weight of the world was suddenly on him. “Father?”
Father placed a hand on his shoulder, before doing the same to Robb. “I need you both to listen to me. We are Starks. We are a pack. The pack is weakened when we keep things from each other – even for the best of reasons. Now, this is not going to be easy for either of you, but there is a war coming and we do not know what will happen. The North wind is going to blow and I don’t know where it might take us. You two need to trust each other and there’s only one way that can happen – with the unburdening of yourselves.
“Jon – Robb has been touched by the Old Gods, just as you have been. Only in his case… more directly.”
He stared at Father and then at Robb. “More directly? The Old Gods used me to pass on a message for Tyrion Lannister.”
Robb smiled wanly. “Oh, they brought me back from the dead.”
There was a long moment as he stared at Robb. If this was a joke then it wasn’t very funny. Not that Robb seemed to be joking. Or even amused. He was pale and wincing slightly, as if some terrible memory was going through his mind. “What?” Jon said eventually.
Robb sighed and then ran a hand through his hair. “The Old Gods brought me back from the moment of my death. I was fated to die in about two – almost three – years. At the Twins. There was a war you see. A terrible war. I did my best, but it wasn’t enough. And… I died.”
Eyes wide, he stared at Robb. From the way that he was talking… by the way that Father was watching him with a look of total seriousness on his face… “You died?”
“I died. And I was sent back. By the Old Gods. Because everything had gone wrong and the Others were coming. There was no warning. Nothing. The Long Night was coming and I was losing a war in the South.”
“I… I don’t understand. Where was father whilst all of this was happening?”
Father lifted his chin a little. “Me? Oh, I was dead. According to Robb Jon Arryn died and King Robert came to Winterfell to make me Hand of the King. So I went South with him to King’s Landing. And I died there.”
Horror stole over him and he felt his legs quiver. “What?” he whispered. The thought of Father being dead was something that… he couldn’t even begin to imagine it. To have father gone from this world… no, it was unbelievable. “No. No. That’s… not possible.”
“I’m afraid it is,” Father said gently.
“How?”
“King Robert died. A ‘hunting accident’. Prince Joffrey became king. But he’s an unstable, proud, stuck-up little piece of shit.” Robb spat the last words harshly. Then he looked at Father, who nodded slightly. “And he’s not King Robert’s son. He’s mad because his true father is his own uncle, the Kingslayer.”
Brother and sister. The words rolled through his mind and he felt nauseous. Just like the Targaryens.
“If Prince Joffrey’s real father is the Kingslayer then… oh. You found out about this Father?”
“Apparently I did. And I died because of it. Betrayed, from what Robb said.”
He thought about this. “Then Robb must have called the Banners to avenge you,” he said softly. “I hope that I was at your side.”
“No,” Robb said sadly and shock roiled through him again. “You weren’t.”
“What? Why? What would have stopped me from doing that?”
“You joined the Night’s Watch. You were on the Wall when it happened. Your oath to take the Black took precedence.”
He stood there, feeling stunned. Well, perhaps it would be fairer to say even more stunned than before. “I was on the Wall?”
“From what I heard you were doing well. We didn’t get much news, but from what we heard… well, you saved the Lord Commander’s life when he was attacked by a wight.”
He shivered a little. The very thought of wights even now made him uneasy. “I… I don’t know what to say. I should have been with you. I’m sorry, I should have-”
“Don’t talk rot!” Robb broke in. “You were defending the North on the Wall. And if you had been with me then it would have meant that we would both have died at the Twins.”
A silence fell as he winced and absorbed this. “Did you die in battle?”
“No. I was betrayed.”
“By who?”
“People who had been influenced by Tywin Lannister.”
“Which people? Who were they??”
“The Freys. But it was Roose Bolton who wielded the knife.”
He went very cold and still. “The same man who is inside our walls?”
“Yes,” Father said heavily. “And you cannot kill a man for something he has not done yet. We need the Boltons. We need every House in the North.”
“But he killed Robb!”
“In a future that has not happened! In a future where I was not there to advise him about what Roose Bolton can be like! Jon, I know how angry you must be. I was angry too. But we have already changed things. In the future that Robb remembers Domeric Bolton was dead by now, instead of being betrothed to Sansa.”
This shocked him. “Dead? How?”
“Poison we suspect. And perhaps at the hand of his now dead half-brother.”
“Ramsey Snow…” Jon breathed. He rubbed his forehead. He had a lot to think about. “This is… this…”
“I know that it’s a great deal to take in,” said Father. “But you needed to know. The only others who know so far are Lady Stark, Luwin and Theon Greyjoy.”
And that hurt. “Theon? Why does he know?”
“Because he was touched by the Old Gods too. And because in the world that will not happen the Ironborn attacked the North. Theon did not understand the power that his own father had over him. Theon tried to face both ways but was forced into obedience by his father. He took Winterfell but then became a prisoner of the Boltons. Who… cut bits off him.”
More shock. And then fury and nausea combined. “He took Winterfell?”
“And was part flayed for his crimes by the Boltons,” Robb said with a wince. “Brother, you cannot be angry with Theon. He is already a different man.”
He sighed. “Gods… so much to think about.”
“Aye,” Father said quietly. “And now it’s your turn. Robb, there is something that you do not know about Jon. Who his mother was for a start.”
Robb eyed Father. “I did wonder. Not that it matters. Jon’s my brother.”
Father’s nostrils flared for a moment. “No, he’s your cousin.”
Robb stared at him. “What?”
“He’s your cousin. His mother is buried here in Winterfell. She was your aunt Lyanna. I am not his father.”
This seemed to utterly stun Robb, who gaped at first Father and then Jon and then back to Father. “But… I don’t understand. Why would you have people think that he was your…. son…” And then his eyes widened. “You brought Aunt Lyanna’s bones back from Dorne. Where the remains of the Kingsguard had been guarding her… and you brought Jon back then. Then his father was Rhaegar Targaryen.”
“Yes,” Father said curtly. “And that was a secret known only to your mother and I. I told Jon a few weeks back. Now you know it too. You must keep it secret. Because if the King discovers that a child of Rhaegar Targaryen lives then that child is in mortal danger.”
Robb pulled a face. “But the King loved Aunt Lyanna! Would he really kill her child?”
“You did not see him after he was presented with the bodies of Jon’s half-siblings in King’s Landing. He laughed. I could not take the chance. I told everyone that he was of my blood. I did not lie. But it was not the whole truth.”
From the way that Robb frowned Jon could tell that a number of pieces were falling into place. “So that’s why Mother’s been warmer to you of late.”
“Aye.” Jon looked at the floor. “I hope that you do not feel any less of me, now that you know the truth,” he said in a voice that wobbled a bit more than he wanted it to. “I want nothing more than to be-”
He never finished the sentence, because all of a sudden Robb had him in a bearhug that would have impressed the GreatJon. “Don’t be a bloody fool,” Robb muttered in his ear. “You are my brother. You have always been my brother. You will always be my brother. You’re a Stark. You’ll always be a Stark. You’re part of the pack. Winter’s coming and I can’t think of a better person to have by my side than my brother.”
Jon closed his eyes and smiled as he felt that hug. When he opened his eyes again he saw the smile on the face of Father to one side. And then he knew that what he had feared, an estrangement from Robb because of the truth about his heritage, would not come to pass. And just for a moment he wanted to cry.
After a long moment Robb broke the bearhug and then slapped Jon on the shoulders with both hands. “Right then. Some ale?”
Not a bad idea. “Some ale.”
Bronn
This Lord business could be very odd at times, he thought as he sat on the rock and cast the hook of his fishing rod carefully into the river. He’d found this place on his third day of being Lord Foxhold. The river held trout. His river. His trout. He pulled gently on the line, let it out again and then peered up at the sun. Oh yes. A lovely day and some fishing. It didn’t get better than this.
Of course some people didn’t like the fact that he was Lord Foxhold. The names confused him at times – Bronn Cassley, Lord Foxhold. Mind you, the last man to hold the title had been called Cawlish. He shrugged internally. One of his neighbours was one Lord Derkin, a younger man with a large nose and next to no chin. Oh and a raging snob. He’d been horrified by the fact that the new Lord Foxhold was not nobly born and had curtailed his one visit quite sharply.
On the other hand his other neighbour, Lord Flinters, seemed to approve of him. The older man had left a few hours before and had been a fount of good advice. “All nobles were smallfolk originally,” he’d muttered to him in his solar over a cup of wine each. “And anyone who says different is an idiot. There are lords alive now whose grandparents or great-grandparents were sellswords, or merchants or whatever. Look at the Riverlands – the Tullys were originally lesser lords before Aegon arrived, whilst in the Reach the Tyrells were stewards to the Gardener Kings!
“No, lords come and go. It’s what you do that counts. Old Jordy Cawlish was a good man, but his wife was never able to give him children. He loved her dearly. And now the Cawlish line is gone.”
Bronn had sipped his own wine. “Not entirely gone,” he had replied shrewdly, causing the older man to peer at him quizzically. “I saw the likeness of my predecessor on his tomb. Bore a rather striking likeness to my Steward, Ursula Stone.”
Lord Flinters had grunted with approval. “You noticed that did you? It was the one time that he strayed. He was a good man, as I said. He regretted hurting his wife – she found out, he was terrible at keeping a secret – but he loved his bastard daughter. Kept her close and taught her well. But he could never bring himself to get her legitimised. A shame. I think he wanted to, in his last days, but by then… it was too late.”
A shadow flitted to one side in the water and he gently pulled the lure to one side slightly. He had to admit that Ursula Stone was a fine Steward. She knew the Foxhold backwards and forwards and she knew the land like the back of her hand. The only problem was that she seemed to loathe his very existence. Which was fair enough. If he’d been in her place then he would have loathed him as well. It just made life a bit, well, awkward.
He sighed. That wasn’t the only thing that was awkward. This news about Lord Arryn’s wounding and the disappearance of his wife… well, it made him uneasy.
He tilted his head to one side. All of a sudden he could hear horses off to one side. Fast horses, being driven hard. And in a team. He looked to one side. Yes, there was dust being kicked up by something on the road that was just on the other side of those trees. He looked back at his lure. It was nothing to do with him.
But when the carriage emerged, being pulled by a lathered team of horses he did look over. The three men at the front and on top of the carriage were looking about wildly and when one of them saw him he waved furiously. “Ho there!”
He sighed and looked at them. “Can I help you?”
“Where are we?”
“Don’t you know?”
“We were in a hurry and got turned around. We are to the North of Saltpans are we not?”
“Aye. This is Foxhold.”
The man looked at his companions with what seemed to be confusion. “Foxhold?” he called back at Bronn. “Is there a Maester here?”
“Aye, there is,” Bronn shouted back as he reluctantly reeled in his lure and then stood up. “What’s amiss?”
“We… we have a sick woman here,” the first man replied. “She needs a Maester. Is there a ford nearby or a bridge?”
He peered down the line of the river. “There’s a bridge to the Foxhold about a mile that way. Of course you’ll need Lord Foxhold’s permission to get into it. The Foxhold that is.”
The two men stared at him and then at each other. “And where is he?”
“Here. I am Lord Foxhold.”
The men peered at him, then at each other and then back at him. Well, he was wearing an old pair of breeches, scuffed boots and a shirt with the sleeves rolled up, his usual fishing attire, but he didn’t look that bad did he?
“You’re Lord Foxhold?”
“I am.”
“Er-” But whatever the man had been about to say was lost as someone within the carriage screamed something. Whatever it was, it was totally incoherent and made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. What was going on?
“I think whoever that is does need a Maester. Swing along the river and you’ll soon see the bridge.” He peered at the rise behind him and the tree where the roan he’d taken from the stables was tethered with a feedbag over its nose. “I’ll meet you there.” Something was niggling at him, some feeling that something was very wrong here.
A man on a horse could always beat a team, pulling a carriage, especially as he could ride across the bend in the river when they had to follow the curve. By the time they reached the bridge his curiosity had been well and truly piqued by the livery that the men were wearing. They looked like Valemen – and from House Arryn.
And the last news from King’s Landing had all been of woe for that house, with the Hand of the King injured and his wife missing. So who were these people? And who was the woman?
As they road to the Foxhold he looked at the sweating man who was urging the tired horses on. “So, who is this lady?”
The man looked at him almost fearfully. “Lady…. Lady Barnley. On her way to, er, the North. To see her son.”
Bronn did not stare at the man, nor did he sigh and shake his head. Whoever he was he had no idea how to lie. “Oh aye,” he said instead. “Lady Barnley. Fair enough.” And then he caught a whiff of something. It was coming from the closed carriage and it hinted at corruption. Just a whiff, but he had smelt it before. Whoever was in the carriage was injured – badly enough that a wound was tainted. It explained the earlier incoherent scream.
He nudged his horse on ahead and as they approached the gates of the Foxhold he waved at the guards. “Get the Maester! Get Haster!” Yes, it was still an unfortunate name, but he had to admit that the young man knew his bloody business.
If there was one thing that made him realise how well organised the Foxhold was as a result of his bloody-minded steward’s work, it was the way that his people (and yes, it was still taking him almost by surprise when he realised that they were his people) reacted with such speed and care. As the carriage came to a stop then ostlers and grooms came out to care to the exhausted horses, whilst others locked the wheels. He could see Haster hurrying down the steps from his chambers, whilst Ursula Stone, her face as flinty as ever, was also approaching.
One of the men on the carriage jumped down and went to the door. Looking at Bronn out of the corner of his eye for a long moment he finally opened it. Inside Bronn could see two figures, both women. One was large and slumped across the seat, whilst the other was holding what looked like a wet cloth to her forehead. The second looked up at the door as it opened and Bronn could see at a glance that she was desperately worried. He was worried too. The smell was stronger in here.
“Lady Barnley, I presume?” Bronn asked, and was rewarded by a confused look from the woman with the wet cloth.
And then Haster was next to him. At the sight of the Maester the woman started to babble about how her Ladyship had been injured and had a corrupted wound in her arm and how they had tried to treat it. Haster did not seem to be listening. Instead he was inspecting the comatose woman with an air of deepening concern.
“My Lord,” Haster said eventually, “We need to get her indoors at once. I need a litter for the Lady, a clean table, sheets on it, my instruments and…” he sniffed the air and turned, if anything, even paler. “A brazier.”
Bronn nodded and then relayed the orders back to Ursula Stone, who was now at his side. As people started to run about and a small party ran up with a litter. As the woman was transferred to it she stirred feverishly – and then she seemed to awaken for a moment. She looked straight at Bronn and a single, oddly hopeful, word dribbled from her lips. “P….Petyr?” And then she was unconscious again.
As they disappeared into the main keep with her Bronn followed, thinking furiously, before pulling his Steward to one side by the door. Ursula Stone looked mulish at the interruption, but also curious.
“I want guards keeping an eye on them at all times,” he said in a low voice. “They say that she’s Lady Barnley, but if that’s her real name then I’ll eat my own foot. They’re lying. And I think I know why. They’re Valemen – House Arryn I suspect.”
She froze at this but then seemed to think about it very hard indeed, before stealing an eye at the carriage. “Ah.”
“Ah indeed. If what I suspect is true then we’ll need to send a raven to King’s Landing to say that we’ve found the missing Lady Lysa Arryn.”
At this point Haster ran out, obviously looking for them both. “My Lord!”
“Quietly Haster, quietly. What news?”
“It’s bad my Lord. She has a corrupted wound in her arm – and it’s bad. There are red lines up her arm.”
Bronn winced. “Can you save her arm?”
“I will do my best, but I suspect not. It may be that even if the arm comes off I may not be able to save her my Lord. I will know more soon. But also… her name-”
“Is Lady Arryn, I know. Do your best Maester. We will send a raven. But try and keep her alive.”
Gendry
It was his first time on a ship and so far he wasn’t enjoying it much. In fact he wasn’t enjoying anything much these days. A month ago he’d been apprentice to Master Mott and he knew what his future held – an anvil. Maybe a wife someday. And then the Hand of the King had appeared, with Lord Stannis bloody Baratheon, and everything had changed. He’d always wondered who his Da was. Well, now he knew. The King. His Grace the fucking King. The moment he found out, he’d damn near shit himself.
And now he was here, on this ship, in a new set of clothes, with a bag of gold coins and a Warhammer. The clothes had been given to him by the man who had sent him to the ship, Ser Davos Seaworth, a man that he had heard good things about.
And the gold and the Warhammer… well the King had given him those. He’d arrived at dawn, the day that he’d sailed, looking slightly haunted and had inspected a bleary-eyed Gendry carefully. “Gods,” the King had said, “The more I look at you the more I see my father. And the more I wonder which God cursed me with Joffrey.” And then he’d given him the gold and the Warhammer. “Thought about this a lot,” the King had said quietly. “Not much use giving you a sword if you can’t use it and the fact that you’re my bastard son means that you might have to defend yourself. So take one of my hammers. You’re used to them and it shouldn’t take you long to train yourself, so to speak. I’ve sent word to have you trained.”
He’d stared at the Warhammer, seen the quality of it and made a noise of protest, only to get a wave of the hand from the King. “Bah, I’ve got a dozen of the things left from when I was growing up. I had that one when I was your age, before getting a heavier one. It’ll do for you. It’s not much. I wish I could do more and perhaps I can one day. But I’m going to war and I haven’t much time. I sail for the North in three days. Be well, lad. And don’t trust anyone who says he’s a Lannister. They’ll have no love for you.” And then he had gone.
So now here he was on this damn ship, discovering the joys of seasickness, much to the disgust of the Captain, a crusty old Stormlander called Hedrick. Especially after throwing up on the man’s boots.
The ship swooped downwards into another trough in the water and he swallowed and tried to stop another dry heave. Wonder of wonders he succeeded, mostly because there was nothing left in him to bring up. At first he’d asked if they’d sailed into a dreadful storm, only to be told it was ‘a bit choppy today’, which has made him wonder what a real storm was like.
That had been two days before. He now knew exactly what a storm was like. He also knew what it was like to be so miserable that you wished you were dead.
The ship dipped sickeningly again and then rolled and he stared at the wall ahead and held his breath for a moment. Yes, that worked and he tried, desperately, to think of something – anything – other than his stomach.
It was then that someone pounded on the door, before opening it. A small man in drenched oilskins stood there, panting. “Cap’n needs to see you - he’s at wheel,” he said in a strong Stormlands accent as he threw another set of oilskins at him. “Needs t’ see ye now.”
Gendry stared at the man. “But there’s a storm out - *hork* - there.”
The other man scowled. “And there’ll be a bloody storm in here if you don’t go to him!”
He went. It wasn’t easy. The ship was pitching and rolling and he knew that he didn’t have sea legs. Twice he almost fell and that was before he got onto deck. And when he did get there… it was bedlam. The wind was howling and the deck was wet from the waves that surged by. The cable things that held the masts up were thrumming as the wind vibrated them. And the sky… black clouds roiled by, bringing with them something that was more than drizzle but less than steady rain.
Even with the oilskins he was soaked by the time he got to the wheel. The Captain was standing next to it, by two men who were wrestling with the wheel itself, and all three were looking at the mainmast worriedly. As he approached the Captain he could see that he was holding a piece of metal.
“You’re a blacksmith aren’t you?” The Captain bellowed at him as he got close.
“Aye!” He bellowed back.
“Take a look at this!” And the piece of metal was thrust at him. He stared at it and then at the Captain and then back at the metal. It looked like a bracket or some kind of fitting.
“What?”
“Look at it! You know metal, don’t you?”
“Aye?”
“Is it any good?”
He stared at it and then brought it close to his face. Then he braced himself against the nearest bit of wood, pulled out a knife and then scraped at it, just in front of his eyes. “No,” he finally bellowed. “It’s bad. Poorly cast – quenched wrongly and brittle.”
The Captain stared back at the mast and then let loose a string of fascinating swear words and curses that went on for some time without somehow repeating himself. He finally finished with a curse on all shitty Dornish fucking chandlers.
“It fell off one of the masts earlier,” he shouted at Gendry. “I had new ironworks fitted a month ago, in Dorn. If I ever see that smooth-talking bastard again, I’ll gut him with the bluntest spoon I have.”
Gendry thought about that and then winced. It was at this point that he made the connection. “Wait – how many fittings are like this one?”
“Too many for me to feel happy about being at sea in a storm. Especially a storm like this one. And-”
The Captain never finished whatever he had been about to say, because all of a sudden there was a horrible creaking noise, like a giant post being bent by a pair of giant hands, and then all of a sudden the tallest mast on the ship was topping to one side, breaking cables as it fell and bringing the sail that had been on it down as it fell. The whole mass fell with a rumble and Gendry heard muffled screams from the men who were caught up in it. Another cable parted as it failed under the stress, with the free end smashing into a man and in an instant he was gone, his pale surprised face arcing backwards as he was knocked into the sea.
“Axes,” Captain Hedrick bellowed desperately. “Axes! Cut the remaining cables, get it free before the mast acts as an anchor and we broach! Axes!”
Total chaos everywhere followed, the Captain ran forwards, other men appeared, struggling desperately withy the wreckage. Gendry stared at it all – and then he too ran towards the wreckage. A man appeared from nowhere, a thin stringy slip of a man, and he flailed at a nearby cable with the axe he was carrying – with no real effect.
“Here!” Someone threw an axe at Gendry and he caught it without thinking about it, before stepping up to the cable. He hefted it in two hands, brought it up and chopped down with all his might. The axe jarred in his hands at the impact, but half the ropes in the cable had parted at his blow and the next one did the job, the ends flying apart.
“Stand clear!” Gendry bellowed as he stepped up to the next cable, that disappearing face in his mind, and then he chopped again with everything he had. This one was thinner and took just one blow to part it, but the one after that was a monster. One blow hardly shook it and he gritted his teeth, wiped the rain from his eyes and then chopped again and again. The cable groaned as it weakened and he paled a little. “Stand clear of this one when it goes!” Gendry shouted and was rewarded by cries of acknowledgement to either side. It was good that they did, because his next blow severed it and the ends whipped out cruelly at a shocking speed.
On to the next one, and the next and then the final one in front of him. As the last one parted then the mass of rope and timber shifted a little – and then it was gone, pulled over the side. Someone screamed as it went, but Gendry could see that one of the trapped men had been freed and was being pulled away by a shipmate.
The ship staggered as the weight went and then he heard the Captain shouting orders at the top of his lungs, something about bending on another sail once the spare spar was jury rigged, about steering due East and about getting another hand on the wheel. After a moment he realised that the last thing meant him.
“You’ve got some muscles on you lad, replace Dirk on the wheel – the shorter one. Relax, you’re not there to steer the ship, you’re there to hold the ship to whatever course Harnley, the other one, sets.”
He nodded, did as he was told – and was astonished at the force it took to keep the wheel steady. The hour that followed was torture, a constant battle to keep the jerking wheel steady as the wind howled around him and sheets of rain hurtled down. Various crew members ran around like madmen, pulling on ropes and as he watched a very short new mast was raised and lashed to the stump of the old one.
As the new sail was raised and sheeted into place he felt a hand on his shoulder The Captain, with another two men next to him who relieved them both. He let go of the wheel with a barely suppressed groan of relief and then staggered back down to his cabin, where he pulled the sodden oilskins off. He was looking at the rest of his dripping clothing with distaste – at which point the door was banged on again. “Come!”
The Captain entered quickly and peered at him. “Well done today lad,” he said tiredly. “If you hadn’t cut those cables when you did… well, we might have broached and that would have been the end of us. But with a mast gone we have to seek port. We’re headed for Dragonstone. I just thought you should know. Try and eat something, we’re not out of this yet. I lost five men today, with ten more wounded. That makes me light on crew. Get some rest. You’ll be working out a part of your passage.”
Ned
Preparing to ride to the Wall was no easy thing when you were the Warden of the North. Ned leant back in his chair and then looked at the map in his Solar, before looking wryly at the stack of letters and messages that had to be read, evaluated and then replied to. There was a lot that had to be arranged first. Cat was obviously staying in Winterfell, to advise Bran as the Stark in Winterfell. Besides, there was no way that he was going to risk a pregnant woman on the road to Castle Black.
Robb was going with him, as he had planned. It was time that the lad saw the Wall, especially as they both now knew how important it was for the North now. The lives of everyone in the North, perhaps everyone in Westeros, now rested on the Wall.
He sighed and then looked at the list of things that Cat would have to help Bran with. And then he winced a little. Bran had been left in charge of Winterfell in that terrible future that would not now come to pass. From what Robb had heard, Bran had died here, crippled and betrayed. Well, Theon wouldn’t do that this time. He was a changed man. He was still in two minds about taking Theon to the Wall. It would help to have the Ironborn alerted – but would Balon Greyjoy listen? Even to his own son?
He stood up and walked over to the door, which was open. As he strode through it he could see young Jojen Reed approaching and he frowned a little. “Jojen. Were you looking for me?”
“Yes, Lord Stark,” the boy said almost formally. “May I talk with you in private?”
“You may,” he sighed and led him to his Solar, closing the door behind him and then gesturing at a chair. “Now,” he said as he sat down himself, “What’s all this about?”
“Dreams, Lord Stark.”
He paused at this. Jojen hadn’t reported any new dreams since arriving in Winterfell with his father and sister. “You’re dreaming again? Special dreams?”
The lad nodded sombrely. He seemed to do everything sombrely these days, as if he held not an ounce of frivolity. “Aye Lord Stark.” He seemed to collect his thoughts for a moment and then he spoke again: “I dreamt of a hundred cages, filled with parts of men that still moved. I dreamt of a great mountain of ice, filled with a terrible hate and being summoned by a terrible evil. I dreamt of a walking dead man who was filled with light but who needed help with one last task. And I dreamt of a shooting star from the South, whose heart was from the North.”
Ned absorbed all of this and then nodded slowly. “Did you see any faces in your dreams?”
“Some. The man who was dead, but was filled with light… he looked like some of the statues that are in the crypts here.”
That was a surprise. “A Stark?” He considered this for a moment. “Not every Stark is buried here, despite the efforts of those who saw them fall in battle. But this filled with light business… a walking dead man? A wight, but not turned all the way? Why? How?”
“I know not, Lord Stark.”
Ned nodded slowly. “Thank you for telling me about this. I will think on it a lot. I was going to pass word for you anyway. You know that your father is going to Castle Black with me?”
“Aye, Lord Stark.”
“My son Bran will be the Stark in Winterfell when we are gone. If you see any other visions you are to tell him at once. Him and my wife. Two other things. When you first came here to Winterfell and you saw my direwolf you started to say a name. Did you already know what I’ll name her?”
There was a pause and then the lad nodded reluctantly. “Aye, my Lord.”
“I have been thinking about a name for her a lot of late. I was thinking… Frostfyre.”
For a moment a look of smiling relief flashed over Jojen’s face. Then it faded. “A good name for her my Lord.”
He smiled at the lad. Then he sighed. “As for the other - can I ask you a question, Jojen Reed?”
“Of course Lord Stark.”
“You said that you could once see the moment of your death – the manner of it?”
The boy paled. “Aye.”
“May I ask how you died, before?”
Jojen looked down, still very pale – and then he looked Ned in the eye. “I was killed by wights, Lord Stark. Under a great Weirwood tree, beyond the wall. I was trying to protect your son Bran, who could no longer walk after losing the use of his legs in a fall. Bran was our last hope. He was the replacement for the Three-Eyed Crow, Brynden Rivers, who still lives there now, entwined in the tree itself.”
Ned felt himself stiffen from head to toe with shock. “Wait… what? How could Bran be North of the Wall? I thought that he died in Winterfell in that other future?”
But Jojen was shaking his head. “The Crypt. I remember dreaming once of hiding there, with my sister and Bran – and Rickon too, who was with some girl I have not seen here. The sea had come to Winterfell, but we hid and took a tunnel out of it. That’s all I remember. But the Tree, where I died, I remember that well. Until it changed. Something happened. You speak of another future – yes, there was one once. That’s why my dreams have changed of late. The Old Gods did something.”
If this was true…. That meant that Theon hadn’t murdered Bran and Rickon. So what had really happened? The fact that Bran had been crippled in both the vision and the future that Robb remembered meant that it all sounded true, or at least that one followed the other.
No. He forced his mind away from that terrible vision, looked Jojen in the eye and then nodded, before placing a hand on his shoulder. “Yes. The Old Gods touched my son. Jojen – you cannot tell anyone about this. Few would understand.”
Jojen Reed stared at him gravely, but then nodded again. “I know, my Lord,” he said hoarsely as he stood up. “I know. May I go by your leave?”
“Aye,” Ned said quietly. “You can go.”
As the boy slipped out Ned thought long and hard about what he had just heard. Certain pieces were falling into place. In that first vision, the one that he had had in the Godswood all those weeks ago, he remembered hearing a voice, the voice of an old man, talking bitterly about why things had changed, just as he had his replacement. Had that been this Three-Eyed Crow? And he remembered his father talking about the tales surrounding Brynden Rivers. Was that not Lord Bloodraven? An odd man, a Targaryen bastard who had lost an eye in battle and who had once been Hand of the King, before becoming Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch –but then vanished one day beyond the Wall almost fifty years ago. Where had he gone to? What had he done? What role did this Three-Eyed Crow play in all of this?
His eyes narrowed a little. Wait… Father had once said that there had been a rumour that Brynden Rivers had been a sorcerer or something. He’d used magic, anyway. And…. why, if he still lived then he was far, far older than any man could be! Entwined in the tree as well…. What did that mean?
Magic. It all came down to magic and he just didn’t know enough about it. So much depended on it, but so little was known. Well, here at least. His ancestors must have known – how else could Bran the Builder have built all that he had? The Wall, Winterfell, and the other places that he was at least linked to. Storm’s End. The Hightower at Oldtown. All amazing feats.
And now here he was, desperately trying to piece together fragments, scraps of information left by his ancestors. He hoped that it would be enough. What if it wasn’t though? He closed his eyes and sighed. If he started to second-guess himself then he’d run the risk of going raving mad. No. He couldn’t afford to do that.
He stood up and left his Solar. Perhaps a walk to the Godswood to clear his head? As he passed down the corridor he looked out of one of the windows. Off to one side he could see Domeric Bolton giving young Robert another riding lesson. The boy was a fast learner, according to Domeric, and judging by the way that he was sitting in the saddle he was improving by the day.
As he padded down the stairs to the main courtyard he saw Frostfyre sitting to one side, watching as Grey Wind and Ghost play-fought as their master sparred with practice swords. He walked over to her and as he approached she turned and looked at him, her eyes intent. “I named you today,” he muttered to her and he reached out and slowly laid a hand on her neck. “Frostfyre. What do you think?”
The direwolf tilted her head to one side and then huffed once, as if in acknowledgement. He wondered what direwolves thought about names and naming conventions. What did they call themselves? He sighed again.
A horn sounded beyond the walls of Winterfell and he frowned at the gates. Men were peering out at the road, before shouting something down and after a while Jory Cassel strode up to him, looking a little bemused. “A party approaches, my Lord. One bears… well, the Baratheon banner with colours reversed.”
His eyebrows flew up for a moment. Oh. Robert had obviously been busy. A bold choice, that. “Admit them at once.”
He watched as the little party of no more than a dozen men entered, baulked a little at the sight of the direwolf and then came forwards. Some bore Baratheon livery, whilst their leader, a totally bald man, bore a tabard of brown, with white feathers, or quills. He blinked. “Cortney Penrose! I haven’t see your face since Pyke!”
“Aye, my Lord. We shared that barrel of ale together after the end of the siege, along with the others.” He dismounted and then bowed formally, before gesturing to a smaller figure on the next horse, who was wearing a hooded cloak. “Lord Eddard Stark, I have the honour to present to you my ward, Edric Storm.”
The boy pulled his hood down and then nodded formally in his saddle at Ned. “I am honoured to meet you Lord Stark. My father told me many stories about you in our passage from Storm’s End to Dragonstone.” Then he grinned in such a way that made him look very like his father. “He did not say that you had a direwolf?!?”
Ned smiled a little. Oh, all of a sudden he had such memories flowing through his head. “Welcome to Winterfell. Ser Cortney, Edric, word of your passing was sent from White Harbour by Lord Manderly. You have made good time. Now – let us get you settled in. There is much we need to discuss.”
Brynden
Some would probably call the Isle of Faces a very restful place, he thought as he sat grumpily on the bench and stared at the white trees on the other side of the clearing. He wouldn’t. He had far too much to think about, starting with, well, the entire damn place.
He’d heard the legends and stories about this place. He knew that Addam Velaryon had come here, on his dragon, to consult with the Green Men. No-one had ever known what he had asked. Or been told, as Velaryon had been killed not too long afterwards. Had other kings come here? If they had then history was silent on the matter.
Brienne of Tarth sat on the other side of the bench. Her eyes were closed and she seemed to be savouring the sun on her face. He wondered about what had brought her here. Did she feel that other pull now? That pull, that drive, to be on the road to Winterfell.
If only they knew what was going on. They hadn’t been told much, just to wait – whilst the Green Men (who interestingly enough included women) went about their increasingly busy business. And they were very busy indeed. Many of the older ones seemed to be busy teaching the younger ones about… well, trees. Lots and lots of trees. And how to plant them, tender to them and then leave them to their own devices. He had his own suspicions about what they were planning.
That said, he didn’t like waiting. Not with lunatics like the Faith Militant, or the seemingly reborn elements of it, out there. He hoped that Robar Glovett was well, he and his people. The last thing he wanted to go back and then wade through the blood of hundreds of demented smallfolk in the name of vengeance.
“You’re brooding again.”
Brienne of Tarth had a nasty habit of speaking the truth very bluntly. He sighed a little. “Yes. We still don’t know why we’re here and what’s going on. And I feel a different pull now.”
“To Winterfell?”
“Yes.” And it was a strong one.
“I feel it too.”
He nodded. “I wish I could do something to protect that village as well. You saw the eyes on that mad Septon.”
“I did.”
Another pause. Just as he was about to speak again he heard boots scuff to one side and looked to his right to see one of the younger Green Men approach, his hood up with the antlers sticking out to each side. “You are both summoned to the Green Man.”
They both stood, but Brynden frowned as he came upright. “The Green Man? I thought that you were all Green Men?”
A slight smile played around the lips of the other man. “He leads us, so to speak. He sees further than any of us that are South of the Wall.”
That was oddly phrased. “And North of the Wall?”
“That is something for later. Follow me please.” And off he strode, almost loping away like a man who was used to long walks measured with long strides. Brynden looked at Brienne, shrugged and then followed.
The Green Man led them into one of the few areas that he had only briefly seen before, one of the older parts of the encampment. The buildings were more ancient here, the wood had moss on it in places, the paths seemed more sunken, the stone more weathered. And at the far end was a stone building that seemed older and more ancient than anything he had ever seen. The Green Man led them to it, knocked three times on the closed door and then opened it and escorted them in.
There was a hall in the building, with a fireplace that had a huge stone for a hearth and an even bigger one for the back of the hearth. There might have been the remains of something carved on it, but it was hard to tell because of the fire. And in front of the fire there was an old man. A very old man, with what showed of his face being deeply wrinkled. He was hunched, which hid the fact that he had once been very tall, and he was wearing a cloak of the deepest green that he had ever seen. His hood was pulled down to almost the lines of his eyes and the antlers that were attached to it looked ancient. As they approached the man caught sight of them and pulled his hands back from where he had been warming them in front of the fire – but not before Brynden caught sight of what looked like terrible burns on one of them.
“Ser Brynden Tully and Brienne of Tarth.” Old as the man must have been, there was still strength in that voice. Brynden frowned slightly. That voice seemed vaguely familiar. “I apologise for not meeting you earlier, but I was called away to speak with… well, we’ll get to that later. Some friends, shall we say. You must have many questions.”
“We have,” Brynden rumbled, still fighting that sense that had met this man once, many years ago, or at least seen him. “As we were both called here. We’d like to know why.”
A small smile flashed across the old man’s face. “Ah,” he said after a long moment. “I could tell you, but you wouldn’t believe me. I know that you have both heard the Call and that therefore you have the blood of the First Men within you, in some measure. As to why you are here on the Isle of Faces… well, that’s for you to discover. And no, Ser Brynden, I am not speaking in riddles. I am saying that you will find out today.”
An old and rather gnarled hand pointed to the North. “There’s a Heart Tree about a mile that way in the forest. There’s a path that will lead you straight to it – this time at least. The tree itself is… quite large. You’ll find a mortar and pestle by the face carving. Divide the contents in half and then eat it. Return here… afterwards.”
Brynden stared at the old man and then at Brienne and then back at the old man. As he opened his mouth to ask what he was talking about the old hand waved them away. “Shoo.”
He went. No, they went, she looking as baffled as he felt. The younger Green Man led them out of the building and to a small path that seemed to twist and turn as he looked at it. Taking a deep breath he led the way. The path did indeed twist and turn, but at least there were no paths that led off it – just this small thin trail. He peered at the ground as they went and frowned a little. What had created it? He couldn’t see any hoofprints, or footprints.
Well, there was one footprint. But the number of toes looked… wrong.
After about a mile the path widened a little and he beheld something that made him pause long enough to have Brienne almost walk into him. Then she saw the same thing that he did. The tree. The huge Weirwood Tree. It looked impossibly old but also massively strong.
“That… that tree is so big that… that we should have seen it from outside the island,” Brienne muttered in shock. “Why didn’t we?”
Magic. No-one said it out loud, not that he could sense it, but the word still pealed in his mind, like a bell.
“Well,” he said, deeply shaken, “Let’s be about this.”
He saw the mortar and pestle as they approached the face. Whoever had carved the face so many years ago had chosen a rather lopsided expression, as if between a smile and a frown. As they halted by it he reached out and picked up the container with a frown. It looked very old of itself, as if it had been carved many centuries ago – and by odd hands. Peering inside he could see that Weirwood seeds had been ground into – into a paste, and the words of Robar Glovett came to mind. “Eat the paste, he said.”
Brienne of Tarth stared at him and then also looked into the bowl. “Your friend on the mainland said to eat the paste.”
“Aye.”
“Looks revolting.”
“Aye.”
“Will you divide it up?”
“Aye.” As he did he wondered just what this would do. How could crushed seeds give anyone a reason for what they were doing here? He sighed, scooped out Brienne of Tarth’s portion into her hand, removed his own portion, exchanged an uneasy glance with her and then ate what was on his hand. It didn’t taste too revolting, but it wasn’t something that he’d recomm-
Darkness fell, and he fell with it. How long he fell for he could never work out. A heartbeat? A moment? A minute? An hour? A day? All he knew was that he fell – and as he did he heard scraps of voices.
“Riverrun! For Riverrun!” “The King in the North!” “Treachery! Woe to the Freys!” “This is my home Kingslayer. And I will defend it.” “Honour? The honour of a Lannister? Your honour is worthless, boy.” “Blackfish! The Blackfish for the Riverlands! The True Tully!”
When he finally stopped falling… well, he seemed to slow and be suspended in thin air for a moment – and then he saw stone flagstones appear under his feet. He could see statues ahead and amongst them a figure. Wait. That was Ned Stark. He was talking to an old man, but Brynden was too far away to hear them. He tried to step closer but his feet seemed to be nailed to the ground, he could not move them. He looked down at them in confusion and then up again. Ned seemed to be agitated about something – and then shocked. And then the old man he was talking to disappeared, like fog on a hot day. He stared – and then his skin crawled as he realised that all of the statues had somehow opened their eyes. Eyes filled with green fire.
Darkness fell again, and again he fell – but this time for a shorter time. When he opened his eyes again he looked around, baffled. Where was he? It was night and there was water nearby, based on the sound of the waves breaking gently nearby. Then he paused. There was a strange glow on the horizon. Oh and a fire to one side. A man was sitting by it – a man in the robes of the Green Men.
Brynden walked carefully up to the fire. He felt no heat from it. And then man seemed to see straight through him. Was this the Isle of Faces? Then he heard the sound of rowing and he turned just in time to see a small boat be run up on the shore not too far away. Two men sat in it whilst a third dressed in leather armour jumped out and walked to the fire. As he approached Brynden frowned a little. The man had the hair of a Tully, but he had never seen him before. He also looked tired, the kind of tiredness that only a lot of sleep can cure, and also dirty.
“You came then,” the man by the fire said softly. “I began to fear that you would not.”
“I came. I had to.” The other man sat down heavily on a log to one side. “Do you have any wine? I need wine.”
The Green Man reached down, pulled out a wineskin from a bag and threw it over to the other, who caught it, unstoppered it and then took a long swallow, before lowering it. “I didn’t know that stone could melt,” he muttered. “Or men, come to that.”
“Now you know better. Was it worth it?”
There was a pause as the dirty man stared into the fire. “Was it worth it? Well, he’s dead. Him and his sons. And his fucking castle still burns. He beggared the Riverlands to build it, aye and his own precious Iron Islands. All for nothing.”
Brynden felt his skin crawl again – and then he stared back at that glow in the sky. Harrenhall? Was that Harrenhall? If this was the day that it was burnt by Balerion… then this had to be his ancestor, Edmyn Tully. He shivered for a moment.
“Did the Valyrian give you the title I mentioned?”
Another pause. “He did,” he said eventually. “He’ll proclaim it tomorrow. Lord Paramount of the Riverlands. Ambitious bastard, isn’t he? But we are well rid of Harren and his Ironborn scum.” He looked at the Green Man bleakly. “So. This will be, as you predicted, my last trip here. There will be those who will say that I should not have come here at all. What do I need to know?”
“There are three things,” the Green Man said slowly as he looked into the fire. “All are important. And they are all related to the Valyrian. Or perhaps we should just call him the Targaryen, as Valyria is no more? Gone in smoke and flame.”
“Don’t get lyrical on me now, Uncle. Three things?”
Uncle? Brynden peered at the Green Man. Tullys had once been Green Men?
“Three things. The first is the steel. He lies. He may say that the secret will be rediscovered, but it died in Valyria, at the Doom. Valyrian Steel can no longer be made.”
“Shit. I was promised a sword.”
“You’ll not get it. Second – the Targaryens were just lesser Dragonlords, not greater ones. As time goes on and proud idiots fail to pass on everything to their sons, well – dragonlore will fade. Best keep that one to yourself. Bury it deep and whisper it to your sons.”
Edwyn Tully stared at his uncle. “I thought that the dragons were here to usher in a new age.”
“For a time. It’s a pity – they’re needed. There will come a time, when…” And for a second the eyes of the Green Man darted to Brynden, which shocked him deeply. “When fish are black here on this isle, they will be needed again.”
His ancestor took another long pull on the wineskin. “Uncle, that makes no sense.”
“Worry not. Just… be aware that the dragons will not always last.”
“Very well. And the third thing?”
“Something else was lost at the Doom. Knowledge of a different kind. The Valyrians liked to wed brother to sister. Do that here in Westeros and after a generation or two you have deformed idiots for offspring. The Valyrians had an answer to that.” He looked away and winced. “The Targaryens will see that secret spark and gutter and die. Tullys of the future must not trust them.”
Edwyn Tully stared at the other man. “Are you saying that they will go mad?”
“Eventually. I have seen it. Be cautious. And that is the third thing.”
“Uncle, you are saying that I have bent the knee to a man whose family will eventually go mad!”
“He will unite Westeros. That is needed. The visions from the Old Gods are clear on that. The Starks will bend the knee, they are too canny to do otherwise. Don’t worry about the Storm Kings – one will be reborn, after a fashion. Something is coming, Edwyn. Something… far ahead of us. We Green Men will prepare. Protect this isle, as you agreed.”
A long silence fell as the two men stared at each other – and then Edwyn Tully nodded slowly. “Very well. It is agreed. You have given me much to think on. And… you said that I will never return here.”
“You have a great task ahead of you. Harren the Black looted the Riverlands. You must restore it. You’ll be busy.”
Brynden’s ancestor stood and then passed the wineskin back. “Will… will I ever see you again?”
“No. I have seen that much.” The Green Man stood and then embraced his nephew. “Your father would be proud of you. Riverrun endures.”
“Riverrun endures. Be well, Uncle.” And then he was off, striding back to the boat and the waiting men.
Brynden watched him go. After a while he turned back to the Green Man. “Can… can you see me?”
The Green Man stood and pulled his hood up, settling the antlers in place on his head. “That’s a dangerous question,” he said. “My nephew couldn’t see you. But then he believes in the Seven, not the Old Gods, not really. What do you believe in?”
He stood there for a long moment. “I… never thought about it.”
“Time you should then, Blackfish. Time you should. You may not be sure about the Old Gods, but let me tell you something – they believe in you. Why else are you here?” And for a moment his eyes blazed with red fire.
Brynden felt his eyes widen as he stumbled back – and then he was falling again. This time it was for longer – and then his feet hit the ground again. Flagstones, it felt like, but everything around him was black.
Greetings Blackfish, said a voice that he felt rather than heard. We have watched you for some time.
He looked about into the darkness wildly. “Who are you? The Old Gods?”
There are those who call us that. We are simply those that ARE. Those that remain. We have long watched. It’s time to do more than that now.
He shivered. “Did you send the Call out? Was that your work?”
Nay, that was done by the Wolfsblood. The Starks as you would call them. We gave them the means to do it, long ago. After the First Long Night and the Alliance of Desperation. And now the Call has been sounded again. Men must listen. You must help them to listen. Otherwise doom will follow. The Others, as you call them, come again.
“The Others? They are not a myth then?”
No, never a myth. A tale the start of which has been shrouded in darkness. The… thing behind them is one of madness and hate for the living. A cautionary tale even for gods. But time destroys memory and long ago something broke free from its prison. Something able to make the dead walk.
He shivered again. “Truly? The tales of the First Men about wights-”
Are true. All of them. But men are very good at forgetting. And others at… refusing to believe. They place their own desires first. And their own hate.
The blackness lifted to reveal a hall – the Twins in fact, a place that he knew and hated. And the hall was filled with fighting men. Men in Stark and Tully livery were desperately fighting with knives against Freys armed with swords. An ambush! What was happening? He looked around wildly – and then his blood ran cold. Edmore was on the floor, his chest rising and falling but his forehead covered in blood. And…. he was there. Himself. He had killed one Frey with what looked like a spoon through the eye and was laying about him with a sword, before glancing back at the Dais, snarling and then cutting a way out of the nearest door.
He looked at the dais as well. Two red-headed bodies were lying in front of it, He froze in horror. Cat. It was Cat. And next to him… was that Robb? He looked older and wearier even in death. Bearded as well. There was a thin cold-eyed man next to him with a dripping knife – and on the dais Walder Frey was cackling with glee.
“What happened here?”
Treachery and foolishness. All for naught. They all died anyway. The Wolfsbloods are… persistent. But that is not why we show you this. This was the moment that we acted.
“Acted?”
This is a future that will not now happen. A future that we diverted. We took the mind of Robert Stark from the moment of his death and took it back through time.
He stared at the body, stunned. “To when?”
The hall faded from view and a room appeared, smaller and with a bed. And then suddenly the figure under the blankets woke with a scream, before looking about wildly. It was Robb Stark again, but younger and unbearded.
To now. Some months back. He remembers what went wrong and has been working with his father. Truths have been shown to him – to them both. They know about the Others. They sent out the Call. You will need to talk to them. They will need help.
“Help? With what?”
With those who will not listen. The First Men are awakening, but we still stand on the blade of a sword. Things can still go wrong. The hearts of men are hard to predict at times, stubbornness and stupidity can still rule at times. And this must be avoided.
Blackness fell again and when it lifted he realised that he was on the walls of Riverrun. But it was a Riverrun that was different. The air was cold and snowflakes drifted through the air. Men were working on the walls here and there, repairing damage and there was the smell of smoke in the air.
And then he saw the two figures looking out over the ramparts. Himself again, only older and infinitely wearier. He was dressed in leather armour, but had a necklace of small antlers around his neck, with a wicked-looking mace in his belt. And Robert Baratheon was next to him. The King looked older as well – and a lot thinner. Still powerful, but there was a haunted look in his eyes. He stepped up to them to see at what they were looking at and saw a small boat drifting sluggishly through the water, its way blocked now and then by chunks of ice. There was a body in it, judging by the fire that was engulfing it. A funeral boat.
“I always wondered why we burnt our dead,” the older version of him spat bitterly. “Now I know.”
“A holdover from the old days of the First Men,” the King rumbled. “A good thing. Otherwise we’d have wights in your crypts.” He sighed. “So much for going North. It would be a death sentence. I’ve lost enough men as it is – and then had to kill those who came back.” He patted his sword and Brynden started slightly. What was that thing? It was huge – and old. And so very deadly.
“A rider came,” the older him said eventually. “News from the West. It’s true. All of it.”
The King sighed. “I feared it was so. Damn that bloody man. Lannisters!” He spat the word with hate. “Fools, the lot of them. Especially Tywin. He wouldn’t believe.”
“Tyrion Lannister is no fool and he believes. He has to. He leads the last of them South. What’s left of them.”
“The Westerlands are gone. The North is besieged. Winterfell might be holding out but Ned’s last raven said that the Night’s King himself was outside the walls. And the Iron Islands… are best not talked about. Any word from anywhere else?”
“Nay. And the new Maester… well, we’ll need new ravens. Who would have thought that your old Maester would go so mad?”
“Others will come. Although the ones from the Twins… well, we know what happened there.”
Boots scuffed to one side and a tired looking young man walked towards them with a sack in one hand and bowed formally. “Your Grace. Lord Tully.” The lad looked familiar – like a younger version of the King, with a shock of black hair and very blue eyes. A bastard son perhaps. “I spotted a wight that looked familiar.” And he opened the sack and pulled out a severed head – with blue eyes that opened and closed and a mouth that also moved. Brynden stared at it in horror. A wight? Wait…
The older version of him and the King both peered at the head and then burst into laughter. “The Late Lord Frey!” The other him chuckled and then shook his head. “He begged for help in his messages. And now here he is. So much for the Freys.” He pointed to one side. “Put it down please lad. I’ll see to this one.”
The lad did as he was told and was about to move off when the King held up a hand. “Gendry?”
“Your Grace?”
The King paused for a long moment. “You’ve done me proud these past few weeks. Shown your mettle like few others. Time it was rewarded. I don’t know how long we’ve got here. I don’t know if we can break out South and survive. But whatever we do I want you at my side as my son. You’re Gendry Baratheon from this day forwards. I’ll proclaim it.”
The young man bowed his head for a long moment and then looked up with tears shining in his eyes. “Thank you your Grace. I mean – Father.”
The King laid a large hand on his shoulder and smiled at him. “Off you go lad.” As he went then the two of them looked back at the severed head. And then the older version of him pulled out the mace, hefted it thoughtfully – and then brought it down on the head of Walder Frey savagely.
And the darkness fell again.
This must be avoided. This future holds no hope. You must work against it, you and Brienne of Tarth.
“Why me? Why her?”
You are both needed. You are both… honourable in ways that many do not understand – but also clear-sighted. You see the fundamental truths that many deny. You both have your blind spots, but between you, you are one. You will need her and she will need you to keep to the proper path. The world rests on this, Brynden Tully, the Blackfish. You are needed.
He thought long and hard. “What would this make me? A Green Man?”
Something like that. The Green Men will be tending the groves again, they will have their duties. They will walk the roads and forests again, as it was before. You and Brienne of Tarth will have other duties. You must convince other men. Even men as stubborn as your nephew – and the Old Lion of Casterly Rock, who must avoid the fate that overtook him in that future we showed you, that of a stumbling wight in the blood-soaked halls of his ancestors.
He nodded slowly. “Very well. I will do this. What choice do I have?”
None.
And then pain annihilated his world as red fire enveloped him for a long instant. When he opened his eyes again he was sprawled at the foot of the tree. Brienne of Tarth was next to him – and as she opened her own eyes and groaned he saw red fire in them for an instant.
Chapter Text
Brienne
The darkness smothered her and she clawed at it for a moment. And then it lifted. She was standing at the edge of a forest, with statues in front of her. Statues of men and the odd women dressed in archaic clothing. Old armour. Furs in places. She looked about, confused. Where was this place? The statues stood on flagstones and… wait, there were others here. She could see a man with shoulder-length hair talking to an old man. And then suddenly the old man vanished like smoke in the wind. She blinked – and then she saw the green fire in the eyes of the statues. All the statues.
Stark talked to Stark. You stand in the presence of the Old Gods and the ancestors of the Starks, a voice seemed to say, a voice that she seemed to both feel and hear. The blood of the First Men is still strong on Tarth. Still strong in you. And you must be strong. As strong as you were in a future that will not come to pass.
And then the darkness took her again and she fell. When it lifted again she was standing in a tent. A figure was standing to one side with its back to her as various pieces of green armour were piled to one side. And then her breath caught as a man stepped into the tent. It was Renly Baratheon. The man who had danced with her on Tarth, the man who had treated her with politeness that few others ever had, until she met the Blackfish.
She peered at him shyly. He was a comely man, handsome. Not as tall as his brother the King and… wait. As she came to look at him she could see something in his eyes that made her pause. There was an… emptiness there. A look of a man trapped by events. She could tell by the sounds from outside the tent that something terrible was happening here, something huge. The preparations before a battle perhaps?
And the ground seemed to shake under her feet, because the other person in the tent turned around – and it was her. She was in armour as well, good armour too. She held a green breastplate in her hands and helped Renly Baratheon to don it, moving carefully with the straps.
The wind blew in through the flaps of the tent and despite herself she shivered. What was this? Why was she being shown this?
And then… something black and terrible came through the very shadows at the base of the tent. Something evil. She could sense how wrong it was even as she caught sight of it out of the corner of her eyes. She opened her mouth to call out, to warn that other version of her, who was also reacting – but it was too late. A black tendril, like smoke but somehow sharper looking than Valyrian steel, slashed out at Renly – and suddenly there was blood everywhere. It gushed from his neck to his hip and she stared in horror, before giving a wail of grief as he fell first to his knees and then onto his side, his mouth opening and closing. She wanted to fall to her knees, to weep, to help that other version of her, who was desperately trying to tend to a dying man.
“Why show me this,” she sobbed. “Why???”
To show you that magic is real. Magic is deadly. This was the work of a shadowbinder of Assai. This was magic used for evil, in a future that will not now happen. Renly Baratheon’s death was an empty one in this world, part of a tide of death that we avoided.
She looked up at this, away from the now frozen tableau of death in front of her. “This will not happen?”
No. This was a world that went wrong, a world where the Call was never sent out, a world where death marched on the Wall and no-one cared about it in the South. We acted to change this.
The scene changed again to a room in which a young man slept in a bed. He had red hair and from the vague memories she had of something her father had said once, he looked like a Tully. She found herself shaking less from shock all of a sudden and wondered just how she was seeing this. Was this like a dream? Had her ancestors had such visions?
This is Robb Stark of Winterfell. The Starks are the key to everything. King of Winter of old, their blood was used to build the spells that made the Wall. In that other future he died. Here – he lives. We brought him back in time.
The young man came awake with a shudder and a scream, his hands going to his chest – and then looking down at his bare skin in confusion, before staring around the room in total confusion. “I… was at the Twins,” he muttered. “I… I died…”
She stared at Robb Stark in awe. “You.. brought him back from the moment of his death? Then… you are indeed Gods. Did… did the Starks send out the Call? Did Robb Stark?”
His Father did. An ancient artefact owned by his ancestors did it. The Starks know the threat now, as does the North. And those with the blood of the First Men. You heard it.
She had heard it. It still rang within her. “The Others come. The Stark calls for aid. You are needed.”
Tarth awakens then. But much remains to be done. There is another future that must be avoided.
More blackness – and then she was standing at the top of a tower. There were four grim-faced figures there – and again, some other version of her was one of them. She stared at that other version of her. Her hair was a little longer, but not overly so and a thin scar marked her cheek. She wore a necklace of small antlers, but it was her eyes that had really changed. They were the eyes of someone who had seen far too much. She’d seen such eyes on the faces of veterans, those who had seen far too much.
The other three… well, judging by the runed armour one was Bronze John Royce. Another was Lord Arryn, looking old but still formidable. And the third was a black-haired, black-bearded man in dark leathers, with a nose that looked as if it had broken and then reset at some point.
Brienne looked over the ramparts and then felt herself paling. A steady stream of men and women were passing down the road to one side. Judging by the Sun they were all heading South – and they were desperate. She could see that many were gaunt with hunger and many others wounded – and that all were armed in some fashion. Even the women were carrying what looked like crude spears, with some kind of stone attached to the tips.
“This is no longer a war that can be won with the old tactics,” Lord Arryn said wearily. “The Knights of the Vale are no more. Heavy cavalry cannot charge the endless ranks of the dead. Not without being swarmed over – and adding to them. This is a war of the First Men now. First Men magic and First Men tactics. I will return to King’s Landing and send supplies. Lord Royce – this is your war now. Lord Cassley – I have paid a part of your debt, as you asked. Your service to House Arryn and Westeros remains exemplary.”
The black-haired man smiled wryly. “Thank you my Lord. If I live to see her again I doubt that she’ll ever speak to me again for having her sent away, but given what’s at stake... aye, you have my thanks.”
Lord Arryn nodded in response and then shook his head a little. “I would give all the gold in the world to see my son just for an instant.”
“Winterfell holds out, my Lord, despite all that the Night King has thrown at its walls,” that other version of her said. “And Ser Brynden is with the King in Riverrun. Hope remains, though the thread grows thin.”
“Grows thin indeed, with the Westerlands gone. Our Western flank is gone and the Martells are panicking. Well – all we can do is fight. Lord Royce – your runes could provide us with the edge we need to delay them at the very least.”
“I pray to the Old Gods that it will be so,” the bearded man in the runed armour growled. “Much has been lost over the centuries and even we in Runestone do not know if it will be enough. We need more of everything. Valyrian steel. Dragonglass. Knowledge. And time.”
All four looked grim at that. “Time,” the other version of her said with a shake of the head. “The one thing we need more of.”
And then things seemed to shimmer and freeze. She looked around.
This future is one that must not come to pass. We brought Robb Stark back in time because there was a war between men, a war that stilled the voices.
“The voices?”
The voices of those who worship us. The war stilled too many. As would this future. This is why it cannot happen. It must be stopped. You and Brynden Tully are the ones who must stop it.
She stared around again. “How?
There are those who deny the Call. Who deny that the Others have awoken again. Who would place their own petty desires and politics over those of this world. They must be persuaded. We stand on the blade of a sword – the slightest thing can tip things one way or another. The Riverlands must be alerted – as must the Westerlands – to the threat that lies ahead. The North must be supported.
“And I have been chosen for this? Me and Ser Brynden? Why us?”
You both have a sense of honour and justice that few others have. You both persuade others to find that better part of themselves. You both believe that the world can be better. And in all the futures that we have seen you keep fighting when others would despair and give up.
She felt vaguely proud at that. But she also felt stunned. “Very well,” she said eventually. “What will the cost be?”
The Green Man will tell you, for it has been his burden for too long. Prepare yourself.
“How can I prepare myself?”
But there was no answer. Instead red fire seemed to fill her eyes and every part of her body. She opened her mouth to scream – and then she was back in front of the great Heart Tree, on her back and feeling as if the weight of the world had been laid on her for a second. She groaned and opened her eyes and then turned to look for the Blackfish. He was next to her and he seemed to be staring in horror at her – and his eyes were filled with red fire, which blazed brightly and then vanished as if snuffed out.
There was a long moment of silence and then he croaked: “Your eyes… they were filled with red fire.”
“So were yours,” she replied shakily. “Did the Old Gods speak to you as well?”
“They did. They showed me… they showed me visions. Of the future. One in which there was a… a war. Betrayal. Treachery. And another in which… the Others were in the Riverlands and had overrun Casterly Rock.”
Shock roiled through her. “You were in Riverrun, with the King. Winterfell was under siege.”
He stared back at her. “Yes. You saw it too?”
“I saw… myself. With others. Lord Royce I think. Lord Arryn. And someone called Lord Cassley. We were discussing the war against the Others. I do not think that we were winning.”
The Blackfish stood with a groan and then peered at the Sun. “Well, several hours have passed. It feels like but a moment, despite all that we saw, but hours have passed.” He held out a hand and she reached out and grabbed it as she levered herself up. There was a moment of dizziness and then it passed.
“It seems that we have a task to perform,” she muttered. “And a future to prevent.”
“Aye,” he replied. “A dark and terrible one too. Those who heard the Call but reject it must be… persuaded. I feel that I am an odd choice for that, but it seems that we have been chosen together.”
“I asked what the cost would be,” she said as they both made for the path that would lead back to the building where they had started off from. “I was told that the Green Man would tell us.”
“Aye,” he said again. Then his brow furrowed. “From his hand… well he would know about cost. He was badly burnt at one point. His voice though… I have heard it before, or I have met him in passing before at some point… when though? It must have been a long time ago. A very long time ago.”
It was at that point that she realised something. “This is not the same path that we came down. I mean, it goes in the right direction… but these are not the same trees.”
He peered around. “You’re right,” he said in astonishment. Then he looked down at the ground. “Wait – tracks. Someone small has been up and down here.” And then frowned. “Someone with odd feet. Not enough toes. Odd.”
They pressed on and after a while she could see the hall that they had left what now felt like a lifetime ago. There was no-one outside it, but as they entered they could see that the Green Man was still sitting by the fire, staring into it. As they approached he looked up, allowing the hood to shift a little – and Ser Brynden stopped dead next to her, staring at the man as the blood drained from his face.
“You’re dead,” he muttered eventually. “You’re supposed to be dead. Everyone said that you died. After… after…”
“After Summerhall?” The Green Man smiled bitterly. “Oh, I wanted to die after that.” He pulled the sleeve back for a moment to reveal the terrible burns on his hand. “I failed, you see. I failed to protect them. And not just from the fire.”
It was her turn to stare. And then she made the connection and felt her eyes widen and her nostrils flare. “But… if you are who I think you are… that would make you more than a hundred!”
The Green Man smiled again, this time faintly. “Being the Green Man has its… peculiarities. After Summerhall I came here seeking answers. I found them – but not the ones to the questions I was asking. I found bitter truths here. And… a measure of peace. As well as something else.”
The shock was still rattling through her mind, as she thought about the tales she had heard… and the shield that she had found in the armoury of Tarth. “I… I am Brienne of Tarth.”
The Green Man stood slowly, his back crackling as he straightened up. He was at least six and a half feet tall, but from his slightly crooked back he had once been closer to seven feet tall. “I know,” He said with a smile. “Hello, great-granddaughter. You have made me so proud. You did not just hear the Call, you came to the Isle of Faces.”
She had no idea what to do, or say, or how to react – but the Green Man took the decision out of her hands by approaching and hugging her gently. “Come,” he said as he released her, “Both of you. Sit. You have been chosen. The Old Gods are with you. I sense it. They chose me too once. My time is passing. A new time is upon us – if we can survive the storm that is upon us. And a black and terrible one it is. You have been shown visions.”
“We have indeed,” the Blackfish muttered as he sat down by the fire. “The Others come. We have people to persuade about the threat.”
“Aye,” the Green Man agreed. “And I have one last fight in me. One last war. The Green Men will go forth from here for the first time in centuries, to tend the groves of the First Men. And... the way must be made safe for our allies.”
She swapped a confused glance with the Blackfish. “Allies?”
The Green Man did not reply, but instead looked up. It was only then that she saw the little figures sitting in the rafters. Figures with green and gold eyes – and some with eyes of moss green or blood red. And both hope and wonder stirred in her heart.
Bronn
By the time that the Maester re-emerged from the room in which he’d been sequestered with ‘Lady Barnley’ Bronn was beyond fretting and well on the way to worrying. The Maester had been in there for the better part of a day or so, with little word other than that he was still trying to save her life and could someone please send in some new coals for the brazier.
That was a bad thing, the brazier. That meant that the Maester was using fire. Which would explain some of the choked screams that had emerged initially from the room, before the dreadful silence had fallen.
And now Haster had finally emerged. His young face was drawn with strain and tiredness and what was probably extreme hunger. Bronn stood as he saw him and then waved at Ursula Stone, who hurried over whilst Harold, the poor bloody fool who had been driving the carriage and who appeared to be permanently terrified, also scurried over.
“She lives,” Haster said wearily. “But her arm was… well, the wound was corrupted, as you know. Very badly corrupted. To save her life I had to take off her arm.”
Bronn winced. “Where, exactly?”
Haster sighed. “I tried to save her upper arm – but failed. I had to amputate just below the shoulder, my Lord.”
Bron gazed at the Maester with no small amount of respect. That was a tricky thing to do and have the person still live. He’d seen very large men lose an arm and then die not long after from one of the very many things that seemed to ail people with wounds at times. Then again he’d also see a small skinny runt of a Northman once lose a leg at the knee to a giant twat from the Iron Isles and somehow survive.
Harold had gone white with shock. “She lives though?” The question was asked in a quavering voice.
“She lives, aye. But I would be a liar if I said that I could predict if she will see the dawn a week from now or not. The loss of an arm is no easy thing to live through. The infection was deep. Why did you not seek a Maester earlier?”
The Valeman looked shifty. “She forbade us from seeking one. She was in a great hurry to get, erm, home.”
There was a short pause as Bronn looked at the man and raised an eyebrow at Haster and then at Ursula Stone, who raised an eyebrow of her own back at him for a heartbeat. Then he sighed. Enough was enough.
“Get home? Come on lad. We all know who she really is.” He paused as Harold stiffened and then reached out like lightning and grabbed the Valeman’s hand as it reached towards his dagger. “Now don’t be a complete idiot. You’re a bad enough liar as it is – and I’ve known a lot of liars in my time. She’s not ‘Lady Barnley’, she’s Lysa Arryn. We all know that. The ravens came with her description. See sense, lad.”
Harold’s face worked for a moment and then he seemed to deflate like a toad being stepped upon. “Yes,” he said eventually. “She is Lady Arryn.”
“Who is accused of trying to murder her husband. The Lord Paramount of the Vale, the Hand of the King himself, Lord Arryn.”
The Valeman hung his head in shame.” “We… we didn’t know that she had done so. She… she came out of the Red Keep and told us that she had to depart at once.”
“Where to?” Bronn asked sharply.
“The Vale. The Eyrie. She was going to demand the return of her son. That was… that was all she could talk about. That the Stark would have to give him back because of Petyr’s gift to her. That’s what she said. I don’t know if it was the fever talking, but that’s what she said.”
Bronn stared at him for a long moment and then looked at Ursula Stone, who was looking as baffled as he felt. “What gift?”
“Lady Arryn has a chest. A small one. She had it in the coach with her. She never let it out of her sight… until she became feverish. Then we placed it under her seat.”
Bronn looked at his steward, who sighed, nodded shortly and then strode off. As she did Bronn looked back at Harold. “You and the others will be our ‘guests’ until word come from King’s Landing. Maester Haster, please send a raven with the appropriate information on it, about Lady Arryn’s arrival and her current condition. Then please return to caring for her. I’ve no doubt that the King will want her to live to be questioned.”
The Maester nodded and then scurried off. As he did then Bronn beckoned to a guard, who placed a large gauntleted hand on Harold’s shoulder, disarmed him swiftly and then marched him off. Bronn watched them go and then leant against a nearby wall. All of a sudden he was so very tired. Petyr fucking Baelish. That repulsive little weasel, whose legacy seemed to be to poison everyone around him who had even the slightest connection to him.
Yes, he had profited mightily from catching said weasel. And at least the man was dead. Cutting his head off had been, well, something that he had enjoyed doing, if only because he knew that there was no question that he was dead.
Hearing footsteps approaching he looked up. Ursula Stone was approaching with a small chest, about the length of his forearm, in her hands. “This was in the coach, in the place that he mentioned,” she said. “It seems to be locked though.”
He took it from her with a murmur of thanks, raised an eyebrow at the lock and then pulled out the small pouch that always hung at his belt. Inside were a few small items that he had always found to be… useful. He picked out two of the smaller pieces of metal inside and then started to probe the lock on the small chest, humming as he did so.
After a long moment he realised that he was being stared at. “Something the matter?”
“Are those… lockpicks?”
“Happens that they might be. What if they are?”
“What were you before you became a lord again? My Lord?”
He smiled lazily at her. “I was the man who caught Petyr bloody Baelish for Lord Jon Arryn, Hand of the King. And before that… well, I was a man of many talents.” He felt something give a little in the lock and devoted his full attention to it. After a moment the hasp came free.
Opening the chest revealed a number of letters. But it was the one on top that caught his eye because it was the one with a mockingbird seal pressed onto it. A broken seal come to that. He reached out, picked it up and unfolded it.
My dearest Lysa. By the time you hold this I might no longer be in King’s Landing. Do not believe the foul lies and untruths that you might hear about me. I am an innocent man, guilty only of trying to do my best to save the Realm but being misunderstood most grievously in the process.
There is a plot against my life and I have been forced to flee. Do not worry, I will find safety. I have many friends in many places and I shall send word to you.
I suspect many people in this plot against me. The first person is your husband. I have discovered a terrible secret that he is hiding. The King’s children are not his. They are abominations born of incest between the Queen and her own brother. You have only to look on them and realise that there is not a drop of Baratheon blood in them – they are all blonde. All Lannister.
Why your husband hides this I do not know. Perhaps he is biding his time. Perhaps it is a part of a wider plot. Perhaps he has been bribed by the Lannisters.
I have been trying to get to the truth in this matter, but all of a sudden I am fleeing for my life. All I have ever done has been for the good of the Realm. You know this to be true.
I will send word when I reach safety, probably in Essos. We will see each other again my sweet.
With love,
Petyr
By the time he finished reading it his hand was shaking more than a bit. As for Ursula Stone, who had been craning over his arm to see it, she was pale and trembling. “This…” she started to say, “This…”
He folded it back up immediately. “This is a letter that some would kill for,” he told her in a low and very grim voice. “This is a letter that could start a civil war within the Realm.”
He ran his hand over his short beard and tried to jam his thoughts back together in a coherent manner. Much to his surprise he succeeded. “This is the hand of Petyr Baelish. I should know. As I said – I caught the bastard. Problem is, how much is real and how much is lies?”
She stared at him and he smiled a particularly bitter smile. “Petyr Baelish, Steward Stone, was a conniving, double-dealing fucking weasel who gave particularly villainous weasels a bad name in comparison. He was a thief and a liar and that worst of things, a man who thought himself cleverer than anyone else around him. When I caught him I knew that I couldn’t trust him, no matter how much he tried to bribe me. For one thing he kept offering my money that I knew he didn’t have any more. For the other, I knew that he’d put me on his own personal list of people that he was going to do anything to see dead, just for outsmarting him. Seeing him dead was a relief.”
“You were at his execution?” She sounded surprised at that.
“I was. I was also the man who kept him alive to see first his trial and then his execution.” He looked at the letter again. “The trial… that was private. Just Baelish, Lord Arryn and Lord Stannis Baratheon. I wondered at that. No clerks, no guards, nothing. I did wonder at the time. Perhaps… perhaps it was because of this. What Baelish mentioned. If it’s true… well, Tywin Lannister would give anything to make this letter go away. Including wade through blood.”
His thoughts stopped skittering around and he looked around at the place that he had called home for these past few weeks. Well now. Time to choose. “I am a sworn banner to Lord Arryn. He might no longer be the Hand of the King, but this is a matter for him and his successor. I trust him more than I trust the word of Petyr Baelish. And – I have no wish for there ever to be a song called ‘The Rains of Foxhold’.”
She opened her mouth for a moment – and then closed it and nodded just the once. Then she closed her eyes for a moment, straightened and then looked at him. For once she didn’t look as if she thought that he was something scraped off a boot. “What are your orders, Lord Foxhold?”
“Bring me a piece of canvas, about half a yard by half a yard. And I’ll need a needle and a tough thread. This letter must be secured properly and I’ll do it myself. I want guards placed on Lady Arryn’s chamber. Have the master at arms pick men who are reliable. Her people are to be split up and secured. I want none of them leaving. Maester Haster is to tend to her. We need her alive. And I need five good men as an escort. I will ride for King’s Landing with this letter at once. I want you in charge of the Foxhold in my absence. Be watchful. Take care of our people.”
She gave him another look that again suggested that she didn’t regard him as a deformed maggot. “As my Lord commands.” And then she actually curtsied before hurrying off. He watched her go with a bemused look before shaking his head. And then for some reason he wished that he could pray at the nearest Godswood. For some reason he felt as if he could do with every possible help.
Gendry
By the time that the docks of Dragonstone were finally in sight he felt as if he was about to fall over from sheer tiredness. It was a weariness that he had never known before. Not even the worst possible day at Master Mott’s forge had he ever felt as tired as he did now, as he sat in a quiet corner of the deck.
He was lucky, in a way. He hadn’t been one of those sent up the remaining masts in all weather. Nor had he been one of those involved in ‘fothering’ the ship to slow the seep of water through the hull from the place where the lost mast had hit the side of it, although he had pulled on a rope to help tie the canvas to the hull as tightly as possible.
No, what he really ached from was the chain pump. The blasted device that sucked up water from the bilges and shot it over the side of the ship. The one thing that was keeping them afloat because of the water that was seeping through the fother, or canvas, or whatever it bloody was, and threatening to sink the ship. Using the damn thing over a long period took stamina and strength. He had both. So he’d been at the chain pump more than others had. Around and bloody around. Endlessly. He’d tried to count the number of times he’d used the damn thing. He’d always failed, through exhaustion. Around and around. Each time saved the ship a little. And that little was the thing that drove him onwards.
At least the crew appreciated what he had been doing. Gendry Strongarm they called him now. Good King Robert’s natural son. He was too tired to think about it much. He still felt strange about the very thought. He frowned a little. The closer they got to Dragonstone the more he puzzled over it.
Hearing the clump of seaboots he looked over to see Captain Hedrick approach. “Ever seen Dragonstone before?” The older man asked.
Gendry shook his head tiredly. “Never been far from King’s Landing.” He nodded at the fortress as it loomed ever closer. “What are those… things all over it?”
Hedrick barked a short choppy laugh. “Dragons, lad. The old Targaryens were a bit dragon-mad. Them and the Valyrians who held the island before them. Dragons on the brain. So they covered the place in dragon statues. The place is riddled with the bloody things.”
His skin crawled more than a bit. “Dragons?” He looked back at the fortress and the island behind it. It was rather eerie. The island itself gave him the creeping horrors. It was dominated by a giant mountain, except that this one was, well, steaming. A thin plume of smoke came from the tallest peak. Frankly it was one of the bleakest places that he’d ever seen – grey and desolate, with just the odd splash of green here and there from trees. As they finally made it into the harbour and moored at one of the docks he could see a number of people gathering and staring at the ship – at the jury-rigged mast and the canvas that had been used to fother the side of it.
After a while a slightly stooped old man in black, with white hair and muttonchop whiskers, as well as a chain of some kind around his neck arrived. “What happened Hedrick?” The old man called out. “You’re normally so careful!”
“Ach, we caught the arse end of a storm. There was a flaw in the mast that we hadn’t spotted and of course the wind finally had its way with it. Damaged the hull as it came down and we damn near broached. Fortunately this lad over here helped cut the sail loose in time.”
The old man nodded as he looked over at Gendry – and then seemed to stagger, the blood draining from his face. “By all the Gods – Robert? Wait, no, it can’t be,” he muttered – and then as a gangplank was put into place he shuffled up it as fast as he could. Having reached the deck he stared at Gendry fixedly. “Good gods. What’s your name lad?”
“Gendry, my lord. Gendry Storm.”
The old man smiled slightly. “I’m a Maester, lad, not a lord. Maester Cresson is my name. And you… you are the very likeness of… Your name is Storm. Who is your father?”
He stared at the old man and then at the davit, the deck, the plank, a rope, a rat and then back at the desk again. “My Lord – I mean Maester Cresson – they say… I mean he said that… well, my father is his Grace, the King.” He said those last few words in a low mutter.
The Maester stared at him for a long time and then nodded just the once. “Aye, and I believe it. You are the spitting image of your father when he was but a lad himself. Extraordinary. Quite extraordinary.” Then he seemed to shiver for a moment as he looked about the ship, before beckoning the captain over. “Your pardon. Where are you bound for?”
“Storm’s End, Maester Cresson. A cargo for there – plus the lad here. On the orders of King Robert himself.” Hedrick said the words quietly.
Cresson stared at him and then back at Gendry. “I see. Well, you’ll need a new mast stepped in. And will the ship need to be careened?”
“Aye, she will. I’ll not go anywhere until I’ve seen the damage repaired. It’ll take a week at least. Can the lad be sent on?”
Cresson shook his head. “I doubt it. Too many ships are going North these days. And I myself have sent off three ships to Eastwatch by the Sea with… well supplies of a kind. ‘Tis been a bewildering time of late. I shall check though.” Gendry felt his eyelids fluttering and he shook his head for a moment. Gods, he was more tired than he thought. The Maester sighed for a moment. “In the meantime – are you well lad?”
He realised that his eyes had fluttered again and that he was almost asleep on his feet. “Your pardon my – I mean Maester.”
“The lad’s tired. He stood more than his fair share of shifts on the chain pump getting us here. He’s done his duty Cresson. Done his father proud, if I might say so.” Gendry inspected his feet again, swayed slightly again and then suddenly found himself blinking furiously. “Onshore lad. Get to the barracks. Get bath, a meal and a bed. We have all the help we need for the ship.”
He nodded, feeling increasingly exhausted – but then Cresson held a hand up. “I think that I have better quarters for you."
The Maester did indeed have better quarters. Dragonstone had tunnels snaking everywhere and he led Gendry to the finest quarters that he’d ever seen. For one thing the bed had a pillow that wasn’t stuffed with straw. There was also a room to one side with the oddest bath he’d ever seen. Warm water bubbled up from somewhere in it and then ran off to one side. A servant with a poorly hidden sneer of contempt had to tell him to just get in and start scrubbing. Whilst he did the servant took his clothes and left with them at arm’s length and a face that meant that they probably stank. Once he got out and found a robe, he also discovered that there was indeed a meal on a table to one side. It didn’t last very long. And after that there was bed. It was ridiculously soft but he didn’t notice much as he fell asleep almost at once.
When he woke up he had a moment of bleary confusion as he didn’t recognise his surroundings, but he soon worked out where he was. His clothes weren’t back yet, but someone had left some replacements. He fingered the cloth worriedly. It was too high quality – someone had made a mistake somewhere. He put the garments on anyway – he had nothing else to wear, as he had left his bag on the ship. Then he paused. His Warhammer was propped up in one corner. He walked over to it and traced a finger over the head. He’d never really thought about it much, but who had his father ever used it against? Had it been used to kill people with? Was there blood on it? And did he care? He sighed and then jumped slightly as someone knocked on the door. When he opened the door to the corridor there was servant waiting there, who looked rather baffled as to why he had opened the door.
“Maester Cresson desires to see you,” the blond man said stiffly and then gestured to follow him.
He found the Maester in a room with more books in it than he had ever seen before in his entire life. They seemed to be everywhere and he stared at them all in wonder, before a cough from the old man brought him back to the desk. “Captain Hedrick sent your Warhammer and clothing on. I’m having it cleaned – you had a rough passage. Everything smelt of sweat and seawater.”
He shifted uneasily on his feet. “There was always too much to do.”
The Maester lent back in his chair and looked at him levelly. “Captain Hedrick thinks highly of you. What will you do when you reach Storm’s End?”
He shrugged. “Don’t rightly know. I’m to be trained, I know that much. Trained to use a Warhammer. Though the only hammer I know how to use properly is one for a blacksmith.”
“You were an apprentice blacksmith in King’s Landing?”
“I was. With Master Mott, in the Street of Steel.”
Cressen looked at him consideringly and was just opening his mouth to say something when someone knocked on the door before entering. She was a girl, short and with long braided black hair. Her ears stuck out more than a little, but that wasn’t what caught his eye the most. No, what made his eyes widen was the grey skin on the left hand side of her face and parts of her neck. Greyscale. He’d heard about this from some people. She looked at him curiously through a pair of sad eyes that grew a little sadder when she saw that he was staring at her. Then she turned back to the Maester. “Any word Maester Cresson?”
The Maester shook his head sadly. “None. I am sorry child. The boat patrols came back again this morning. There is no sign of him anywhere. He must be… dead.”
The girl sighed and wiped a tear from her eye. “I know,” she said wretchedly. “I just… hoped differently. Poor Patches.”
Cresson leant forwards and patted her hand awkwardly. Then he looked at Gendry. “Forgive my manners. Shireen, this is Gendry Storm. Gendry, this is the Lady Shireen Baratheon, daughter of Lord Stannis Baratheon and his wife Selyse Baratheon.”
Shireen peered at him almost shyly, before nodding her head at him – and then she paused and looked at him closely, intently. “Do I know you? You look familiar. Actually – you look like Uncle Robert!”
Gendry cringed a little – but for some reason the old man looked proud of the girl. “Very observant of you my dear! Young Gendry is in fact the, erm, natural son of his Grace the King.”
She looked at him again, this time with a smile that transformed her grave features. “You’re my cousin?” He gaped at her. Cousin? “I… I… well, I suppose so… but…” She peered at him again and then her lips quirked into a smile. “Yes, I’m your cousin.”
“Shireen-” Maester Cresson started to say, but he was forestalled by Shireen.
“Yes, I know, he’s a natural son of Uncle Robert, I know that there’s a word for it and I know that Mother would be very… snobbish about me meeting him. But she’s not here right now. She’s with Father in King’s Landing. So therefore – I respectfully don’t care what she might think about me meeting Gendry.”
There was a short silence whilst Cresson and Gendry both stared at her and then the Maester chuckled. “My dear, you are far older than your years at times.”
“Thank you.” She looked at Gendry again. “Is this your first visit to Dragonstone?”
“Aye, my Lady, it is.”
She looked at him owlishly. “I suppose I’ll have to teach you to call me ‘cousin’. Now – I shall give you a tour. I have decided it, and in the absence of Father and Mother I am in charge. Is that not so, Maester Cresson?”
The old man threw his hands up and then clasped them together. “Oh, entirely so.”
And so Gendry found himself getting a detailed tour of Dragonstone, with Shireen pointing out all the various odd nooks and crannies as a few servants trailed behind them discreetly. And saw umpteen statues of dragons. As he looked around a feasting room that had been built in the shape of a bloody dragon he finally voiced what he had been thinking for some time: “They were mad for dragons, weren’t they?”
She perched herself on a bench and smiled slightly at him. “They were. They were Valyrians, after all. And they weren’t very nice people. They were very cruel. They enslaved people, killed people. And then came the Doom. But the Targaryens came here before the Doom.” She looked at him gravely. “We’re both part Targaryen, did you know that?”
No, he had not, and he felt a little faint at the thought. And then she continued the tour, moving on from room to room. Only once did she show any reluctance to go anywhere, when they approached a room with large arched windows.
“That’s… that’s the room where Patches jumped,” Shireen whispered. “On the night he…. he died.” He thought desperately about something to say.
“Odd name that, Patches.”
“Patchface,” she said sadly. “His name was Patchface. I called him Patches though. He was my friend. My only real friend, odd though he was. He almost drowned on the day that my grandfather and grandmother died in a shipwreck. He was a jester. He made me laugh. And then almost a week ago he went mad. And he threw himself from one of those windows.”
He had known that she was a desperately lonely little girl almost from the start, but that about broke his heart. “I’m sorry,” he said eventually. “You miss him.”
“I do,” she said simply. “But his last words were an odd message to me. Said that I should seek out the Godswood here.”
Confused, he stared at her. “There’s a Godswood here?” “
No. There’s no record of one, not here on Dragonstone. The oldest records don’t mention that there was one here when the Valryians came here. So why did he say that I should seek out something that isn’t here?”
One thing that occurred to him was to point out that she had said that the man had gone mad, but that wouldn’t have been polite to point out, so instead he led her away from the room, pointing out a few little carved dragons that were in dark corners.
“I keep trying to count the number of dragons here and I keep having to amend my total,” she said wryly, before finishing the tour in the most amazing room he had ever seen – a room with open windows to one side and a table carved into the shape of Westeros itself. “Aegon the Conqueror had this made,” she pointed out in a matter of fact voice. “So that he could plan the Conquest.”
He gaped at it. And then, after a guard cleared his throat meaningfully, he ended up back in the Maester’s room. The Maester greeted them both and he thanked Shireen for the tour. She smiled at him and then left, leaving him alone with the Maester.
“A sweet girl,” Gendry said. “Lady, I mean.”
“She is a treasure,” the Maester said with a smile. “News from Captain Hedrick. Repairs proceed apace and he thanks you for your analysis of the bad iron in the upperworks. It’s being replaced. Hopefully, if things go as planned you can resume your journey to Storm’s End in a few days.”
“Can I help at all? I mean, with the ironwork?”
The Maester laughed a little. “Nay, it’s all in hand. Dragonstone has been a naval base many times before. There are ample supplies – and blacksmiths aplenty. I have arranged for you to take a meal in your quarters again. You look tired my boy.” That was true enough and he ate the meal with gusto before falling, exhausted, into bed again that night and then sleeping very heavily. His dreams were odd though, and disturbed him a bit. When he woke up again in the morning he had a vague memory of a dream of snow, trees and a woman.
He broke his fast in his room, uneasy at the thought that people were waiting upon him, before going for a walk. Somehow he found his way back down to the docks, but noticed that the ship he had come on had been moved to the different part of the docks, far further way, where it was getting a new mast installed. He watched from a distance, feeling vaguely frustrated at not being able to help, but then had to admit that there was nothing he could do.
So instead he walked off in the opposite direction. Eventually he ended up on a beach to one side of the harbour. Knowing that there was a corpse somewhere out there made him watch the high tide mark with more than a little concern, but he saw nothing apart from seaweed and the odd dead fish. He wandered on, noticing that the tide was going out and then eventually stopped by a cliff face and peered back at what he could see of the island.
The mountain – sorry, fire-mountain, or volcano as Shireen had called it, was still smoking and he wondered about that. The fortress itself though was still ugly, he had to admit that. A massive, brooding, dragon statue-studded thing. He sighed. What would Storm’s End be like.
The wind kicked up for a moment and he shivered a little. And then he saw it, a leaf in the far distance. It rose and fell in the wind, blowing this way and that and he watched it with amusement. He felt a bit like that leaf. The wind was blowing him – and where would it take him? The wind died down and the leaf fell to earth by his feet. He bent down to look at it – and then he picked it up and frowned at it. It was red. Strange. Leaves were green normally – weren’t they? Except during autumn of course – but this was still summer. He twirled it by the stalk for a moment – and then he froze. Someone had once told him that the only trees with red leaves were Weirwood trees. Which were in the North. Or in Godswoods. Still holding the leaf he started to walk back to the fortress, only to stop as a group of figures appeared in front of him. It was Shireen, along with two guards.
“Hello,” she called out, “I tried to find you to talk to you, but you weren’t in your room. Then someone said that they’d seen you out here. What are you looking for?”
He walked up to her and then held the leaf out. “Here – that just blew onto my feet.”
She looked at it curiously – and then she gasped. “It’s from a Weirwood tree! Where did you find it?”
He pointed to the spot and they both hurried over to it, before looking around. “The wind was from that direction,” he told her, pointing. “The leaf came from there.” “Then we need to look there,” she said decisively. “That cliff looks sheer, but… let’s look.”
The cliff did indeed look sheer and as they looked he started to doubt their discovery. The island was rocky and barren. What if the leaf had come from a dying tree? And then he saw it. The faintest of carvings on the cliff face, worn by rain and time. It looked like a carving of a tree with a face. He stepped back and looked at the cliff. There was a notch there, a place where there might once have been an opening, far above the high tide mark. It was clogged with rocks and he started to pull them out.
After a moment Shireen joined him. “What is it?”
“There might be something here. Stand back – this might be dangerous.” She stood back and he started to pull out more rocks and other debris – tree branches and other things. And then a rock fell away and he saw something that made him stop. “There’s a wall here.”
“A wall?”
He pulled more rocks away and then peered again. “A wall. We need something to break it down. And fetch Maester Cresson.”
Shireen barked orders and the guards stared at her – before running off. The one asked to bring a pickaxe arrived first and Gendry plucked it from his hands and then swung it straight at the top of the wall. Metal sparked a little on stone and the pickaxe jarred a little in his hands, but he clenched his hands harder and then swung again. The stones crumbled under his onslaught and he hammered at it, again and again and again. As it started to collapse he gestured for Shireen to stay back.
By the time that a puffing Maester Cresson arrived he’d cleared the wall – and also the earth and debris that had collected behind it. The Maester stared in astonishment at the cleft, muttered about what the carving might mean and then told Gendry to keep going. He did. More blows cleared the last of it – and then he stared up at the narrow cleft that the wall had been hiding. “It’s a path,” he muttered. “Going up. But up to where?”
“Let’s find out!” Shireen burst out.
But Gendry placed a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll go first,” he told her. “It might be dangerous.”
He was right to go on ahead of the others. The path was narrow and in places it was almost blocked by rocks and stones that had come down from the cliffs to either side. Twice he had to stop and then send the others back to the start of the narrow winding path as he cleared out rocks and made the footing underfoot less treacherous, resulting in debris skittering downhill. How long had it been since anyone had been on this path? He looked at the debris as he made his way up. It all looked like stones from rockslides from the cliffs on either side and he wondered how this path had even come to exist. Who could have come here? The First Men?
Hearing excited chatter behind him he smiled. Shireen’s reaction to their discovery had been one of sheer excitement. He was growing fond of the girl. She was clever and desperately lonely, especially after the death of the dead fool. And how had a madman known of this path, which had been blocked off for what must have been hundreds of years at least?
He tested one section, pushed a boulder carefully to one side as it almost blocked a bend in the path and then pushed around the bend itself. And then he stopped dead in his tracks.
“What is it Gendry?” Shireen piped up from behind him and he stumbled forwards a few feet. As the others saw what had stopped him his tracks they paused too. In front of them the cleft widened into a small natural bowl shape, with cliffs towering to the North and East. And in that bowl were trees. There were ten of them, full sized, and some saplings, as well as some dead trunks. They were stunted in places, probably because the soil was so thin and rocky. But they all had red leaves and white bark. And the biggest of them all… it had a face carved onto it. A solemn face that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end as he looked at it.
“It’s a Godswood,” Maester Cresson breathed as he walked up to Gendry. “By the Gods… I don’t believe it. Why did no-one ever see it before?”
“The path was blocked, Maester,” he pointed out. Then he paused. “Oh wait – they had dragons didn’t they?”
“Aye… perhaps the cliffs hid it. Odd.” He walked closer to the trees, with an awestruck Shireen next to him and Cresson a few steps after them both.
“Patches said that I had to seek this out. But why?” Shireen asked and he could only shake his head in bafflement.
“This place… it’s old,” he stammered eventually. “So very old.” And he knew that it was true even as he said it. A silence fell as they looked around the place – before they all turned back to the tree. Even the guards were in awe of the place.
And then Gendry saw something out of the corner of one eye. The cliff came close to one tree but there was an overhand – and beneath it a pile of stones. A rather regular pile of stones. “What’s that?” Maester Cresson followed his pointing finger and then walked over to it.
“It’s a cairn,” he said quietly. “I think it’s a grave.” He approached it with Gendry and then paused. “Oh.”
“What is it?” The Maester reached down with a hand that shook slightly and picked something up that had been laid on the cairn. It looked like a pair of ancient and very worn antlers, attached to a rotted piece of what might once have been leather. “This… this is… perhaps the grave of a Green Man. But that’s… I don’t understand.”
“Maester Cresson,” Shireen piped up, “Gendry’s right. This place is very old. Who could have carved that tree? And if that’s the grave of a Green Man, then who buried him?” She walked up to the tree with a face carved onto it. “And this… this is a Heart Tree is it not?”
“Yes. Yes, it is,” Cresson said thickly. “I must consult the Histories again and-”
They never heard what he was about to say next, because at that moment Shireen reached out and laid a hand on the trunk of the Heart Tree. For a moment Gendry felt as if the ground had shook, but the leaves on the trees stayed motionless.
And then Shireen’s eye blazed with red fire – like the heart of a forge. Gendry stared in shock and the others cried out – but all of a sudden everyone seemed to be frozen to the spot. After a long moment Shireen looked at them, red fire still burning in her eyes. And then she spoke. “A child born from storm and garden! It is as it was foretold. The blood of the First Men still burns here, like the heart of the mountain. Send the harvest on. The dragonglass is needed on the Wall.”
Gendry gaped and then voiced what they were all thinking: “Who… who are you?”
The red fire focussed on him. “Another child of the storm! Well met! You have many miles ahead of you, child of the storm. Your father will need you.”
“Who are you?” Cresson barked, and the red eyes narrowed as they gazed at him.
“You stand in a Godswood. The Gods are here.”
“You… you are the Old Gods?” Maester Cresson asked in what looked like deep shock.
“We are. We speak through this child as a conduit. You have found this place again. We wax. Send the dragonglass North. The Stark in Winterfell needs it. And the Maesters of Oldtown – they must not meddle any further. The Call has been sent. Magic has returned. The Others come. The Stark calls for aid. You are needed.”
Cresson went white. And Gendry looked back into those terrible, implacable eyes. “What must I do?”
“Help your father. The Storm King returns, within him.” The gaze returned to Maester Cresson. “You heard the Seer. He was touched by things that some would not have survived. And he gave his life – for this life. The bargain was struck. We will honour it.”
Red fire seemed to envelop Shireen for a moment and as Gendry watched the greyscale on her face rippled and boiled – before peeling off and then bursting into flames. Her very skin and muscles seemed to glow for a long moment – then the fire faded. “A life for a life,” she whispered – and then the flames in her eyes were snuffed out and she swayed and then collapsed.
Willas
He read the report carefully, then pulled a piece of parchment towards him and jotted off a note to look into the production figures from the South-West area of the Reach in more detail. The projected harvest figures from there were… odd. At least a third higher than they should have been. A lot more land seemed to be under production than was usual. People seemed to be clearing more fields for planting, sowing more seed than normal – doing all the things that might be expected ahead of a bad winter.
It frightened him in a way. What did the smallfolk know that he didn’t? Why weren’t more nobles complaining? Was it this ‘Call’ that his father denied so much, simply because he refused to believe that Ned Stark could have any kind of power over the Reach?
Father had written to the Citadel at Oldtown, hoping to hear that magic had not returned. Willas had also written to the Citadel. The Maesters had sent back the same short, almost bitter, answer – ‘The glass candles are alight. Magic has returned’.
Father thought that this was some kind of move in the Game of Thrones. He did not. This was not a part of the Game, this was a lightning bolt from a cloudless sky. This was a sign that there were other powers at work.
He sighed. Father was not the only person who denied the facts as he saw them. Loras had returned from King’s Landing – and he was not in a good mood. He was convinced that at some point the King would have to set aside his wife Cersei. Why exactly he thought that he had not yet explained to Willas. Who had his own sources and knew the terrible secret that Loras was, erm, extremely close to Renly Baratheon.
Father seemed to be abnormally pleased with himself at the moment, as he probably thought that this plan involving Renly somehow getting Margaery married to the King was one of the few things that he seemed to be in control over at the moment. His own plan. No-one else’s of course. Typical of Father.
He sighed and rubbed his forehead for a moment. Willas had let it quietly be known that he was dealing with administrative matters for the Reach. He had let others know even more quietly that he had heard the Call. Word had gone out about his discovery of the statue of Garth Greenhand. Word was spreading. And people were listening more to him than to Father.
He had to be careful. Father had to keep his dignity. But there was something happening here that was more important than anything he had ever done before.
The clack of a cane proclaimed the arrival of Grandmother. She sat opposite him with a slight grunt and then fixed him with a gimlet eye. “Your Father looks like he’s planning something,” she snorted. “And I finally know what. He wants Margaery to be Queen. Because young foolish Renly Baratheon thinks that he can persuade his brother to abandon the wife he hates – and who just happens to be Tywin Lannister’s daughter – for one that he might possibly like better. Foolishness.”
Willas put his quill down and raised an eyebrow. “Grandmother, the very fact that you know about that shouldn’t surprise me. The dangers associated with it are terrifying. The threat from the Lannisters if they find out that Father is plotting to get the King a new wife…”
Grandmother snorted. “Good, you’re not a fool. Unlike your father. Oh stop that eyebrow business, you know that I’m correct. How I birthed such a blockhead still eludes me. We both know the risks in this. And it is foolish to think that anything good can possibly come from it.”
“I doubt that Tywin Lannister knows about it,” Willas muttered. “If he did… well, he would have probably had an apoplexy by now from pure rage. The very thought alone would have made him incandescent.” He shook his head. “I will talk to Father. Loras too. Now is not the time to get involved in such an affair. There is too much to do. And besides, I would see Margaery happy. I doubt that the King would make her so. He has been in a slough of despond since Lyanna Stark died.”
Grandmother looked at him carefully and then nodded. “Good luck with that,” she said shrewdly. “Your Father will disagree. But then of course he’s a nincompoop. And I agree with what you think about Robert Baratheon. In the meantime, word is spreading.”
“Word of what?”
“Word of your discovery. Word of your being healed. Word of this Call to the North.”
Ah. The Call, again. He sighed a little. “The blood of the First Men is strong in many places.”
“In both of us,” she said crisply. “My nephew Paxter has written to me. This Call rang loud in The Arbor. Ships have been sailing North with supplies for the Wall. And more fields are being planted than I have ever heard of before. You are right to concentrate on this.”
He nodded and was about to speak further when there was a knock on the door. He looked over to see a servant standing there. “What is it Corryn?”
“Beg pardon for disturbing you Lord Willas, but Lord Randyll Tarly is here and wishes to speak to you. He and his son.”
He blinked at this and then looked at Grandmother, who also looked surprised. “Randyll Tarly? Here? Very well, show him in.”
As he stood to greet their guests he saw at once that the surprises did not end there. As Randyll Tarly strode in and bowed, his bald head gleaming a little, Willas could see a wide figure behind him. Oh. It was Samwell Tarly, with an odd long canvas bag, as long as from his shoulder to his feet. He’d heard a rumour that the boy was on the point of ‘volunteering’ to take The Black at the insistence of his father. Then he looked again as he gestured at them to sit. Randyll Tarly looked… well, unlike his usual decisive self. Instead he looked uneasy and uncomfortable. As for Samwell Tarly, well he looked as if he hadn’t slept in a week and there might even have been a hint of cheekbone somewhere on his face. He looked as if he hadn’t eaten in a week as well. But there was something else. A gleam of triumph. Odd.
“Lord Tarly,” he began. “How can I help you?”
Much to his surprise this question was met by a strained silence. Randyll Tarly was a man who called a spade a bloody shovel, but for what looked like the first time in his life he looked as if he was speechless. The big man sat there, clenching and unclenching his hands, as his face worked in an effort to get a word out.
It was Samwell Tarly who finally broke the silence. “It’s this Call, you see Lord Willas.”
Randyll Tarly looked at his son with what looked like a combination of annoyance and relief. It was a look that made him seem slightly demented. “Yes,” he finally said. “The Call. It was loud at Horn Hill. Very loud.” And both Tarlys were pale as he said those words, with Samwell nodding hard. “And then… then the dreams started.”
Willas swapped glances with his Grandmother. The two Tarlys had now gone even paler, if such a thing was possible. “Dreams?” he prompted after a moment.
“Aye. Dreams. Dreams of the aftermath of the Field of Fire. Dreams of the death of the nephew of Mern IX, burnt horribly there.” Both men were now a little green, Samwell Tarly more so than his father. “He died days after the battle.”
After a moment Randyll Tarly rallied a little. “Lord Willas… House Tarly is an old one. Horn Hill dates back to the days of the First Men. But we have long been sworn to Highgarden.” He looked at Willas and straightened a little in his seat. “Before the Tyrells we were sworn to the Gardener Kings. We were… we were their First Marshals. There was a reason for that, or so Sam here tells me.”
The younger Tarly had been twitching with excitement and at his father’s invitation he leant forwards. “Tarly is old name, Lord Willas! It dates back to the language of the First Men and it’s… well, it’s two words put together. Originally Tarly meant SpearKeeper!”
This meant nothing at all to Willas – but not to Grandmother, who sat up with a jerk. “SpearKeeper? The Tarly’s held the Great Spear of the Gardeners?”
“Aye.” Both Tarlys spoke at once. And then Randyll Tarly cleared his throat whilst looking very uncomfortable. “It… it was said that the spear was always held in the keeping of the eldest son of House Tarly. Always.”
She stared at them both. “That spear was destroyed at the Field of Fire though.”
Another silence. “The dreams said not,” Randyll Tarly finally said. “And… and the stories that my Grandfather once told me. Tales I thought to be ridiculous. Legends. The babbling of an old man. But…”
“The dreams kept coming,” Samwell Tarly broke in. “And they were… vivid.”
“My son, here… he dreamt them more vividly than others. More so than his brother. More so than… than I did. Or his mother.” Randyll Tarly’s ears had gone an odd red colour and he seemed to have trouble with a number of the words. “So… he was allowed into the library to… look in the books.”
There was something in the air that was odd. Willas looked at the two men. “Allowed in the library?”
Lord Tarly’s ears turned a shade deeper red. “The boy spent too long there as it was. Before. Not enough time training.” His son glared at him for an instant before looking back at the bag again and smirking a little.
“I went through the books,” the younger Tarly said. “All of them. Dating back to the earliest years of the Tarlys, to see how far back we were Keepers of the Spear. And then to the Field of Fire. The records – the hidden records – said that the spear was saved by the nephew of Mern IX. He took terrible burns for it, but he saved it. And then, on his deathbed, he summoned Rickard Tarly to him, our ancestor. He was the one who had brought the spear to the Gardener King.”
“Why did the Gardener Kings not have it all the time?” Willas asked, fascinated.
The Tarlys looked at each other. “It was made by Brann the Builder, they say,” Samwell Tarly continued. “For Garth Greenhand, or his sons at least. The books said that it could be used to rally men, like the Fist of Winter and to dispense justice. It was more than ceremonial, it had power. They… I think that they were cautious about it.”
“The Fist of Winter?”
“A mace. Owned by the Starks. Long lost, the books said. Once I read them that is.” His eyes slid over to his father, whose ears had turned red again. “Anyway, Mern’s nephew gave the spear to Rickard Tarly. Told him to hide it. Said that he’d had a dream.” His eyebrows went up and down again. “He’d tried to warn his uncle. He didn’t listen. And he told the then Lord Tarly to keep the spear until it was needed again.”
Lord Tarly nodded. “The records were very clear about that.” And then he stood and turned to his son and nodded firmly. Samwell stood as well and opened the canvas bag – and pulled out a short stabbing spear, about four feet long and with an odd wide blade with peculiar black things embedded in holes in the latter. He hefted it for a moment and then placed it on the desk in front of Willas. “There,” he said hoarsely. “The spear of the Gardener Kings.”
Willas stared at it with more than a hint of utter bafflement. This was… utterly unexpected. “Where was it again?” he finally said.
“Hidden in the Armoury at Horn Hill,” Randyll Tarly said gruffly. Then, after Samwell cleared his throat meaningfully, he clarified: “There was a secret room built into the Armoury. My son noticed that the inside of one end of it was, erm, shorter than the building measured on the outside. We discovered a hidden door. Lock needed a lot of oil… but one of my grandfather’s keys worked in it. He once told me that it was important. He once told me that the book with the tale that we found in it about the spear was important. I… I paid him no mind. It was just a book. Just a key.” His ears were bright red again, as was the back of his neck and he refused to look at his son. Finally he said in a strained and hollow voice: “I was wrong.”
Another silence and this one let him inspect the spear. It didn’t look anything like most spears that he had ever known. It was all made from some kind of metal, with leather wrappings down the last third of it. It had runes of some sort written down the side that was facing him. And the blade… the black things looked like stones – but some kind of stone that was black in some places, almost red in others and like streaked and murky glass in others still.
Grandmother seemed to have gone into some kind of shock. “The… the Hightowers, the Florents and the Redwynes gave up looking for this after the Field of Fire. They all thought it was gone, melted by the dragon fire. Whoever held it was supposed to be the rightful ruler of the Reach.”
“Begging your pardon Lady Oleanna, that’s why it was hidden,” Samwell Tarly said grimly. “It would have been fought over. And the time had not yet come for it to return to Highgarden.”
“But that time is now?” Grandmother asked caustically. “Why?”
“The Call,” Randyll Tarly grunted. “The Call has gone out. The Others have returned. The Stark In Winterfell needs our help. We are needed. House Tarly will send help to the Wall. But first this had to be brought here. Mern’s nephew left a message. The spear has to go to the man within whom the blood of Garth Greenhand rings true. The man who will find the Gardener’s Rest in Highgarden and restore the spring there. The man whose leg was broken and then remade. The man who saw the Field of Fire through Mern’s eyes.” Randyll Tarly looked at him carefully. “That would be you. Not your father.”
Willas stood slowly and then reached out and picked it up. It was heavy – heavy in an odd way, as if he was holding something heavy with time as well as weight. He could see its use now. Used with a shield… yes, this could be something to stab at any enemy. This was something from an earlier age. A more violent age. Something seemed to shift under his feet a little and he looked about the room quickly before returning his gaze to the spear.
Grandmother was staring at him, or rather at his eyes, for a moment, before shaking her head. “A trick of the light,” she muttered. “Does it have a name?”
“Aye,” Randyll Tarly said. “It does. Otherbane.”
Kevan
The door to Tywin’s solar was closed as he walked down the corridor, but as he approached it the door opened and a Septon came out. Oh. It was that idiot again. Then he looked more closely. The Septon was pale and shaking and looked as if he was about to vomit as he walked down the corridor. Seeing Kevan’s glance at him he gave a ghastly smile and then fled.
He found Tywin at his desk, a look of deep concentration on his face. As Kevan sat Tywin finally looked up. “Astonishing, isn’t it? The power of faith. Or should that be faith in power? Septons!” He spat the last word bitterly and then steepled his hands. “Idiots, the lot of them. Worse – dangerous idiots.”
Kevan raised an eyebrow. “Dangerous? For what reason?”
His brother sighed and then tossed a message across the desk at him. “One of the last messages sent by Jon Arryn, before he was attacked. It warns of a worrying event in the Great Sept of Baelor. Of mutterings amongst the Septons and Septas. And of rumours of the resurgence of the Faith Militant.” This time the last words were said in a tone of unremitting bitterness that made the previous tone seem almost happy.
“Ah,” Kevan said after a moment. “Not your favourite group at all.”
“Not even in the slightest.” He leant back in his chair with what looked like a visible effort of will to appear to be calm. “If there’s one thing that all my years as Hand of the King taught me, it’s that you always look for the slightest sign of the Faith Militant. Everywhere. Because they never truly went away, Baelor’s Law not withstanding. Various High Septons have always tried to have the law repealed. They cited umpteen events, umpteen attacks on the clergy of the Faith. Some were even real. I always said no. As has every other Hand before and since my time.
“They said that it was a question of protecting the Faithful. They lied. It was always about power. There’s always been a balance of power between Kings and nobles in Westeros. Delicate at times, no matter what part of the Kingdom as a whole, but a balance. The Faith Militant was an effort by the Faith to insert themselves into that balance, to become a greater player in this greater game of thrones. High Septons who could call upon knights and others to use the threat of violence… well, at the very least no King would ever be able to control the Great Sept again, still less the Starry Sept. At most… can you imagine it? A King forced to take the High Septon seriously? Oh don’t look at me like that. The last few High Septons have been idiots. I should know, I knew them, or at least knew of them. You should have seen the ones I used to get appointed when I was Hand. Some of them genuinely thought that they had been appointed by their peers!”
Kevan blinked a little. “And the Septon who just left?”
“An idiot. But one capable of listening to facts, namely that any recurrence of the Faith Militant in the Westerlands, no matter what the cause, would meet with my… extreme displeasure.”
And this made Kevan wince a little. “Extreme displeasure? How… final would that be?”
“Oh, the usual. If anyone raises a force of arms on my lands without my permission, that would be cause for their heads to be on spikes soon after. All their heads. Starting with any foolish Septon who might have thought about giving permission for such a group. Oh and the executioner would have a blunt sword.”
“Subtle,” Kevan pointed out drily as he finally started to read the message. “Did it have the desired effect?”
His brother scratched at an eyebrow. “Possibly,” he conceded after a long moment. “I’ll see what his words are worth, if anything. A firm hand and a few object lessons should suffice, for the Westerlands at least. No, it’s the Riverlands I’m worried about. More rumours about fighting near God’s Eye. If the unrest starts to spread closer to us and if it gets anywhere near Golden Tooth I’ll consider more… stern actions.”
Kevan wasn’t entirely paying attention, because he was staring at the message. “The statues of the Seven at the Great Sept have changed? How???”
“A pretty riddle is it not? I wonder how it was done. Some clever Septon. It seems to have fooled Jon Arryn for the time being.”
“And Stannis Baratheon?”
“Ah. That. Yes, that’s the part with worries me. Stannis Baratheon is a dour and humourless man, but if there is one thing that he is not, then that’s credulous. Or religious. If he was taken in by this mummery…”
“What if it’s not mummery? What if it was the Seven delivering a warning?”
“Why now, after so long a silence?”
“The Call.”
A long silence fell, as Tywin sank a little deeper into his chair and glowered at the farthest wall. “The Call. That still puzzles me. I did not hear it, but I felt… something. Something that took me – took us both – to that room. Others heard a voice. A call to aid the Stark in Winterfell. That is something that I cannot explain.”
He shifted his chair a little closer to the desk and looked at his older brother. “Tywin, something is happening. The smallfolk are whispering. They speak of a Long Winter coming. Crops are being planted in places where they haven’t been in some time. Firewood is being chopped, when it is still Summer.”
“I know,” Tywin said. “My own people have told me as such. They also say that help should be sent to the Wall. And then there is talk of the blood of the First Men.” He hesitated and then threw another message across the table. “From Tyrion in Winterfell.”
Kevan peered at it and then looked up, confused. “Did he write this whilst drunk? It makes no sense!”
The faintest part of the beginning of a smile came and went in a heartbeat on Tywin’s face. “He left out the vowels from the more unimportant words in an effort to get the most words in. Clever of him. You just have to think about it.”
He looked back at the message and then started to read it out, stumbling occasionally. “Lrd Stark – Lord Stark, obviously – um, prepares? yes, prepares for war at the Wall. Sent out the Call. Claims that the… Others are coming. Wldlngs… Wildlings, yes, fleeing South. Night’s Watch needs, erm, support. Old Gods have spoken to him. Stark has a direwolf…” He looked up at this. “Old Gods? What nonsense is this? Of course Ned Stark has a direwolf, it’s on his damn banner.”
“You missed out a word.”
“’lv’? What? ‘Stark has a… a…”
“A live direwolf. Keep reading.”
“A live direwolf, that has given birth to pups. Stark children have direwolves now? Boltons, Umbers and Reeds at Winterfell. Appeal to King Robert discussed. Help to Wall coming from all over Realm. Stark worried about Ironborn. Ironfleet building. Balon Greyjoy dangerous. Beware possible raids, coast of Westerlands. Ask Maesters about the Crook in the stars. Erm, he’s underlined this next bit. ‘Winter is coming.’” He put it down. “Most… peculiar.”
Tywin drummed his fingers on the desk for a moment. “Some of the more important Lords of the North in Winterfell? Starks always say that Winter is coming. They’re always right about it. That’s how they’ve kept the North safe through Winters that would freeze even the best-prepared Lannister to the bone. That said… I don’t know what to do now. In reaction to that message that is.”
There was an odd look to his brother, a look of anger and bafflement. The last time that Kevan had seen anything close to that look was the day that he’d heard that Jaime had been appointed to the Kingsguard. “You… don’t know what to do?”
“No!” Tywin spat almost savagely, before seeming to catch himself and then reassemble his calm. “Tyrion says that Stark is preparing for war. Of its own that would confuse me – a war against who? The Riverlands? That would pit him against his dying Goodfather and his wastrel Goodbrother. The Vale perhaps? No, Ned Stark would cut off his own hand rather than attack Jon Arryn’s home. The Iron Islands? Perhaps, there’s no love lost between him and Balon Greyjoy, and apparently the Ironfleet is being rebuilt, which is a bad sign. But Stark holds the Greyjoy heir in Winterfell and Robert Baratheon would adore another war against the Ironborn that he despises so much, so why prepare on his own?
“But Tyrion says that Stark is preparing for a war North of the Wall. That means against perhaps the Wildlings. Except that Tyrion says that they are ‘fleeing South’. Why would Wildlings flee? The Others, of legend? Legend.” He pinched the bridge of his nose for a long moment.
“There are many points to consider here, brother. If I call the banners to help support the Starks then people will ask: why, for what reason? If I say ‘because of the Others’ then they will stare at me as if I am mad. Those that refuse the Call that is. They will say that the Others are a legend of the North. That Tywin Lannister is afraid of ghosts and tales that men tell to frighten small children.”
Kevan looked at his brother. “And what of those who heard this Call and who say that you are reacting to a real threat?”
Tywin stared at the other wall again. “How many who heard that call are still convinced that they heard it at all? Can I risk taking such a gamble? All my life I have striven to make House Lannister a force to be reckoned with again, a force to be feared. I am not our Father and I have always done my best to tell people that. I am not Father, with his weaknesses, his fancies and his theories. But if I say that I believe in this ‘Call’, if say that I believe that something is North of the Wall and coming for us, without any other proof… what then? What will people say? Will they follow, or will they laugh at me?”
Ah. Kevan nodded slowly as he thought it all through. “You need more then?”
“I need more. Tyrion’s letter is a start. He… he has earned a little of my respect.”
“He is a better man than you think, brother. But then I have told you that many times.”
Tywin snorted. “At present he’s the best of a bad lot. Jaime spends all his time thinking up clever things to say. I wanted him at my side instead of in that damned white cape, but he still remains in the Kingsguard, guarding a whoring sot of a man, although the last reports from King’s Landing do say that Robert Baratheon is changing a bit. Cersei? She remains an idiot. Her last letter told me – told me, as if I was hers to command! – that I should press to be the new Hand of the King. Despite that the fact that Stannis Baratheon already holds that position. My daughter… she thinks she’s clever and she’s not. She thinks she’s cunning and she’s not. No, she’s a vindictive little idiot with little idea about the real world.
“Which leaves… the dwarf. Who drinks too much and sees too many whores. And you would have him as Lord of Casterly Rock?”
“I would have you trust him more, give him duties and responsibilities and then assess him on his own worth! Of course he drinks and whores. He has too much time on his hands. Is he doing that in Winterfell at the moment, or is he sending you valuable intelligence?”
A dangerous silence fell as Tywin glared at him, before taking back the message and then glaring at that instead. “We shall see. In the meantime we can look at one thing at least – go to Lannisport and inspect our defences. If Balon Greyjoy is thinking anything particularly stupid then I want to cut his manhood off before his fleets get anywhere even near the Westerlands.”
Oberyn
His brother took one look at his face as he entered and then straightened in his wheelchair. "What is it? You are pale, Oberyn."
He tried to smile a little, but knew that it looked more like a grimace than an actual smile. He was tired, tired and shaken. Plus his hand still hurt from all the writing he had done. "I have been calculating, my Prince," he replied formally.
Doran's eyes narrowed a little. "So formal, my brother?"
"Aye, so formal." He sat down. "Winter is coming. I have spent I don't know how many days on the calculations, backed up with messages to Garin - now an Arch-Maester! - at the Citadel, to check my findings. And what I have confirmed is that a Long Winter is coming. It will be a bad one Brother."
A silence fell, broken only by the sound of water gurgling from pool to pool nearby. "How bad?" Doran eventually asked.
"As long as the Summer has been. Plus or minus a year, depending on the finer details of my calculations."
"Summer has lasted for nine years so far. You are certain that the Winter will be as long?"
He sighed. "The science of calculating the celestial spheres about us, as Garin describes it, is an intricate one. It depends on detailed observations at night, with a Myrish spyglass on a tripod. The only good thing about was the waiting. Ellaria will hold off on the moontea for a while I think." He paused. "I might even decide about... well, we will see. She's thinking about things.
"In the meantime... we know that we are one of a number of other worlds that go around our Sun. Think of it like a great... dance. Our world flings itself about the Sun at the same time as other worlds. The, ah, orbits are not circular. They are ellipses, we think. Combine them all together and you have the most complicated dance in existence. And sometimes... they all align. On one side of the Sun or the other. And sometimes... we are on one side and all the other worlds are on the other. I think that such times... affect us. Affect the tilt of our world. Pull us a little perhaps one way and then the other."
"Hence a long Summer leading to a long Winter?" Doran asked shrewdly. "And... word of the Others? Of magic?"
Oberyn paused and thought deep and hard. "I don't know," he said heavily. "Perhaps things like magic wax and wane because of the dance of those celestial spheres that Garin talks about. Perhaps there are other causes at work. Perhaps... well, I would be a liar if I told you that I know anything for sure about magic, except that it... exists. It might have its own logic, but one other than that of men."
Doran nodded slowly as he absorbed this. "And the Citadel agrees with you?"
"Garin at the Citadel agrees with me. The rest of the Maesters... well, there will be a lot of careful checking of calculations and then arguing about what it all means - there are always Maesters who disagree because of their own theories."
His brother raised an eyebrow. "Theories?"
Oberyn laughed softly for a moment. "I once met a Maester who claimed that we live not on a world but within a sphere. But then he also claimed that sparrows talked about him under their wings when he passed them. Nevertheless, they will confirm my calculations I think. Eventually."
Doran sighed a little. "So in the meantime Dorne must prepare for a long winter?"
"Aye. The good news is that it should not get too cold this far South. And the change of season should mean more rain - we might well be able to grow food at a time when it's too cold for that further North."
"And the bad news?"
"There is a legend told by the Stony Dornish about the last Long Winter - the Long Night they call it. Apparently it snowed everywhere in Westeros. Even here. Who knows what it will be like? We should plan for the worst."
"Very well," Doran said quietly. "I shall start to put together a plan. More food, more preparation, more... planning. And, perhaps, better relationships with the borderlords in the Reach and the Stormlands."
"That might be best, brother," Oberyn agreed, before looking up as Hotah appeared to one side and bowed.
"Your pardon, my Prince, but there is a man here who says that he has news of Lord Dayne."
Doran looked at the hulking captain of his guard and then looked at Oberyn. "Who is he?"
"He says that his name is Myras, captain of the Seahorse - which took Lord Dayne to King's Landing. He has ill news, my Prince."
Oberyn sighed a little and then looked over at the Water Gardens, as Doran did the same. "Very well, Hotah. Bring him here."
The captain was a tall, dark-haired man who looked as if he was bearing a great weight. The moment that he saw them he bowed. "My Prince - Prince Oberyn. I am Myras. It was my honour to take Lord Alster Dayne to King's Landing. It is my sorrow to tell you that he died there."
"I feared that was so," Doran said with a sigh. "He was ill enough when he left here. Good captain - what happened?"
Myras closed his eyes for a moment. "When he boarded he did not say that he was ill, my Prince. I started to suspect it as we headed North though. I wanted to make for the nearest port to seek a Maester, but he insisted that we head for King's Landing. He had to see his son, he said. He was insistent about it...dreadfully so. He had to see his son. So... we crammed on more sail, perhaps more than was safe at times. By the time we were five days from King's Landing he was no longer well enough to stand, let alone make it onto deck. Instead he spent his time in his cabin, writing. Instructions for his son, he said.
"When we got to King's Landing we were lucky enough to find a member of the Kingsguard there. Ser Jaime Lannister. He sent word to the Red Keep for Lord Dayne's son to come at once."
It was hard, but Oberyn somehow managed to keep his lip from curling at the very mention of the word 'Lannister'. Now was not the time, even if the man in question had once expressed regret about what had happened to Elia and her children.
"Ser Davos Seaworth was also there and he organised things to a nicety. Lord Dayne was brought ashore on a litter and a Maester was summoned at once. The Maester... well, he said that Lord Dayne was lucky to have lived as long as he had. And then Lords Arryn and Baratheon - Lord Stannis Baratheon - arrived. They calmed Lord Dayne a little. Before his son arrived."
"He handed over Dawn then?" Oberyn asked shrewdly.
"Aye he did. Ser Jaime brought the blade from Seahorse. And he did not look happy about holding it. Lord Dayne was particular about that blade. Tywin Lannister's son did not appear to be content in holding it. Most odd."
Remembering the feel of the blade when he had laid a hand on it before Oberyn found himself shuddering in agreement. Yes, that damn blade was odd. More than odd in fact. "And then?"
"Lord Dayne's son. Edric Dayne, arrived." Myras bowed his head for a long moment. "Lord Dayne handed Dawn over to him. Told him that he was now the Sword of the Morning. Told him that he had to find a Godswood at dusk. Told him to go to Winterfell as soon as he could. And then he whispered something in his son's ear that no-one else could hear. After which... his son asked Lord Arryn if his father's watch was done. Lord Arryn said yes, it was. And then.... then Lord Alster Dayne died."
The room fell silent, apart from the noise of the water outside. "He will be remembered," Doran muttered after a while. "He was a strong voice for the Stony Dornish. And a noble one. Where are his bones?"
"On board my ship, my Prince. I swore that I would deliver them in all honour to Starfall. And I will honour that promise. He was indeed a good man."
"And his son? Where is he now?"
Myras set his chin a little. "Riding for Winterfell my Prince. With all despatch."
Doran looked at Oberyn, who looked back at him levelly. "Winterfell again," his brother said eventually. "The Blood of the First Men is strong."
Oberyn looked back at the captain. "Our thanks, Captain Myras. Please - continue on to Starfall with our thanks. And a purse of gold for informing us."
Doran gestured at Hotah, who strode forwards, stamped in salute , and then escorted the seaman away. As the pair vanished he looked back at Oberyn. "It seems the Stony Dornish know something," he said. "We must know as much - or more."
Chapter Text
Ned
The lad, Edric, was so like his father. Well, apart from the ears that is. Those were pure Florent. But the rest of him was pure Robert, from his shock of black hair to his blue eyes and his build. He had a warhammer at his back already, a small one, and judging from his muscles he was already practicing hard with it, despite his age.
He watched from a bend in the stairs leading down into the main courtyard. Edric was taking lessons from Ser Courtney Penrose, whilst a fascinated Bran and Robert listened to one side. Those two had become as thick as thieves in recent weeks, combining a love of horses with a penetrating need to bombard everyone around them with questions about... well... everything.
Hearing feet on the steps near him he looked to one side. Cat was approaching and he smiled and kissed her proffered hand gallantly. The Lord and Lady of Winterfell had to keep up certain... niceties. In public at least. In private... well, they both knew that there was a baby coming, but that was not yet cause to stop coupling as much as possible.
Cat smiled impishly at him and then looked down at young Edric. She opened her mouth to speak - and then she looked about them to make sure that no-one was near. "Strange to think that I'd welcome a bastard to Winterfell," She muttered, just loud enough for him to hear. "When I was growing up I was told to hate and fear bastards of any kind. Because they posed a threat to the trueborn. Father always mentioned the Blackfyres. Everyone always held them up as an example."
"Very true," Ned sighed in response. "But this... this is different. He's a trueborn son of Robert. You just have to look at him. Black of hair and blue of eye. He's Robert in miniature - and wielding a warhammer already!"
She nodded and then sank into his embrace a little. Just enough to assuage propriety. "Do you... do you think that all will one day rest on him?"
That was a good question and he paused to think it through for a long moment. "We have to act as if it might. At the moment Robert's true heir is Stannis. But he only has one heir, Shireen - and she is a sickly girl. After that it's Renly. And the rumours that Robb said that he'd heard from people - including you - about Renly and his... let's call them preferences... well, let's just say that House Baratheon needs as much support as possible."
Her face went still for a long moment. He recognised that look. "Oh, no - enough. Do not grieve or worry about decisions you took in a future that will not now happen. You were badly informed. I was apparently juiced to the eyeballs with milk of the poppy by Pycelle in King's Landing - a man who I have never liked as he's Tywin Lannister's creature. And Robb was badly advised. There's much that he now knows, that he didn't know before."
"Aye," she whispered. And then a steely look appeared in her eyes. "And P- I mean, Lord Baelish is no longer about to betray us all. I still cannot imagine it. How he could do such a thing. I thought I knew him."
He directed a sad look at her. "You knew Baelish the boy. You never really knew Baelish the man. From what I have learnt... he became bitter and twisted. And the moment that Brandon tried to gut him like a fish he hated all Starks. Those... the us from that future... we should have seen that. Seen that a mile off. But some fog of madness seems to have clouded our minds. It's gone now. He's dead. We still live. And we must protect our family."
"Aye," she said mistily as she looked at their nephew as he practiced sword strokes with Bran using wooden training swords under the experienced eye of Rodrik Cassel. "Especially from those we thought we loved. I still cannot believe that Lysa did what she did."
"The guards have been warned. If she somehow comes here, then she will be imprisoned in a cell and if she sends word to demand Robert then she will never get an answer. She cannot be trusted. Not with her son, not with anyone."
She nodded again and then buried her head in his chest a little further. "Is there any word?"
"None. If there had, you would have been the first to know. The last message from King's Landing was that Jon Arryn still lives."
"How she could attack him..."
"Baelish's poison," he whispered into her hair. "His poison."
After a moment she straightened up and wiped at her eyes almost angrily. "Ah, Ned, enough of this." Cat looked down at the courtyard. "All the preparations are made. The messages have gone out. They're ready. When?"
"Tomorrow. First light. I'll be there and back before you know it."
This earned him a laugh. "No, Ned, I'll miss you for every moment you're gone. But you've left me enough to do to keep me busy." Then she sobered. "Your plan for the Broken Tower..."
"Might not work. But it will still start the repairs needed at the very least."
She looked back down at Edric. "If we do win at this... if Robert discovers what we know about his 'children'... what if he marries again?"
He felt his face grow solemn. "The Long Night comes. We fight for the Wall. And after that Winterfell, if the Wall falls. There's a war coming, the like of which we cannot imagine. Robert needs an heir he can point to as a credible alternative to him if he dies. I care not if it's Stannis or Edric, or some boy yet to be born. But I swear by the Old Gods that I'll keep that boy alive long enough for Robert to make a choice and to know that he has such a choice available."
Cat looked into his eyes for a long moment. "I understand she said seriously." And then she kissed him lingeringly, before descending down the stairs and then talking to Bran and Robert, both of whom looked flushed from exercise.
He smiled a little and then strode back up the stairs briskly. There was much to do.
Tyrion
The first hint he had that he was no longer alone in the library was a rumbling crash as a book fell off a shelf. Quite a large book by the sound of it. This was followed by the sound of a youthful, and rather familiar, female voice muttering a number of words that Tyrion would have bet quite a number of Dragons that her mother would be horrified to know that she knew.
There was then a pause, interspersed with the sound of pages being flipped. And then, muttering. Quite a bit of muttering. Tyrion cocked an ear and picked up the occasional word here and there. Like: “Useless” and “Where’s the bit I need?” and then “Bugger it!”
He pursed his lips in thought for a moment and then carefully closed the book in front of him, having marked the place, before getting down off his chair and padding towards the source of the noise as soundlessly as possible.
As he had thought, the source in question was young Arya Stark. She was sitting on a large chair with a huge book in front of her and she was rifling through the pages with a lack of care for the contents that made him wince. After a while she finished, scowled furiously and then slammed the book shut. “Useless!”
“What is?” Much to his gratification he saw how high she jumped at the sound of those two words. Then she caught sight of him and her eyes widened.
“The Im- Oh! I’m… I’m sorry. Lord Tyrion. Erm. Sorry?” She looked as if she was about to die of embarrassment.
“You’re not enjoying your book then?” He asked after a long moment.
Arya Stark looked down at the book and then scowled again. “What? Oh. No. It’s useless. It doesn’t contain anything about what I need.”
He looked at her quizzically and then down at the book. The title: ‘A True Hystory of Ye Legendes of Ye North’ confused him more than a little – surely a true history of legends was something of an oxymoron? – so he asked the logical question. “So – what information are you searching for?”
The girl looked about the room carefully and then bent down a little. “I want to know how-” Another quick look about the room. “-How to become a warg!”
“A warg.” He said the words carefully, trying them out on both his tongue and his brain.
“Yes! A warg! My ancestors were Wargs! They’re in the crypts, with their wolves.”
He blinked a little. Someone had mentioned that, but he had not gone there just yet. “Your half-brother mentioned that you were a warg. Or rather the Old Gods did through him.” He still didn’t like remembering that. The red fire in the eyes, the voice, the feeling that he was about to piss himself in terror as something older and vaster than anything he could ever imagine peered at him.
The girl all but danced from foot to foot for a moment. “I know! The Old Gods called me ‘Young warg’!” The dancing ceased. “But I don’t know how to be a warg. None of the books or the legends say anything about it. They’re useless!”
He looked at her for a long moment as he considered a wide range of potential issues. “And what,” he said eventually, “Would you use any wargish – is that the right word? – powers for? What would you do as a warg?”
She looked at him as if he was raving mad. “I’d be a warg! Isn’t that enough?”
He sighed and then pulled up a chair and climbed into it. “Frankly – no. Everything I have read about magic so far tell me that it has a price – that you must have a good reason to practice it. You cannot simply announce that you to warg for the sake of warging.” He paused. “You seem unconvinced.”
“I have Nymeria!” She snapped the words. “I could warg into her! And then I could bite Sansa on the arse!” At which point she blushed more than a bit. “That sounded wrong, didn’t it?”
“Very likely. Let me ask you a different question. Surely you wouldn’t want to hurt Nymeria, would you?”
Arya Stark frowned and then shook her head furiously. “Of course not! Starks of old were wargs and didn’t hurt their direwolves! Why would I? Besides – that’s what I’m looking for. Information on how to warg, safely.” Her angry expression softened a little. “She relies on me. And I’d never hurt her!”
Tyrion looked at her for a moment. All of a sudden he needed a large goblet of wine. “You obviously haven’t asked your father about this, as he would have forbidden it. Then I suggest that you keep reading – and make sure that you put all the books away afterwards. In the right places. Otherwise Maester Luwin will be irked.”
She looked rather alarmed at that – and then, hearing the sound of footsteps to one side she darted away and vanished in the stacks. Tyrion sighed and then looked at the doorway, where Luwin was standing. “Maester Luwin.”
“Lord Tyrion.” The Maester approached the table and then looked at the books there. After a moment he moved his head to one side slightly – and then he sighed. “I see that Lady Arya has been in here again, looking for ‘a big book that tells me how to be a warg’?”
Someone left out a harrumph not too far away, quickly silenced, and the two men smiled at each other for a moment, before the Maester smiled wistfully. “She is Lyanna Stark come again, Lord Tyrion. I knew her only briefly, but the same fire that burnt in her burns just as bright in young Arya.”
“I would not want to be the man who is fated to get close to that fire,” Tyrion muttered. Then he looked back at the Maester – and at the book he was carrying. “And what do you have there, Maester Luwin?”
“A book that I thought might interest you, Lord Tyrion. It was amongst the books and other writings that we found in Lord Stark’s solar, a book that I have only recently discovered.” He held it out – a thin, slim volume that looked as if it was hundreds of years old. “It contains notes written by the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch of some two hundred years ago. About the time of the abandonment of the Nightfort. Not his journal – that has been missing for many years. But the notes themselves are singular. They hint at more information, possibly hidden at Castle Black. And the name of that Lord Commander…. Lord Tyrion, does the name Tyrek Lannister mean anything to you?”
“I have a cousin of that name,” Tyrion said slowly. “But there was also once a younger brother of an ancestor of mine… about thirty years before the Dance of the Dragons. I think he joined the Night’s Watch. There’s a bit of a blank spot in the family history that I read when it comes to that bit, to be honest.”
Luwin’s lips thinned for a moment. “The honour of serving in the Night’s Watch was fading by that point, I’m afraid. Especially in the Great Houses of the South, as King’s Landing grew in influence and power and splendour.” He spat that last word. Then he made a slight gesture of apology. “Your pardon, Lord Tyrion. Here in the North…. Well, we have long been used to how little the South thinks of the Wall.”
He thought about the reports that had been arriving of the descendants of the First Men sending help to the Wall, as well as the arrival of the Clans from the Vale, and smiled a little. “I think that you’ll find that that has changed, Maester Luwin.”
“Aye, it has. Well – you need to read this.” The Maester turned to a particular page and handed the book over.
Tyrion looked at it with a frown. ‘I, Lord Commander Tyrek Lannister, having ordered the abandonment of the Nightfort, due to the growing enfeeblement of the Night’s Watch, have ordered that certain chests containing document and other artefacts pertaining to the secrets be concealed there. Lord Stark is to be kept informed of this. And when the time comes to reclaim the Nightfort, as I have forseen, then the second son, short of stature but great of intellect, of the Proud Lion will go there to reclaim what is his – and to help open the Black Gate for the Wanderer.’
Invisible ants seemed to crawl up and down his spine for a moment. After a while he looked up at the older man. “This all makes it sounds dreadfully obvious that very thick underwear and a lot of furs lie in my immediate future.” It was a weak jape, but the best he could manage in the circumstances.
“I think, Lord Tyrion, that you must join Lord Stark and the Lords of the North at Castle Black.”
“I think, Maester Luwin, that you are very right about that.” He sighed. This was not going to be a pleasant trip, he suspected. It would instead be fast and arduous. And what was he going to ‘reclaim’?
Varys
He sat there and forced his fingers to be still as he read the message. He prided himself on his ability to be calm and still and he needed to be so now more than ever. It was just that… he couldn’t quite bring himself to believe it. Illyrio Mopatis, a man who had forgotten more about fighting due to his time as a bravo than Varys could ever possess… was dead. Killed by an insane Viserys Targaryen. Or rather attacked by Viserys Targaryen before they both fell into a fire.
A shudder ripped through him. How had this happened? What had driven the boy over the edge so quickly? It had taken Duskendale to start Aerys’ descent into madness. What had driven Viserys mad? His nickname of the Beggar King? His poverty? The dragon egg that Illyrio had given him and which he had started to regret?
He stood abruptly and then took the message over to the nearest candle and burnt it. As the parchment crackled and burnt he stared into the flames for a long moment. Fire. Such a destructive thing. But it had its uses. His career had been partly founded on it. Few knew this, but Aerys Targaryen hadn’t just brought him to Westeros to spy for him. There had been another reason. Summerhall. Aerys hadn’t believed that the tragedy had been an accident.
And unless he very much missed his guess, Aerys had been right. It had been hard to ascertain the facts. Too much time had passed to get to the exact truth, the exact culprits. Too many questions. Why was it that the dragons had diminished in size? Why had the line of dragons failed? Why had the dragonlore failed the Targaryens? That much he did not know. So, then, why choose Summerhall as the place to rebirth dragons? Why not Dragonstone? The latter had a volcano, warm tunnels and all the accoutrements needed to breed dragons. What did Summerhall have?
It had been totally under the control of the Royal Family. It should have been a safe, controlled, environment. It should have been perfect. Instead it had turned into an inferno that had claimed a King, a Prince and the lives of umpteen others. And why? He suspected the Maesters. Why? Because they were not keen on magic or on dragons. They were an affront to their tidy world of books and facts. He understood that and he had some sympathy for it. Magic was too unpredictable, too wild, with costs that few understood. He knew however. Knew all too well.
He’d brought his findings to Aerys, only to have more tasks thrown at him. Who was plotting against the King? Who wanted Aerys dead? What was Tywin Lannister doing? Why was his son, Rhaegar, learning how to fight all of a sudden? Paranoia had burnt bright in the breast of the King. And beyond the paranoia lay madness. Increasingly severe madness.
The more he thought about the more he’d wondered about if his own actions had contributed to it. Aerys had thought many things, mostly about disloyalty all around him. Every lord had been under suspicion. Even Tywin Lannister. A thousand little things that ordinarily meant nothing had combined until Tywin Lannister had no longer been trusted. And then, after Aerys had humiliated Tywin with Rhaegar’s marriage to Elia Martell instead of Cersei Lannister and Jaime Lannister’s enrolment in the Kingsguard, the King’s oldest friend had been utterly alienated and had resigned and returned to Casterly Rock in a high dudgeon.
That had only increased Aerys’s paranoia. Everyone was now plotting against him. Varys had had only one real major success after this point – the discovery that some kind of plot against the King might be discussed between a number of Lords Paramount and Rhaegar at the great tourney at Harrenhall. Even then that ‘success’ had been a mixed one. All attending the tourney had been horrified at his appearance – long, unkempt hair, long nails, eyes like red coals in the snow. And even after that Aerys still sank even deeper into paranoia and madness. Which had led to the crowning madness of what had happened to Rickard and Brandon Stark. He’d known, right there and then, that disaster would follow. As one burnt to death and the other choked on his own blood he’d known that the Targaryen’s were, eventually, doomed.
That brought back more bad memories. Aerys had always been odd about wildfire. After the deaths of the Starks… well, he’d become even more obsessed by it, if such a thing was possible. Watching him as people burnt to death in front of him, as he giggled and then pawed at his sister-wife… well, it had been the nastiest, riskiest period of his life. He’d been running on the edge of a knife the entire time. Knowing that one misstep would – not could – kill him.
It had grown worse after the news came of disaster at the Trident. Rhaegar dead, his army scattered, the rebels advancing rapidly, no friendly forces anywhere near, lord after lord turning their coat, the court filled with whispers and long silences… Aerys had killed messengers bearing bad news and traitors. At one point he’d even screamed to burn the ravens, until Pycelle had somehow persuaded him that the birds were loyal. That had been a surreal conversation to overhear.
And then it had all come to an end. Tywin Lannister’s betrayal, the deaths of those members of the Royal Family in the Red Keep. He often wondered about the final details of that. There had been rumours of some kind of plot that Aerys had been working on, something that had involved wildfire. The reports about the causes of the resignation and death of Lord Qarlton Chelsted were… highly suspicious. He had tried to find out more, but Aerys had always made it perfectly clear that Varys should never – ever – spy on him. Not if he wanted to live.
Looking back, he wished that he had had his current flock of little birds in place back then. He’d been young and callow back then. Well, younger.
He’d known what had driven Aerys’s obsession with wildfire though. It ran in the family. Aerion Targaryen had died screaming after drinking a cup of the substance, thinking that it would transform him into a dragon. He had always wondered if Aerys had thought the same thing. Dragons. It always came back to dragons.
And now, almost to make a mockery of it all, Summerhall, the desperate desire of kings long dead for dragons, the petty whims of her father, the Rebellion, and so on, Daenerys Targaryen was now the mother to three dragons.
He winced a little and then paced about the room. The problem was that he had no idea what to do at the moment, not really. He had crafted a plan with Illyrio and Connington, with the connivance of the Martells, a plan that had a reasonable chance of success. Robert Baratheon had been a terrible king so far. Grief had hollowed him out and he’d tried to fill the void with wine, food and women. It hadn’t worked. The boy Aegon would make a better king. He was controllable, well-educated and free of the taint of Targaryen madness.
Or he would have. Suddenly the gameboard was changed, the pieces moving in different ways from those that had before. Perhaps this was an old form of the board, an ancient one? Had the First Men had a Game of Thrones? Of course they had, it was as old at time itself. But there must have been times when it was placed into abeyance perhaps. Times like now. The Call had changed everything. The eyes of many men with the blood of the First Men were not on King’s Landing, but rather on Winterfell. And the Wall. He could see it all so clearly now.
It had taken time. He’d had to clear his mind of more than a few layers of disbelief, more than a few illusions that he had cherished about the world and the way that he had thought that it worked. So many people had changed their ways. So many things had been found. Stormbreaker had not been the first, he knew that. Ned Stark held something as well. And there had been rumours about the Tarlys.
And then there were the other things. The Blackfish had been seen heading towards the God’s Eye. Something odd was happening there. Fighting was one thing, but there were also reports of men and women dressed in green, with antlered hoods. The Green Men were stirring for the first time in centuries. Something was happening at Raventree Hall, something to do with the supposedly dead heart tree there. Something old was stirring, something ancient even by the standards of Essos. He knew that. Anyone who didn’t was an idiot.
The Queen was just such an idiot. Of all the players in the Game she was the least likely to recognise that the Game had changed. That King Robert was changing before her very eyes. The Demon of the Trident was sloughing off years of fat and inertia, a man with a purpose once more. Why did have to be her as a player in the Game? She was a sad shadow of her father. He was a challenge. She was not. She thought she was clever and she wasn’t. She thought she was subtle and cunning. She was, in reality, as subtle as a brick. And any cunning she had was that of a desperate rat. That said, even desperate rats could kill.
At least Baelish was gone from the Game. He had always known that he was a threat, but the true nature of that threat had only become apparent after his death. The list of people he had bribed, the number of men and women suborned… he had suspected that the list had been long but had been quietly stunned at just how long. And for what? What had Baelish been striving for? Even now he didn’t understand it.
He pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment. The King would be sailing for the North in an hour. King’s Landing was all astir. What to do? Stay or go to Pentos? Daenerys Stormborn was now a major player in the Game. The rules were different in Westeros, but in Essos there were certain… certainties. The Magisters would treat her well, with great hospitality – and then they would start asking questions about her intentions. Would she be willing to use her dragons – once they were grown of course – on Braavos? Oh, yes, they’d sell their souls to her for the chance to use those dragons on their hated enemy. And on anyone else. Perhaps Volantis after Braavos?
Stay or go? Forgo the changed Game here for the Game that he was familiar with in Pentos? He had to make a decision, and soon. Stay…. or go?
Asha
There were three dead men at the entrance to the harbour at Ten Towers. All had been Drowned Men. All had been hanged. She stared at them as the Black Wind sailed past the point and then on to the Long Stone Quay. And then she sighed. Oh, she could feel it in the air now. War. Strife. She shook her head for a moment.
Dale was waiting for her at the quay, whittling on a piece of wood. Judging by the shape it appeared to be a… miniature tree? Odd. “He’s at High Harlaw again,” the man drawled as he jabbed his knife at one of the little shaggy horses that were tethered nearby. “Wants to see you. Has news.”
Asha stared at him. “News?”
Dale nodded and then started carving again. “News.” Then he looked up. “Men on the point are Damphair’s men. Your nuncle caught them ranting about him. No-one was listening. Then they tried to draw steel. Bad idea.”
She raised her eyebrows at that, before nodding and then mounting the horse and riding it up on the long winding road that led to High Harlaw. And as she rode she noted – again! – how much was happening around her. Men were sowing fields, whilst others cleared brush. The Iron Islands had long since lost their great trees, but there were still the odd sapling here and there. Farming was a hard task on the Iron Islands. Here on Harlaw they were making every effort at making it work. It worried her.
When she finally reached High Harlaw, her mind dark with worry, she found her nuncle Rodrik in a makeshift study, a table piled high with books next to him. He was talking to a woman with long black hair who must have been about ten years older than her. From the way that they smiled at each other Asha realised that the two were close. Very close. Odd. He’d never spoken about anyone other his late wife before. Who was she?
He caught sight of her and an odd look crossed his face, a combination of surprise, guilt and determination. “Asha, well-met,” he called out. “I would like you to meet someone. This is Alyse.”
“Lady Asha,” Alyse said, her voice low and polite. “I have heard much about you.”
“But I have heard little of you,” Asha blurted, before blushing a little. “Nuncle?”
“Your pardon. Alyse and I have known each other for some years now. We had an… understanding.” The was an odd expression to use, unless he meant that she had had a husband who was old or infirm or was in his dotage. He cleared his throat. “We were married two days ago.”
She stared at them both. Her nuncle had never ever mentioned the possibility of him marrying again. Her face must have reflected everything she was thinking, because after a long moment he smiled ruefully. “I wanted to hide Alyse from your Father’s attention. And Damphair. I wanted to keep her safe. Especially as she… well…”
“I heard the Call very loudly,” Alyse said with a quiet strength. “And my family does not worship the Drowned God.”
Ice trickled up and down her spine for a moment. “I am come from Old Wyk,” she said hoarsely. “And the Stonebrows there. They deny the Drowned God as well. As do many others.”
Nuncle Rodrik went still for a long moment as he and his new wife both stared at her. “The Stonebrows? What of them?”
She sat in the nearest chair and pulled the stone out of a pocket. “They asked if you were awake yet. They asked why you have not yet sent for the stone.”
Alyse merely looked puzzled, but her nuncle went as white as a sheet. “The stone… I didn’t know…” He caught their looks at him and abruptly stood, before pacing back and forth for a moment. Then he stopped and looked at them both. “When my grandfather lay dying he sent for me. He made very little sense, but what he did say has always stayed with me. He said that one day the Stonebrows would send word. That one day the stone would be returned and the Harlaws could see things clearly again. And then he died. I never knew what he meant and my father said that the words meant nothing but now…” His eyes turned to the stone. “Who gave you that?”
“Elys Stonebrow. My childhood nurse. She said… she said that it would help you to read the runes. That Harlaws were overly clever and that perhaps you were not told about the runes and the stone. But she gave it to me anyway. Said that it would answer your questions. Once you placed it at the start of the runes.” She hefted it thoughtfully and then carefully handed it over to him.
Her uncle stared at it for a long moment and then he clenched it in his hand. “Very well. Let us see what this will do.” As they all stood and walked across the room to the door that led to the corridor and the stairs he seemed to recollect something. “Oh – your brother has written to me. A number of most… interesting… letters.”
Theon had written? “Interesting in what way?”
Nuncle Rodrik paused as he took a burning torch from a wall bracket. “Interesting as in what he asked. He asked about the Greyjoy rebellion. About your Father’s motives and strategy. And he asked a very good question.”
“What question?”
“If your father was an idiot or not. Not in those exact words of course, but from the way he phrased it I suspect that he’s guessed the truth.”
Asha pulled a face. She’d wondered at times just what kind of a life Theon had in Winterfell. He’d been a proud boy from what she remembered of him. Nicer than their older brothers, but still proud and oddly needy. What was he like now? She had no idea, but from the sound of things... “What else did he ask?”
“Questions about the history of the Iron Irelands. Questions about the Drowned God. Oh and something odd – if there were any legends about people dreaming about an island made of bones.”
“An island made of bones???” She laughed. “Why would someone dream of anything like that?”
“I know not – and yet it’s an oddly specific question is it not?”
She thought about as they passed down the stairs leading to the corridor and then slowly nodded. “Mayhaps,” she said reluctantly. “But what did he mean?”
“I have written back to him to ask,” her nuncle replied as they reached the corridor and strode towards the room where the light still feebly flickered. “Especially for more details about the Call. You see, your brother was there when Ned Stark sent it out. He was there, Asha. No mummery. He was there. And his letter on it was… sobering.”
They trooped into the room and Asha stared at the flickering runes with disquiet. She suddenly had the oddest feeling that her life was about to change in ways that she did not understand. “I must read that letter,” she said in a hoarse voice. “We need more information on what happened.”
Nuncle Rodrik was peering at the wall where the runes started – and then he gave a surprised grunt. “There is a place for this,” he muttered as he lifted the burning brand closer to the wall. Asha looked closely and could suddenly see a depression in the wall next to the first line. The Reader reached out his hand and – after juggling it around a few times hesitantly – finally slid the stone into the wall. Nothing happened for a long moment and just as she was starting to almost hope that this was all a mistake something flared within the stone, as if a part of the sun had been trapped in its heart and was now making a bid for freedom. Brighter and brighter it shone – and then suddenly the lines through the runes seemed to shimmer and fade and the runes themselves suddenly blazed with light, so much so that Asha and the others all raised their hands to their eyes for a long moment as the room seemed to almost shake with something that she couldn’t describe.
When she opened her eyes again and peeked through her fingers she gasped. The light had diminished but it was still clear and she looked about the walls in astonishment. The runes could now be read. All of them.
Nuncle Rodrik and Alyse were already at the wall where the runes started, reading and muttering to each other as what certain runes meant and she watched them for a moment. Those two seemed a good match. They were both fascinated by the runes.
Then she frowned. The other two were silent now and as she watched they continued to read the runes but grew more and more pale by the moment. Now the looks were filled with shock and even perhaps horror. In fact Nuncle Rodrik was more than pale as he reached the end wall, he was grey and his hands shook as if he was about to have an apoplexy.
“Asha, bring wine and a cup at once!” The command came from Alyse, who was watching him worriedly and even though she was not used to taking orders from anyone, Asha ran when she heard that note of command, ran as if her life depended on it. Up the stairs she dashed, along the corridor and into the room where she had met the others. There was a jug of wine on the table, with a stopper in the top, along with a couple of rather battered goblets and she grabbed them all and returned, trying to hurry at the stairs but not to break her neck.
She found them both by the door, still pale and wan, but Nuncle Rodrik’s hands had stopped shaking. That said, they both fell upon the wine with grim but thankful looks at her. Both swallowed a goblet of wine almost in an instant – and then they both stared at the runes again.
“I never dreamed…” Alyse muttered, only to be cut off by Nuncle Rodrik.
“No-one did. No-one could. This is as bad as I had feared. We must guard this room with our lives, because our lives depend on it. Damphair… if he knew what was said in these runes then he would kill anyone who read them, before burning this place down to the bedrock to destroy it.”
“Aye,” Alyse muttered shakily. “That he would. But what now?”
“Nuncle,” Asha broke in. “What do they say?? You acted like a man suffering from a palsy when you read them!”
There was a pause as the other looked at each other. And then her Nuncle directed a long and intense look at her that made her feel deeply uneasy. She’d seen that look on his face before, but directed at others. It was the look he gave people that he was measuring up.
“Are you sure you want to know?” He asked the question in a low and intent voice. “You will not be the same after I tell you what the runes say. You may never be the same ever again.”
She looked at him and then at the runes and then again back at him. “Tell me.”
He paused for a moment and then he nodded, before handing his knife over to Alyse. “Guard the door if you please. We must not be overheard.” She nodded back choppily and then went over to the entrance.
Asha watched all of this with a deepening unease, before looking at her Nuncle as he walked back to the start of the runes and then gesturing at her to join him.
“These runes,” he said in a low and intent voice, “Were carved by my ancestor. It says so, here.” And his hand gestured at a section of runes. “The Harlaw, it says. It’s… it’s an older name than I ever dared consider. Runespeaker, or Runecarver is the translation I think. And it tells a terrible tale.”
He took a deep and shuddering breath into his lungs for a moment and then let it out again. “The Old Gods are many. And there was once an additional one. But this one… was twisted. Became twisted. Was wrong. Became... obsessed with death in the fight against the Others, until he went, well… mad.”
Nuncle Rodrik gestured at another part of the wall. “The Old Gods… they tried to bring him back, but it was too late. The madness took hold and would not let him go. Death and coldness and madness, the madness of chaos. That was all he came to care about. All he desired.”
His hand went to another part of a different wall. “So they cast him out,” he said in a voice like ashes. “Out into the darkness of the sea – and the abyss that lies below it, populated by cold and terrible things that we know not. The Old Gods rejected him and condemned him to death in that darkness. But how can you kill a god? They both succeeded and failed. Succeeded in driving him away but failed in killing him. It sent him into that final pit of madness and despair – all so close to death.
“Not that that worried his followers. And he did have followers. Dark souls amongst the First Men they were, bitter and twisted themselves. They fled the mainland to follow his spirit. Because, as they said, ‘What is dead can never die, but-”
“But rises again harder and stronger.” She whispered the words in total horror. She felt cold all of a sudden, cold and clammy and she heard the glugging noise as he filled a goblet with wine and thrust it into her unresisting hands.
“Drink.” It was a command that she could not disobey and she gulped down every drop before coughing a little. Not a fine vintage, but it mattered not.
“Nuncle-” She started to say in a voice filled with despair, this time he overrode her.
“The runes are clear Asha. Very clear. That’s why they must have been hidden. They tell of the fall of the Drowned God and the arrival of his followers in these islands. They came here and they slowly converted or subverted the First Men here. Until they controlled what became the Iron Islands. And could openly worship their mad god.” The last words were said as if they pained him.
“The Old Way – the Ironborn way? It feeds him, or what’s left of him. Death, destruction, rape, pain, mutilation… don’t look at me like that Asha. You know what your uncle Euron was noted for before his banishment. From the reports I’ve heard of him he’s still a monster.”
He ran his hands over his face as if wiping something away. “Fargh. Well now. As I said, the room must be guarded. I will copy the tale that the runes tell.” He paused. “There is something else. The runes say… well, they say that the end of the Drowned God will come when the Stark in Winterfell wields his fist against him. In one of Theon’s letters… well, he wrote that Ned Stark had found something in Winterfell. The weapon of his ancestors. A mace. It has a name. The Fist of Winter.”
She needed another mug of wine after this. If she had been horror-struck before she was now terrified. “What will happen?” She asked the question in a faint, low, voice.
“I will send word of this… discovery to various people. Lords that I trust absolutely, here on Harlaw. I think I must also send word to the Stonebrows, to say that the Harlaw is awake. And then… well, I think you know what I must do. Will you stand with me or against me?”
She looked at the runes again and then saw the look that her nuncle was giving her. There was concern in it, but also an implacable will. She knew that he would always do the right thing. No matter what it cost. But she also knew something else. Old Wyk had changed something in her and now this room had pushed her again.
It was still an agonising decision to make. Nuncle Rodrik would be fighting Damphair. She cared not what happened to Damphair, as he was a religious lunatic with blood all over his hands. But he was also a cunning beast. And he had the ear of Father. But then was Father any better, really? Was he wise in planning to attack the North in revenge for his defeat? Was he really an idiot? And what would happen with Theon?
She swallowed. And then she made her choice. “I stand with you.”
Jon Arryn
The darkness was smothering him. Every time he thought that he was clawing his way out of it, it pulled him back down again, down into those black depths. He dreamed in that blackness, dark and terrible dreams. The ruin of the Realm, the death of his son, the deaths of Robert and Ned, the deaths of his kith and kin. He relived the deaths of all that had been close to him, and saw again Denys fall at the Battle of the Bells, to the sword of Connington.
And then there was Lysa. She was always there, somewhere, dressed in blackness, her face twisted and her dagger ready. That was the worst dream of all. She killed him again and again. She killed young Robert and then blamed him. She blamed him for everything. And there was blood. Blood everywhere.
Dark dreams. And then… something shifted. Robert. He could hear Robert. He was faint, he sounded strained but as if he was trying to be cheerful. He was leaving for the North. Leaving to find out what was going on. Leaving for Winterfell. A raven had arrived from Ned. Young Robert was doing well, flourishing. Learning to ride a horse apparently.
Robert faded away and the dreams took him again. The Battle of the Bells again. And then the Ruby Ford – only this time Rhaegar won. Robert went down, his massive form slumping into the water, the great Warhammer broken, he had been too late again, always too late, his legs too slow, his frame too old, his mind too feeble.
Wait. What had Robert said?
Learning to ride a horse. It rang through him and pushed him up out of the darkness. His son needed him. An Arryn should ride a horse. An Arryn should know of the Knights of the Vale and how to fight. He clawed his way up, exhausted but still trying. Up from the shadows, out from the darkness.
The dreams chased him, clawed at him, flailed him with shards of bitter memory and terrible nightmare. Failed, came the words, failed. You have failed the Realm.
The voice sounded like Baelish – and that was another reason to fight, to claw out of the darkness. He was never going to let that piece of filthy thieving scum win, not now. His shade might slither out from the Seven Hells, but if needed he’d kill even that oozing remnant. No, Baelish would not win.
Sounds began to filter through the thick cloth that seemed to be wrapped around him. Someone talking? Pycelle? And… Quill. He struggled again, the cloth tearing and ripping as he struggled to get through it. Robert needed him. The Realm needed him. No - his son needed him.
It felt as if every part of him had been dipped in lead, so great was the struggle to move, but at long last he finally managed to crack an eyelid open. He felt exhausted – and hungry, but that was as nothing to the thirst. His throat was parched.
He looked about as much as one half-open eyelid would allow. There was someone moving on the other side. A… man? Yes, a man. A Maester – and a young one. He looked as if he was reading something.
It once again took a massive effort but after a long moment he was finally able to make a noise. It was little more than a gargle, but the Maester’s head shot up as if he had shouted at him. “My Lord?” The man stood and peered at him. “Lord Arryn? Was that you?”
A nod of infinite slowness – but it was enough to get the Maester buzzing around him. “You are awake? Can you hear me? Oh, this is most welcome news, perhaps that last poultice helped, what was in it again, I need to consult my notes…”
He opened both eyes and glared at the man properly, who finally fell silent. “What do you need My Lord?”
“Wa…ter. Dr…ink.”
The Maester cursed at himself and then poured a glass of what looked well watered wine and then carefully brought it to his lips. It was like nectar. He gulped every drop with increasing strength, before leaning back weakly. “Quill…”
The Maester nodded and then hurried to the door. “Quill!” He barked the name earnestly. “Lord Arryn is awake!”
The door burst open and faithful Quill ran in, straight to his bed. “My Lord!”
He struggled to more than smile. Then he finally found the strength. “Quill. How… long… have… I slept?”
“Many days My Lord. Many days.” Quill looked terrible, thin-faced and gaunt. “I… have lost count.”
“Water… more… water.”
“Aye My Lord,” Quill barked, before jumping to the nearest pitcher. Another glass of watered wine and he felt fresh strength enter his body.
“My Lord,” the Maester said carefully. “Do… do you remember who attacked you?”
His chest heaved for a moment as the grief stabbed through him. “Aye.” He licked his lips slowly, chasing the last morsels of moisture. “Lysa. Lady… Arryn.”
Quill and the Maester exchanged looks, one of fury and one of weary acceptance. “We thought as much My Lord,” Quill said eventually. “Your dagger was found with blood on it and she was seen fleeing the city with an injured arm.”
He swallowed the pain and the grief and then focussed on what was foremost on his mind. Robert. He had to be told. The Great Matter… he had tarried too long on it. What if he had died? It would have been left to Stannis to tell his brother, and whilst Stannis Baratheon was a good and dutiful man, he and Robert had never gotten on that well. They were too dissimilar at times – whilst being similar at other times.
“I… must… see the… King. His Grace.”
This time the two men exchanged looks of deep bemusement. “I fear you are some hours too late My Lord,” Quill said – and terror spiked through his mind. Had the Lannisters moved so quickly? Had Cersei manipulated her way against Robert?
“How… so?”
“His Grace has sailed for the North. To meet with Lord Stark.”
Relief filled him. Not too late then. Not too late to secure King’s Landing. “Who… has acted… in my… stead?”
Quill looked down at his feet for a moment. “His Grace said that… that he needed a full time Hand, My Lord. The new Hand of the King is Lord Stannis Baratheon. He has not left yet, but he is scheduled to do so. Something about dealing with unrest in the Riverlands.”
Relief was replaced by wonder. Gods be good, had Robert started to mend the breach with his brother? And done something sensible? “Then… ask the Hand… to attend me.” Then he sniffed. He stank. “But first… a bath. And… food.”
Quill nodded and left, barking commands at guards as he went. He watched him go and then set his jaw. There was much to be done. The Realm needed him.
As did his son.
Robar
Young Edd looked worried as he slipped through the hole in the hedge and then scurried over to the men as they sat by the small fire in the pre-dawn darkness. And his first words sent a shiver of dread through him. “They’ve arrived.”
He looked up from his task of sharpening his sword. “How many?”
“I counted forty of them. Five more were talking to Old Blackfeet.”
Heh. The name for the mad Septon had taken after all. He frowned a little. That man was no Septon, not a real one. Anyone who roused smallfolk to do evil things in the name of the Seven was going against the words of the Seven. Hmm. There were times when he wondered just which road he might have taken if he hadn’t heard the Call and been drawn here to the God’s Eye and the good people that were here. “Did you hear what they were talking about to him?”
“Their leader was asking about what needed to be done. Apparently we’re all pagans who need to be thrown into the arms of the Stranger.”
The other men laughed a little and muttered insults, but he could tell how tense they all were now. They’d been lucky so far. Old Blackfeet had the tactical instincts of a small child at times. He had sent his ‘Faithful’ three times down the road that them now, all armed with as motley a collection of weapons as he could imagine.
He and the villagers had ambushed them each and every time with volleys of arrows. The man around here (and many of the women) were good hunters and could use their bows well. They’d gone after different game this time and they had made Blackfeet’s Faithful have second, third and fourth thoughts about going anywhere near the village, the only place in the area that had boats.
It hadn’t been all one-sided though. The Faithful had bows of their own and they’d used them. And last time they’d used their numbers to try and press home, to charge them. He’d killed five of them himself, messily and very visibly, before they had broken again and ran. They’d left five villagers dead behind them and another ten wounded. And the village couldn’t lose any more men.
And now Old Blackfeet had more recruits. Hedge knights. Men with armour. “Are they mounted?”
“They are.”
Well, fuck. “Aim for the horses then.” He ran a weary hand over his face. “And we use the hedges as much as possible. If we can get them to charge home across Warrenfield then they might lose some of their numbers to holes in the ground.” He was reaching a bit now, but he had to show confidence.
Young Edd nodded and then looked at them. “Any word from the Isle?”
“Nothing new. Old Edd went off with Lake Sprite just after dusk. No word of him since.”
He nodded. Then he looked at Robar. “Will they sing songs of us do you think?”
That depended on the matter of any of them surviving. “Perhaps, lad. Perhaps.”
A silence fell. “It isn’t right. They can’t win. They’re in the wrong.”
He sighed and laid a hand on the lad’s shoulder. “Edd, there are times when evil men win and good men lose. This isn’t a song. The songs leave the bad bits out, like evil winning over good. All we can do is fight – fight the best that we can. We have to protect the village and the island. They can’t get to it. Not the Isle of Faces. It’s the last true place where the Green Men still reside. All we can do is our best.” He paused. “All we can do is our best,” he repeated softly.
He stared into the fire. They’d need the few precious spears they had. And they’d have to hope that the hedge knights were led by an idiot. But somehow he knew that they probably weren’t.
He was right, he thought an hour later as he stared at the road leading down to the village. The hedge knights were in a line on the left hand side of the road, away from the hedges and not on the side that held all those lovely rabbit holes. They had already sent a few scouts out into the copse to one side, the one that was just over the hill. Fortunately he’d pulled his men back from there already. Too obvious. No, this was going to be a battle of horsemen with demented idiots at their back against a grim pack of men and women with spears and bows.
And they didn’t have enough spears and despite the best efforts of the fletchers they were running short of arrows.
“Archers, aim for the horses. We bring some of them down and they might bring others down. Spearmen – stay together. Horses will not charge spears. Not if you hold firm. Swordsmen, axemen – when they flank us aim at the eyes of the horses. Cruel, but the more they rear the less their riders can fight. We stand here. We fight here.”
Grim nods greeted these words. And the words that were unsaid. ‘We die here’.
The hedge knights didn’t bother with a parley. They started to trot down the hill towards them, their leader at the front. He gritted his teeth and stared at the man. He was in old plate armour that looked as if it had been made before the first Blackfyre Rebellion and his shield was red with seven white stars painted on it. Yes, the Faith Militant.
“Steady,” he warned. “Archers, stand ready!” They came on. He watched them come on, measuring distances in his head. He was distantly aware that someone was shouting his name somewhere behind him but he ignored the noises. He had to wait until… now. “LOOSE!”
Twenty bows sang almost one and a score of arrows flew through the air and into the horsemen. Perhaps five of them hit and at least one horse went down in a flail of hooves and blood. Not good enough, he thought, not good enough.
He opened his mouth again – who was it back there who kept calling name? – but before he could order another volley a horn blew to his left. Bold and brassy and a challenge to all that heard it – and then horsemen poured past the copse.
He gaped at the galloping newcomers. They were all dressed in green cloaks, with what looked like chainmail armour. One of then held a spear with a banner on it, a banner of a white tree with red leaves on a green background. And they were led by a trio of riders. Two looked familiar and he stared at them in shock. The Blackfish and that strange tall young woman. And the third was a tall man in what looked like plate armour with a helm that had horns on it. He stared. Was that the King? Wait, no, there were no Baratheon colours on him and there were no Kingsguard.
There were only twenty of them, but they were at full gallop now, spears and swords glittering in the sunlight. The leader of the hedge knights had seen the newcomers and was trying to get his men to turn, but it was hard to turn at a gallop.
The green men slammed into the side of the hedge knights and all was chaos. Hedge knights fell under sword and spear and the green men pressed home with a grim intensity. Behind them the crowd of Faithful had stopped in shock.
The leader of the hedge knights had turned his horse and then spurred at the tall man with the horns, recognising that this was the leader. But as he raised his sword the horned man moved just as quickly. He parried the blow almost effortlessly and then whipped out a backslash to the throat that left the man reeling out of the fight, red liquid sheeting down over his chestplate, before falling from the horse lifelessly.
That broke the hedge knights, or rather the few that remained. The Blackfish had killed at least three or four of them and the blonde women had matched him body for body. As the hedge knights galloped away the horned man held up a clenched fist and the green men rallied around him. A few looked as if they were injured, but none seriously.
The crowd of Faithful gaped at the horsemen – and then another horn sounded and more appeared from the left again, banners snapping in the wind. The crowd started to waver – and then the horned man stood up in his stirrups, threw back his head and roared. It was not a loud noise – or it didn’t seem so – but he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.
The crowd fled. One minute they were staring at the man and the next they were running as fast as they could, leaving whatever they were holding behind him.
Some of the green men had unslung bows and were sending shafts into the chests of the few men who were trying to rally the Faithful – no small thing from the back of a horse – and as he watched the last of the rabble vanished off into the distance. It was only then that he realised that he had been standing there like an idiot, before letting out a shout of exultation. The others stared at him and then joined in, relief on all of their faces.
It was then that he saw Old Edd approach, his face wreathed in smiles. “I was trying to find you!” The older man grinned at him. “I got them over as fast as I could. Me and old Timmins, and everyone else they could find to haul a sail. The wind was kind to us. Just as… he… said it would be. The Green Man, that is. Him there.”
He nodded, his heart suddenly too full for words, his eyes bright with unshed tears. And then he saw the Blackfish approach, leading his horse, with that blonde woman in armour next to him.
“Still alive then Robar?”
“Still alive. Good to see you Ser Brynden. You brought friends then.” He looked at the other man and noticed that he was wearing a green cloak as well. So was she. And they both had cloak pins in the shape of horns. “You found what you were looking for then?”
The Blackfish exchanged a long glance with the woman. Brienne… that was her name. He’d only ever heard it the once and it had been what felt like an age and a half ago. Yes, Brienne. Brienne of… Tarth. He could see Young Edd staring at her with admiration and not a little fear as she cleaned her blade on a cloth.
“Oh, we found a great deal on the Isle of Faces,” the Blackfish said wryly. “A lot of Green Men for a start.” He looked at him again. “How bad was it here?”
“Not as bad as it could have been. They weren’t expecting us to fight, not really. And that Septon leading them… well, he was no soldier. If he’s with the dead then you’ll know him by his black feet. As dirty as his soul. He used them to better his standing. Or he intended to. But we lost good people here. A score dead and wounded, all told.”
“They will be remembered. Remembered as the Green Men go forth for the first time in many a long century. There is much that needs tending, some in very unlikely places.” The words came from the man with the horned helmet as he walked his horse up to them. As he dismounted Robar realised that he was old – very old. How did he have the strength to wear that armour? And then he took his helm off. No. It couldn’t be. He remembered seeing him once from a distance…
“You… you are the Green Man? But surely-”
“I was once a different man,” the Green Man said with a sigh. “Yes. I was once Ser Duncan the Tall. T’was an age ago now, or so it feels like. Before I found a different duty.” He straightened a little. “I have one last campaign within me. One last battle to push back the night. Now – you are Robar Glovett? Ser Brynden spoke of you. Spoke highly of you – as have others. And you have done well here. You have protected these people against fearful odds.”
The Green Man drew his sword. “So – kneel.”
He sank to one knee in a daze. The sword touched one shoulder and then the other lightly.
“Rise Ser Robar. The Others come. The Stark calls for aid. You are needed.”
Jon Stark
He found Robb in the Godswood, sitting in front of the Heart Tree with Ice on his lap. He was staring at the bared blade, an odd expression on his face, as if he had never seen the weapon before. As Jon approached he seemed to return from some far away place in his mind, before looking up.
“Jon.”
“Robb. Father sent me to find you. It’s almost time.”
Robb nodded – and then he smiled wryly at the blade. “Peculiar to have a blade that you can clean and polish but never have to sharpen ever again. There are times when I look at it and barely know what to do with it. I’ve seen Father wield it so many times, but to hold it is… beyond words.”
He looked around carefully and then sat down next to Robb. “But surely,” he said softly, “you must have wielded it in that… that other time?”
Robb shook his head. “No,” he said in just as low a voice. “Father took Ice with him when he went South to King’s Landing. And I never saw it again. The Lannisters kept it. When I fought it was with an ordinary blade.”
Shock roiled through him. The thought of Ice in the hands of anyone who was not a Stark…
“But it’s not just that I was thinking about. It’s all the faces I see here at Winterfell that were dead in that other time. Not just Father. Luwin. Jory Cassel. Rodrik Cassel. Septa Mordane. Harys. Will. They all went South with Father or they died here in Winterfell. And yet here they are now, alive and well. I feel like a ghost from the future at times – a future we can’t allow to happen.”
He spent a long moment trying to imagine what it would be like to not have the people that his ‘brother’ had listed alive. It was… not something he liked to consider. Rodrik Cassel and Luwin were two of the rocks that Winterfell was built upon. And Jory was a good friend. They all were. Even the Septa – well, she always meant well.
“Oh, there are other things,” Robb sighed as he stared off at the trees again. “I was married in that other time.”
He stared at him. “Married?”
“Aye. Jeyne Westerling. That’s what got me killed by the Freys.”
“I don’t… I don’t understand.”
“I was supposed to marry Roslin Frey. It’s… it’s a long story. One I’d rather not think about. I’d go mad otherwise, thinking about what could have been.”
“Then don’t. Think about it that is. Stay in the here and now. Father’s alive. The Others are coming. We have a war to fight.”
“Aye… aye. I wish I’d known about the Others before. It would have changed everything. But then there’s an odd thing.” Robb rubbed his chin. “There’s one difference, between this time and the other.”
“What’s that then?”
“Walder.”
“The guard who fences with Jory at times? What of him?”
Robb shifted a little, his face puzzled. “I don’t remember him like that. He was different. He lived in the stables and he was a simpleton. All he ever said was one word – Hodor. And that’s what he was called.”
This was mad. “What sort of a word or a name is ‘Hodor’?”
“I don’t know. It must mean something.”
He thought it over. “And that’s the only difference?”
“Aye. I overheard him talking to Jory the other day about horses. He knows a lot about horses, Walder does. Odd though. They brought me back – so why change that one thing?”
Jon stood. “Something to think on. Now – we have to get ready.”
“I am bloody ready,” Robb said with a sigh as he stood himself. “My saddlebags are ready. Are yours?”
“Aye.”
“So who are we waiting for?”
“Father needs to say his goodbyes.”
Tyrion
He looked at the book on the table worriedly. “It’s the only one of its kind. What if I drop it in a puddle? Or trip and drop it off the Wall?”
“I’d advise against it doing either,” Dacey Surestone said in a voice that was almost as dry as the sands of Dorne. “Just read it. I have all of Father’s notes and also his rough draft of it, anyway, just in case you do fall off the Wall or disappear in the Nightfort.”
He peered at her. “How touching.”
“Just bring it back.”
Tyrion nodded and then looked at the other books. “These three I think.”
“Not a bad collection.” There was a short silence. “At least you’re dressed properly for this trip. How long do you think you will be?”
“I thought a month at least. However, when I asked GreatJon Umber he laughed a lot and said: ‘When Ned’s in a hurry he travels like shit through a goose’. Not a metaphor I like the sound of. But with the staging posts, and the boats at the Long Lake and the repairs to the road… well, I have no doubt that I at least will arrive at Castle Black as one huge saddlesore.”
“Old Nan gave me some ointment for you.” She passed over a small stone jar.
He peered at it somewhat dubiously. “I suspect that I’ll need a barrel of it. But thank you.” He paused for a moment. All of a sudden he seemed to feel the need to fill the air with witty banter but for some reason all the words he wanted to use failed to assemble themselves in his head. Just before he opened his mouth again he heard the sound of hurried footsteps and they both looked around to see Arya Stark bolt into the room and look around wildly.
“What’s wrong Arya?” Dacey asked with an odd tone in her voice.
“Dacey! Father needs to see you at once! I heard him say so! And I need to say goodbye to Robb and Jon! And Septa Mordane wants me to be ladylike and I can’t, so… wait… where’s Nymeria? Oh! There she is!” And then she ran out again.
Tyrion and Dacey stared at the doorway for a long moment and then she looked back at Tyrion and sighed. “I’m told that Cousin Lyanna was just like that. Impulsive is too dull a word to describe her.”
“She likes you a lot.”
“She can’t understand why I read so much though.” She sighed and then stood. “I need to find Ned. I suppose that he’ll be outside. I wish that was coming with you. With you all I mean. The Nightfort! What a chance to record and study the place!”
He gathered up his books, placed them in the backpack that he had bought especially for the trip and then got down off the chair. “I still wish I knew why I was going. Truly knew.”
“You have been summoned, Tyrion,” she chided him lightly as she strode along next to him down the corridor. “Summoned by the Old Gods themselves.”
They found Lord Stark in the courtyard, in full riding garb and talking quietly to Lady Stark and their eldest son, as well as the former bastard. Theon Greyjoy was to one side in riding garb, looking very serious. He’d heard that the Greyjoy was coming with them as well. He still wondered why though. Brandon Stark was standing to one side looking mulish.
The moment that Ned Stark saw Dacey he stiffened a little and then beckoned her over. Tyrion wen with her, partly through incorrigible nosiness and partly because Emmon was standing to one side with the horses. The Westerlander was still in Winterfell, as Captain Harklin had sent word from Father himself that Tyrion needed a retinue. Emmon was that retinue.
“Dacey, my Goodbrother, Edmure Tully, has sent a raven. Ser Willam Bootle has been found and arrested on suspicion of murdering your father and stealing your inheritance.”
She stopped dead in her tracks, the blood visibly draining from her face. “Truly?”
“Truly,” Lady Stark said with a small smile. “He was apprehended about ten miles North of Seagard. And he still had everything from Surestone.”
Dacey was shaking slightly now. “Everything?”
“Everything,” Lord Stark said with a grim nod. “You will have Surestone back, cousin. I swore it and it shall be so. He’s coming back for questioning and trial. You are the heir to Surestone, not him.”
“There must always be a Surestone in Surestone,” said a quiet, level, voice to one side, and Tyrion looked over to see Roose Bolton standing there by his own horse. “Every Lord of the North knows that. This… Bootle… will pay. I knew your father, Lady Surestone. A good man.”
“Aye,” rumbled GreatJon Umber from the top of his large destrier. “And he could hold his ale.”
Lord Stark nodded again and then looked at Dacey. “By the time we return he should be here. And you will have it all back, cousin. Lady Surestone.”
“Thank you Ned,” she whispered just loudly enough for Tyrion to hear. And then, more loudly: “You have my thanks Lord Stark. Surestone thanks you.”
“Think nothing of it.” Lord Stark looked around the courtyard. “In my absence, my son Brandon Stark will be the Stark in Winterfell. Something he will take very seriously. Now – my Lords! To horse! We ride to Castle Black!”
There was a great susurration as men mounted horses. As Tyrion mounted his own with the aid of Emmon he looked around. Lord Stark was embracing Lady Stark, whilst his family looked on with various looks of amusement (Rob Stark, Sansa Stark and Jon Stark) and revolted astonishment (Arya Stark and Brandon Stark).
As he settled himself in his own specially designed saddle he felt a hand on his leg and looked over to see that Dacey was standing next to his horse. “Tyrion Lannister – you come back in one piece,” she said in a low intent voice. “I will... show you the library in Surestone one day.”
He took her hand in both of his. “Of that I have no doubt, my Lady. And I shall return. I promise it.”
And then somewhere in front of them a horn blew and the small host of mounted men stared to ride towards the opening gates. He released her hand, took the reins and then urged his horse forwards. Well, now. Time to see the Wall.
Jorah
The great harbour, of which White Harbour was named, was filled with shipping. Every kind of ship seemed to be there, from Dornish galleys to cogs from the Reach to some of the… odder… ships from Essos.
He sighed as he leaned against the railing of the ship and looked at the wharf that it was now moored to. The Company of the Rose had come home and its homecoming looked to be deeply emotional already by the looks on the faces of people like his distant cousins, one of whom had tears trickling down her face.
Feeling awkward he looked away and back to the wharf. And then he sighed a little. There was a man on a horse staring at him. Staring at him as if he could not believe his eyes. He was a fat, bald man with a walrus moustache and Jorah knew him at once because they had once fought side by side at Pyke. Ser Wylis Manderly, the eldest son of Lord Manderly.
The big man dismounted laboriously and then strode onto the wharf. Jorah sighed and then turned to Leera, who was looking about the harbour in wonder. “I have been recognised.”
She looked about slightly wildly, caught sight ofg the approaching Ser Wylis and then scowled at him. “You fear him?”
“He was my friend once. We served together against the Ironborn.”
“I shall get The Stone.” She scurried off. He watched her go wistfully and then took a deep breath and moved to the gangway that led down to the wharf.
As he approached the bottom he saw that Ser Wylis was standing there motionless, one hand on the pommel of his sword. A long moment passed and then the Manderly finally spoke. “You’re a lucky man, Ser Jorah Mormont. A lucky, lucky, man.”
“How so?”
“My father’s not here at the moment. You know what he thinks about… those who commit the kind of crime you did.”
He shivered a little. Oh yes, he knew. “Ser Wylis-”
“That was your first bit of luck. My father sailed for Eastwatch-by-the-Sea four days ago, leaving me in charge. He’s off to Castle Black, at a meeting of all the Lords of the North, as summoned by Lord Stark.”
Jorah’s skin crawled for a long moment. The Lords of the North were converging on Castle Black? Then something occurred to him. “My first bit of luck? What was my second?”
The big man in front of him harrumphed for a moment. Then he looked him in the eye. “A raven came from King’s Landing this morning. A fast one by the look of it. It had a message from the King. ‘Ser Jorah Mormont has been pardoned, his exile is ended.’ Just in time to greet you. Otherwise I’d have you dragged off to a cell by now.”
“Ser Jorah Mormont has been very helpful to the Company of the Rose, and is under my protection,” said a voice behind Jorah and he turned to see Edric Stark and Leera walking towards them both. “But you say that he has been pardoned?”
“He has. The Company of the Rose, you say? And who are you?”
“I was once The Stone, the leader of the Company of the Rose. The Company is about disperse back to its families. And I am Edric Stark.”
The look that Wylis Manderly sent at Edric Stark combined utter astonishment with no small amount of shock. “Edric… Stark? Are you a relative of Lord Stark?”
“He is my cousin. Many times removed.”
The eldest son of Lord Manderly did an excellent impression of a fish for a long moment, before rallying. “I think that some ravens must fly today. To Castle Black and Winterfell.”
“I think that many ravens must fly. I need to send one to Winterfell myself, to tell of our return formally. The Starks had a hand in the creation of the Company of the Rose – and that it all I can say at this point. In addition there are scions of most of the main great houses of the North, along with some that died out here in the North. They will need to plead their cases to the Stark in Winterfell. Oh – and then there are Manderlys amongst us.”
Ser Wylis gaped at him again. “Say what again?”
Edric Stark looked about the growing crowd behind him and then pointed to a stout man about ten years younger than Ser Wylis, who had a small flock of family around him. “Godric Manderly.”
The younger Manderly stepped forwards and bowed formally. “Greetings cousin and well-met.”
After a moment Ser Wylis rallied and bowed back, before stepping forwards and clasping forearms with his cousin. “Well-met indeed. This is a day of unexpected joy. Welcome home, cousin. Welcome home to your family too.” He looked around. “Welcome back to you all!” he shouted. “Welcome back to the North! Your exile is over!”
And the shout of joy that arose from the people assembled there seemed to Jorah to shake the sky itself. But he still noticed as Leera slipped her hand into his and squeezed it, before whispering into his ear: “Welcome home my love. Welcome home.”
Chapter Text
Jon Arryn
Stannis Baratheon, much to his surprise, was a curiously solicitous guest for a man still recovering from a terrible wound. He sat next to his bed and was quiet and thoughtful and didn’t raise his voice and boom encouragingly at him in an effort to raise his spirits. Robert had done that the last time that he’s been ill. It had taken hours for his ears to stop ringing.
Instead Stannis had come, to inform him about what had been done in the name of the Realm whilst he had been… asleep. The first thing he’d told Stannis had been what had happened.
“It was Lysa,” he said in a voice that shook far too much for his liking. “It was my wife, as I told Quill and the Maester. She attacked me with a knife. She was mouthing… madness. Mentioned Baelish’s name. She wanted me dead, kept telling me to die. Called me a horrible old man. I… did my best to defend myself. Pulled my own knife. I think… I think I got her in the arm. And then I fell. Last thing I remember is her kicking me in the head.”
He sat there for a long moment, his hands plucking at the sheet fitfully. He felt old and frail suddenly. “I did not know. That… that the death of Baelish had sent her mad. I did not know. My own wife.”
“You should not blame yourself. Madness is madness. And there are times when my own wife… well I don’t know what she is thinking. Even though I have spent more time recently with her than-” And then oddly enough he turned slightly pink and coughed a little.
Jon raised an eyebrow at him. “Are you well?”
Stannis Baratheon stared at his hands intently for a moment. “It’s nothing, really. Something that Baelish said, about it being no wonder that my wife has only given me one living child after only sleeping with her once a year. I… I realised that peculating traitor that he was, he might have been… right. About that one thing.”
He sighed. “At least you have that. Has there been any sign of my wife?”
“None.”
He leant forwards a little. “Is the room secure?” He whispered the words.
Stannis looked about and then nodded, before lowering his own voice. “Yes, but it would be wise to speak quietly. If you wish to speak of the Great matter… well, it remains unresolved. You were wounded and even though I had been made Hand there was never time to tell Robert. He… he has met the boy at the blacksmiths. Met him and sent him to Storm’s End.” Stannis paused and then shook his head a little. “Something has changed within Robert. He is driving himself hard to become fit again. He thinks that there’s a war coming. Something involving this Call. He’s been practicing with Stormbreaker. And walking around the practice yard with a log on his shoulders. It’s as if ten years have fallen off him.”
This was good, in a way. If Robert was throwing off that terrible slough of despondency that had taken him over in recent years… “You have a plan then?”
“I do. I shall be sailing for the North myself in five days,” Stannis said grimly. “Ser Davos’s son, Devan Seaworth, will captain my ship, a man almost as good as his father in sailing. I should have gone with Robert, but I do not like these reports of unrest in the Riverlands and Crownlands – there is talk of the Faith Militant reappearing. And other talk of… odd things in the places where weirwoods once grew. White saplings.”
Jon peered at him worriedly, before nodding slowly. “I need to contact the Vale and discover what has happened there as well.”
“Which reminds me - your man Quill has a stack of messages for you. Are you up to it?”
“I should be. There is much to be done. I do not think that there would be much objection if I brought in more guards for protection.”
Stannis looked at him. “More Baratheon guards as well perhaps?”
“Aye.”
“Good, then that is the first part of my plan. More men here in King’s Landing, men to gain an advantage of any Lannister trickery. Cersei and her faithless brother will be isolated in the North. Between the men I’ll bring and Lord Stark’s men, we will have the advantage.”
“Ned knows something. He sent me a letter some months ago warning me of Lannister plots. I know him better than you do – if it will help I can give you a letter to show to him that will confirm what you tell him and secure his complete co-operation.”
There was the faint sound of teeth being ground together and then Stannis nodded slowly. “Very well. You are right that I do not know Stark very well. Robert knows him best.”
Jon thought back to the angry argument that Ned and Robert had had on the day that Tywin Lannister had presented the latter with the bloodied bodies of Rhaegar Targaryen’s wife and children, before sighing. The two of them had been closer once. That day had driven a wedge into their friendship. Hopefully time had healed much.
“The Great Matter must be resolved. And then there is the matter of the Call. I sense that it is just as important.”
“Aye. And the Realm kept together – which will be the hard part. I admit that.”
Before Jon could reply the sound of shuffling feet pronounced the arrival of Pycelle, who beamed cheerfully at him. “Ah! Looking better already My Lord? Yes, yes, there is more colour in your cheeks.”
Jon smiled slightly, unwilling to show how much he distrusted the man. “I am stronger, Grand Maester. Lord Stannis here was just telling me of matters of the Realm. The unrest in the Riverlands.”
The old man blew his cheeks out with a wheeze. “Religious affairs are not my purview of course, but they do worry me My Lord. Much hatred of old things and disbelief in new. Now – how is your head. Does it ache still?”
“Not at all,” he said honestly. “Although I still do tire easily.”
Pycelle smiled a little. “The body is an amazing thing My Lord. It can recover from the most grievous injuries – but fall victim to the tiniest of things. I think that your body has been taxed mightily, but that you will recover. Time and rest is the answer. Time and rest.”
“I wish my son was here,” Jon admitted quietly. “Seeing him would rally my spirits mightily.”
“Grand Maester, will Lord Arryn be fit enough to sail for the North with me?” Stannis asked unexpectedly. “His son is in Winterfell.”
The Grand Maester harrumphed at this, before poking and prodding at Jon’s healing wounds carefully and then looking into his eyes. “I think that that is a decision for tomorrow perhaps, my Lord Hand. We must judge matters carefully.”
Jon looked at Stannis and was about to open his mouth to disagree with Pycelle when he heard boots running down the corridor, boots that stopped suddenly at Quills barked command to stop at once. There was a gabble of low voices and then the door creaked open to reveal Quill with a young Maester.
“A message from Dragonstone, for Lord Stannis Baratheon! Marked most urgent!” The Maester waved the message around and Jon could see that it bore a red ribbon – something that made Stannis Baratheon stiffen in alarm.
“Approach!” Stannis barked. “That’s the ribbon marking a priority message. Cresson’s own invention. Something important has happened at Dragonstone.” He was white as a sheet now and his hands trembled a little as grabbed the proffered message with a grunt of thanks and then opened it quickly. His eyes flickered as he read the message – and then he froze into place, his eyes wide and his skin pale, as if in shock.
After a long moment Jon exchanged a worried glance with Pycelle, who was also peering at the Lord of Dragonstone with great concern. Then he looked back at the new Hand of the King. “Lord Baratheon? Lord Hand? Stannis? STANNIS BARATHEON!!!”
The younger man started a little – and then handed over the message. “Read… read that.”
He uncurled the message. “’Godswood discovered on Dragonstone by Shireen Baratheon and Gendry Storm. Old passageway in cliff, sealed for centuries. Weirwood trees found. Shireen possessed briefly by Old Gods. Greyscale scars all gone, burned off by red fire that left no mark. The Call has been heard in Dragonstone. Shireen well. Command us.’”
There was a long moment of shocked silence – and then Pycelle emitted yet another harrumph. “Impossible! There is no Godswood on Dragonstone, no Weirwood trees! Your Maester Cresson, Lord Stannis, must have been drunk or addled in the head when he wrote this!”
“There’s no Godswood on Dragonstone, Grand Maester,” Stannis muttered in a voice that sounded dazed. “You’re right about that. But Cresson might be old, but he has never been addled. He would not have written that message, or assigned that ribbon to it unless he meant every word.” He passed a shaking hand over his face. “If my daughter is indeed now unmarked by greyscale… how can that be?”
Pycelle sighed. “My Lord,” he said sorrowfully, “There is no way to remove the scars from the disease. Much was done to arrest it on your daughter. But to reverse it? It’s just not possible.”
Stannis took the message back gently from Jon’s fingers and then leant back a little in his chair, the message waggling slightly as his hands shook. “Cresson… Cresson would not have lied. Not Cresson. He all but raised me after my parents drowned. What should I do?” He whispered the last four words.
Jon answered his question for him. “Sail for Dragonstone at once. At once, Stannis. There can be no other option for you. If your daughter is indeed free of the greyscale… well, you must see her at once.”
“Aye,” Stannis said dazedly. Then he paused. “No… I am Hand of the King and I have my duty here. Perhaps if I send my wife-”
“You planned to go anyway – just go earlier. Be flexible and adjust your plan! I can give orders on your behalf from here. Your duty will be done – but your daughter needs you more now than she has ever done before. If this is true then her life had changed. If it is not true then you have merely advanced your planned move North. Either way – go, my friend.”
Stannis looked at him again, an almost wild look, or as close to undecided as he had ever seen Stannis Baratheon look in his life. “If that message was about my son then I would go at once myself. I want nothing more than to see him again. You can do your duty and see Shireen at the same time. Go.”
There was a long moment – and then Stannis swallowed convulsively and looked to the door. “I need messages sent! One to my wife, to come here at once. And one… one to Devan Seaworth. We sail on the next time.” And his hands shook no more.
Aemon
The ravens cawed quietly as he fed them the scraps that had been placed in the bucket. Feeding them was something of a challenge at times – it helped when there was someone else there – but it also gave him a chance to think. And he needed to think.
The chests were not even partway emptied and their content studied, but what he had found – or rather what had been read to him – was enough to confirm many of his blackest fears. Objects had been found, things that were supposed to have been passed down from Lord Commander to Lord Commander, things that were supposed to have given them warning that something ancient and evil stirred North of the Wall.
But these were also just a fraction of what had been lost – broken or thrown away or misplaced or just ignored. The last Lord Commander at the Nightfort had realised that memory was something that constantly ebbed the more time passed after an event – and as it had been many centuries since the Others had been seen, the memories of what to look for had faded and dimmed down to the merest spark.
By the time that had become necessary to abandon the old headquarters of the Night’s Watch there had been a danger that that spark might gutter completely. He’d had the words of that last Lord Commander read out to him. It spoke of his worries about if the Targaryens would understand the need for the Night’s Watch, if they would listen – or if they would let it dwindle away.
That Lord Commander, one Tyrek Lannister, had been right. His ancestors… they had not listened. Not really. Oh, they had paid lip service to the Night’s Watch and their ancient duty… but with the exception of the New Gift and the jewels of Alysanne, they had done very little. The Watch had dwindled down almost to extinction.
So he knew why those boxes had been bricked up. Precious knowledge had been preserved. But there must have been some plan, some hint, about it somewhere in the records. Some object or record that would have told future Lord Commanders where to look and what to do. Any help would have been better than no help at all.
He huffed in exasperation. Well, at least they knew now. Which didn’t make it that much better, given the amount of work that needed to be done on the abandoned castles on the Wall.
Floorboards creaked as a pair of boots clumped closer to him and he paused. “Yes?”
“It’s me, Aemon.”
“Lord Commander. How may I help you?”
Jeor Mormont seemed to sigh as he leant against what might from the sound of it have been a post. “That last raven from Winterfell brought news from Ned Stark. He’s ordered the Lords of the North to meet here, at Castle Black, as soon as possible.”
The hairs on the back of his neck rose. “He has called his banners?”
“Nay – just a council of war, or so the message says. He intends to give us all available help.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “A shame, then, that the First Ranger has left for the South already, and that the other cages have been sent off to South.”
“I know.” A pause. “I have been thinking about sending out a party to the Overlook, with orders to follow Benjen’s instructions about that place to the letter, in order to find one or two wights. We have more cages available for… parts to exhibit.”
Aemon pursed his lips a little in thought. “I have a better idea – why not ask Mance Rayder about sightings of wights and help with that? If, as seems likely, we need to work with the Wildlings… well that might be a useful first step.”
A long silence fell. “A good idea,” Jeor said reluctantly. “Let me think on it for a day.”
“Lord Commander… we need to put aside old hatreds. Both we and the Wildlings live. The true enemy is the dead – and the Others that animate the dead and desecrate them.”
“I know,” Jeor Mormont groaned. “But shaking off the habits of a lifetime and of past Lord Commanders – it is easier said that done. Far easier indeed.”
“And yet – it must be done. I have much research to carry out. There are many chests still to go through.”
“Aye – which reminds me. One of them contains a journal. That of one Tyrek Lannister, Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch.”
Excitement flared within him. “The man who ordered the abandonment of the Nightfort?”
“The very same. Why?”
“I was hoping to find more of what he planned after the chests were bricked up – if he left some record or artefact that we somehow missed about the cache.”
“Then I shall read this journal aloud to you. Shall we start in an hour?”
“Aye – we shall indeed!” And he felt curiously alive.
Daenerys
The sea. It sighed to her, called to her. That blue expanse beyond the headlands. The place where the ships vanished into the far distance. She could feel that pull more strongly now. Westwards. Why? What was it?
She sighed and then looked about the grounds. She didn’t look at the house behind her, where the repair work was still going on. Somewhere someone was watching her. From a distance. She wasn’t used to people being afraid of her. She’d seen people acting nervously around Viserys, but then her brother had always had a short temper. For people to all but tiptoe around her though… well, it was strange. And uncomfortable.
It was the dragons. They were curled up in a ball of multi-coloured scales wings and snouts in the padded sling that she had around her neck and over one shoulder for comfort. It was a temporary solution, and one that she needed to find an answer for, as they were growing. Slowly, but they were growing.
But… she had to admit that it wasn’t only the dragons that people were afraid of. She’d heard a few people talking about her. Most called her Daenerys Stormborn. But there were others who called her Daenerys Silvereyes, and that frightened her more than a bit.
Her memories of that night were… mixed. Confused. She didn’t remembering the madness that had consumed her brother, she didn’t like to remember how he had talked of killing her. She didn’t like to remember how Magister Mopatis had saved her life – by killing her own brother and perishing in the same flames.
And then afterwards – flames around her and the smell of smoke and other, more terrible things that she didn’t want to remember smelling and then… then that cold, strange moment when she felt as if something very old and very surprised (and more than a little insane) had suddenly noticed her. It had only lasted a moment but it had been enough to terrify her – or had it been just a moment? She couldn’t remember getting rescued afterwards. She’d just suddenly woken up after someone had wrapped a cloak around her nude body – and then realising that she had three live dragons on her.
Dragons. The thought of it still stunned her. Her family had bred them, flown them…. And then died trying to get dragons back again. She knew why Viserys had been so desperate to get a dragon. She knew what had been behind his madness.
At least she had a lot of information about dragons. Many books had been brought to her by the Magisters, many weighty tomes on the care and management of dragons, or at theories about the care and management of the dragons of Old Valyria, before the Doom.
She shook her head a little. The scroll had shaken her deeply. She’d found it in her room that morning, in with one of the books. And what it had said had shaken her.
I write as a friend of Illyrio Mopatis, and also as a loyal counsellor to your Royal Father. By now you will have been given many books on dragons by the Magisters of Pentos. Do not trust the Magisters – they have their own reasons for giving you those books. They have little intention of helping you reclaim your father’s throne. Instead they will want your dragons to attack Braavos, so that they may have their revenge. And then they will use them to attack the other Free Cities. There will never be enough time to help your campaign for the Iron Throne. Be careful, be cautious and be wary in what you promise. There is much you do not know about what has happened of late in Westeros. You are not alone – I will soon come to offer what help I can give you.
It was unsigned, but she knew after some thought that what it said had a great deal of merit. The Magisters had asked her quite a few questions and then asked her seek the answers in the books. How much damage could the dragons cause if they got loose in the harbour? Were there any defences against dragons that were widely known? Could dragonfire melt stone walls? Could she control the dragons to, hypothetically speaking, command them to target exact buildings?
Those were not the questions of those looking to protect Pentos. Those were the questions of those who were seeking to use her little charges. She looked at them and sighed. She needed names for them. And then… then she needed advice, perhaps from this unnamed writer. Advice – and then a plan.
Tyrion
He was still unsure about just how fast shit did indeed go through a goose but he did now know one thing – when Ned Stark travelled with urgency he moved fast. For the first time he knew what his father had meant when he had reluctantly admitted that Ned Stark could be dangerous. They’d ridden for miles more than he had thought was wise for the horses. But there had been a method to his madness and they were all now in a holdfast that had been warned ahead of time, so that their horses were being rested, fed and watered, whilst hot water had been drawn for all of them.
What baffled him had been how, after all that riding, he’d gotten a stone in his boot. Odd, that.
He pulled the other boot off and then dropped it on the floor. He felt bone-tired and he ached in places that he had never known he even had. The ‘bath’ was a copper half tub one that most men would find small. It was one of the few advantages to his stature that he would not find it at all small.
He stripped off, climbed in and then used the soap as much as possible, before leaning back and doing his best to bob. He couldn’t quite manage it, but he came close. The water was still nicely warm, but he knew that it was cooling. Still, he enjoyed the moment to close his eyes and think.
He needed a woman and there were some quite comely wenches amongst the serving girls here. One thing held him back; he had the oddest feeling that Lord Eddard Stark was watching him. Assessing him. Judging him? It was an odd feeling, that. He knew that Ned Stark was nothing like his dead and headstrong older brother. No, Ned Stark was a cooler, quieter, more considering character, someone who observed and judged.
Frankly he had to admit that the man scared him just a bit. There was a… weight to him, in terms of influence. He’d seen Father judge people effortlessly and without mercy at times, just as he’d seen Father rule the Westerlands with a rod of iron. But Ned Stark… there was something happening here. Some old power, old force of support, or something like that, was emerging. People did not follow Ned Stark because they feared him. They followed him because they knew that he would make the right choices. Hard choices perhaps, but the right ones.
He opened his eyes again. And he had the feeling that Ned Stark was judging him on behalf of someone. He felt uneasy all of a sudden. No, it was fanciful. She was Stark’s cousin and had a fine mind. Quite a fine body too, from what he suspect and… by the Gods, Old and New, he had stop this line of thought, ‘lest he go stark staring mad. Heh.
The water was cooler and less enjoyable now and he climbed out and dried himself off with a woollen cloth. He still ached and after a long moment he pulled out the stone jar containing the ointment. The top stuck a bit in the unstoppering of it, but once it was off he sniffed the contents carefully. It was good that he’d been hesitant about it, because he felt his nostril hairs shrivel from the smell. It seemed most… medicinal.
A very careful application of it to the tenderest places brought a muffled exclamation as fire seemed to burn briefly on those spots… and then it eased to a soothing warmth. He sighed, re-sealed it and then dressed carefully in clean clothes.
When he reached the hall he could see that most of the others were already there. Ned Stark was to one side talking quietly wo his two sons and his ward. The latter three had their direwolves at their feet, all of which looked as grave as their owners. They seemed to almost grow a little every day now, although they were still too small to lope alongside the horses. Instead they had been silent, fascinated passengers in special attachments on the pommel of the saddles. To one side sat their mother. Frostfyre had run effortlessly next to Ned Stark the entire day. If word had not before spread far amongst the smallfolk of the North that Lord Stark had a direwolf, then the trip to the Wall would cure that. He’d seen the smallfolk point and stare – and cheer.
Word was spreading. It would spread faster soon.
GreatJon Umber waved him over to a bench and he sat rather gingerly, before a servant delivered a bowl of stew and a plate with several bread rolls, along with a foaming mug of ale. He peered at it and then shrugged. He was starving hungry. And the rolls were still warm, breaking open with a slight crack as the crust yielded to reveal warm white fluffy bread, which could then be dipped in the delicious mutton stew. He didn’t eat his meal, he inhaled it, before washing it down with equally enjoyable ale.
By the time he finished and suppressed a belch he felt a lot better. He was also being observed with a grin by GreatJon Umber, who had just finished his second mug of ale. “Feeling better now, Lannister?”
“Much.” He sighed, feeling replete and then waved for another mug of ale. “A hard day’s ride.”
The huge man’s face hardened for a moment. “I’ve known harder. After the Trident. Getting there was bad enough. But afterwards, riding for King’s Landing, knowing we were riding to get justice for Lord Rickard and Brandon… That was hard.” He paused and sniffed. “Oh aye. Liniment?”
“A touch of it,” he said, doing his best to sound careless. “Lady Surestone gave a jar of it to me in Winterfell. Said I might need it.”
“Oh, you’ll need it,” Umber chuckled darkly. “Take it from me. You’ll need it. She must like you then, Dacey Surestone.”
“She took pity on me - I’m a mere poor soft Southerner amongst a flock of Northern wolves.”
GreatJon Umber took a long swallow of ale and then lowered his mug and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Oh,” he said eventually. “No. If Dacey Surestone sees something in you then there’s some solid metal in you. That one’s clever. As I said, I knew her father. A good man. He was clever too. Clever about the right things. And he could use a battleaxe on horseback like no-one I’ve ever met, then or now.” He looked at him, and there was something dark in his eyes. “Don’t you dare trifle with her, Lannister. Not her. If Ned Stark doesn’t kill you for it, then I will.”
He looked back at the Lord of the Last Hearth and did his best to keep that gaze level. “I have no intention of ‘trifling’ with her,” he replied eventually. “Not her. She’s clever and witty and knows her way around a library like no-one else I’ve ever met so far. Well, who isn’t a Maester anyway. I’d… I’d not ever want to be the one to let her down.”
Umber glared at him for a score of heartbeats longer and then nodded and drank some more ale. “Then don’t let her down.”
He paused and ran the conversation through his head again. “What exactly are you saying?”
“Oh by the Gods, don’t ask me, ask Ned.”
“Ask Ned – I mean Lord Stark – what?”
“Permission to court her!”
Tiny demons made from ice ran up and down his arms and legs for a moment, before dancing a very pretty gavotte along his spine. “I’m a Lannister,” he said dully after a moment. “The last girl I properly courted I married. Without my father’s permission. He… he did not take the news well. She, she was lowborn and… it is a long and cruel story that I’d rather not tell here. I was a fool. And my father was… cruel. He had it annulled. Since then… I have…”
A huge hand landed on his shoulder and he looked up to see GreatJon Umber peering closely at him. “By the Gods… I knew that Tywin Lannister could be a hard man. I even knew that he could be a right shit at times – you have to be if you’re Hand of the King. But to hear his own son call him cruel… I’m sorry lad. I’m sorry.”
Tyrion smiled through a sudden haze of tears, wiped his eyes and then drank his mug of ale with four long gulps. “It was a while ago. Years ago.”
“Wounds of the heart don’t heal as well as wounds of the skin and bones,” GreatJon Umber said surprisingly shrewdly. “I learned that a long time ago. But I’ll say this much – your father’s not here and Dacey Surestone is cousin to Ned Stark himself, so no-one in their right mind would call her lowborn. So there’s nothing to stop you courting her. That said – break her heart and I’ll break the bits of you that Ned leaves intact. And then Roose Bolton will take his turn. He liked her father as well. We all did.” He grinned at him and then waved for another ale. “You’d best get ready for an even harder day riding tomorrow.”
He smiled weakly. What fun.
Davos
They had sailed on the next available tide that morning. He had placed his best man in charge of the Goldcloaks, a man who he knew had never taken a bribe in his life, and left for the docks at once to choose his fastest ship, a low sleek vessel called Sea Eagle that he used for courier work for Lord Baratheon. It was ironic that this time it bore Lord Stannis Baratheon himself, along with the Lady Selyse.
Sea Eagle didn’t have very large cabins, but this was not something that bothered either Baratheon. Lord Stannis Baratheon spent most of his time on deck, not far from the tiller, while his wife varied from being next to his side to pacing about in the captain’s cabin below. She seemed unable to keep still at times. Lord Stannis on the other hand… he seemed like a statue at times, his gaze fixed on the East. Always East, in the direction of Dragonstone.
The winds were good, a steady one from the West that sent the ship speeding East at a good rate of knots that ate up the miles with every hour. Davos was almost constantly at the tiller, only yielding it to Devan to relieve himself or to snatch forty winks. Devan was a good sailor, but Davos trust no-one but himself to get to Dragonstone as fast as possible. He summoned up every scrap of knowledge he had of seamanship, every instinct he had for wind and wave and ship.
He knew these waters like the back of his hand and used that knowledge to get everything out of the ship. The men shifted sails slightly at his direction, cramming on as much as he dared. If he could have he would have attached his handkerchief to the crow’s-nest for that added scrap of push.
Shireen Baratheon had been teaching him to read, in secret. His lessons had been curtailed by his time in King’s Landing, but that had been a poor excuse in her eyes and she’d sent him letters and books and notes, with new words clearly labelled and explained. The head of the Goldcloaks, she’d pointed out, had to know how to read. How to sign his name. After all, he’d be a lord one day.
He doubted that last part, but he’d swim through blood for that child. Wise beyond her years, but sad beyond her years as well. The thought that those scars might be gone, that the blight of greyscale… well, it was a dream come true.
They sailed on, through the night. The stars were his guide, the night sky his map, his nose aquiver for every smell of land if it came too close, the feel of the tiller’s pull in the water his guide to current and tide. Stannis Baratheon remained on the quarterdeck, a still, stiff figure who paced occasionally but who then went back to staring ahead as the ship sliced through the waves as it raced before the wind. Occasionally Lady Selyse joined him, a white-faced strained look on her face. Sometimes she spoke to her husband in a low undertone. Only once did Davos hear their conversation.
“You must eat, husband.”
“I cannot. I cannot keep it down. I am… nervous. I am unmanned.”
“Never that. I want to see our daughter too. But if you do not eat or drink you will collapse. And the men will think you weak.”
He shot her a glare, which seemed to turn to a more troubled look. “I have… tried. I want to. But the need to see Dragonstone drives me. To see our daughter.”
A short silence fell. “I should have given you sons.”
“There is still hope. We still have time. I was… wrong about my duty to you.”
“And… it is appreciated. Drink something husband. And eat, even just a mouthful.” And then she left. Stannis followed her after a short time, before returning later with more energy in his step to resume his silent vigil.
On they went, though the night. Devan took over twice so that he could have short naps, but he soon returned to the tiller. Navigating at night was not something that Daven was used to, not when it came to Blackwater Bay. The danger of impaling a ship on one of the Spears of the Merling King was too great if you didn’t know exactly where you were – and Davos did, from that unique combination of instinct and knowledge. Every now and then they’d catch sight of a looming light from one of the towns on distant shores.
But it was the way that she ship behaved that told when they had entered the Gullet, even before they caught sight of a light on Driftmark. His quiet grunt of satisfaction had brought Lord Baratheon out of his silent vigil.
“What?”
“Driftmark, my Lord Hand.”
“Good.”
On and on, into the slowly lightening sky. And then the man in the crows-nest finally called down: “Deck there!”
“Report!” Davos bellowed back.
“A light on the horizon – three points to Port!”
“Dragonstone,” Davos said with a tight grin. “Almost home my Lord Hand!”
“So soon?”
“Sea Eagle’s a fast ship, my Lord Hand. And we’ve had good winds – and a fast passage.”
“I will see you well rewarded for this, Seaworth.”
He nodded shortly and then concentrated on the final part of the passage. There was another area of shallows that had to be skirted – and he sensed it almost before he smelled it. Sometimes there was a slight scent of sulphur from it. Easily avoided. Well, for him anyway.
As the darkness started to lift further he had Lord Baratheon’s personal standard hoisted from the tallest mast as they beat up the long reach towards the docks. By the time they were on a course to dock the sun had risen – and they had been sighted, based on the guards running towards the dock and the dockworkers pulling out a gangplank with handrails.
Davos guided the ship in with practised ease, roaring orders to furl the sails at the correct moment and using wind and current to come to a halt at the right place. Lines were heaved and made fast to bollards, rush fenders were put over the side and guards came to attention as they saw Stannis and Selyse Baratheon waiting to disembark. As the gangplank was out into place Davos saw a figure in black robes approach. Cressen.
The moment that he was able to, Lord Stannis hurried down the gangplank, his wife just behind him. As Davos turned to give Devan a brace of orders about the ship he heard his patron bark: “Cressen, where is my daughter?”
“In the Godswood my Lord.”
“Godswood? What Godswood? There is no Godswood on this damn island Cressen!”
The old man raised both hands in a placating manner. “That’s what I thought too my Lord – but come with me. I shall show you it. Lady Selyse as well.”
He turned and scurried off, with the two Baratheons and some guards hot on his heels. After a moment Stannis seemed to remember where he was and turned to wave a hand at him. “Seaworth! Come!”
Gratified but apprehensive he followed, as Cressen led them along the dockside, down some steps and then onto a strand and towards what had once been a sheer cliff. Davos had seen it before. But this time one of the notches in it looked different. Debris had been pulled away from it and as he approached he could see stonework. The remains of a wall? Guards stood on either side of the entrance with swords and shields, stepping away smoothly as the Lord of Dragonstone came closer – and then stopped and stared.
“I’ve never seen this before.” He sounded stunned. Davos didn’t blame him.
“No-one living had my Lord. Shireen found it with the aid of Gendry Storm. Before the fool Patchface died he told me to tell her to look for the Godswood.”
“Patchface is dead?” Three people said the words almost as one and he blushed and looked at his feet as he realised that he’d almost spoken over Lord Stannis.
“Aye. I wrote everything in a full letter to you my Lord, which is doubtless waiting for you in King’s Landing. He… went mad one night. He’d been restless and disturbed, but one night… he snapped. Running and howling and saying things that I thought made no sense. I’ve… changed my mind since. I’ve ordered what he said to be written down. I think… I think that his near-death did something to him. I think that he was a seer. It was just that all we ever saw was the fool.”
“How did he die?” Lord Stannis barked.
“He threw himself from the Great Window. Before he did he told me to tell the Lady Shireen to seek out the Godswood. Then he said that it was a life for a life – and then he threw himself out of the window. We never found his body. Shireen was very upset. And then days later a ship came in, with the King’s natural son Gendry Storm.”
“I know the boy – I’ve met him. I thought he was being sent to Storm’s End.”
“He was my Lord. The ship he was on sailed into a storm and lost a mast. They were fortunate to get here. He cut the cables to release the broken mast. The Lady Shireen… she took him under her wing. Showed him Dragonstone. She likes having a cousin who was not afraid of her greyscale.”
“Cousin! A bastard!” Selyse Baratheon muttered the words.
“They were walking down here, with guards my Lady – when they found a Weirwood tree leaf. Then they found this opening.” He turned and led the way through it and then up a winding path that went through the cliff. “The path was cleared by the boy – he’s strong. He made sure it was safe for Shireen and I – they sent for me.”
Up they went, on and on. The path was rough in places and he could see that scree had been cleared from it. And then they turned a corner. Before them was a dell, a bowl-shaped place. Cliffs loomed around it – but there were trees there. Weirwood trees. He’d read of them and even seen some, from a distance one. Now he saw them closer. White trunks and red leaves. And one of them had a face carved into it. A small figure was sitting under it, reading a book. To one side two guards were nudging each other at the sight of Lord Stannis and beyond them a black-haired young man was kneeling over what looked like a cairn of some kind.
He’d seen Stannis Baratheon with many expressions on his face. He’d never seen him with such a look of shock before though, as he stared at his daughter. He could not blame him. The girl’s face was unblemished. She looked up at them – and then delight filled her face.
“Ser Davos – oh! Father! Mother!” And then she was running across the dell, her parents going to meet her, before her father swept her up in a massive embrace. She gave a squeal of surprise – and then she flung her arms around his neck and hugged him, as her mother also embraced her.
There was a long moment of silence – and then he gently put his daughter down and looked intently at the side of her face, where the greyscale had been. Davos stood there, stunned. There wasn’t a trace of it, just a slightly pink area that looked as if normal skin had grown there, like the skin present when a scab above it falls off.
“It’s gone,” Stannis Baratheon said wonderingly. “It’s really gone… the greyscale scars…”
“Are gone my Lord,” Cressen broke in gravely. “I have inspected her twice a day, every day since it happened. No trace at all.”
“How?” Selyse asked in a trembling voice. “How did it happen? It’s like a miracle.”
“I touched the Heart Tree, Mother,” Shireen said gravely. “And then… the next thing I knew I felt this burning throughout me – but the scars were gone. Apparently I spoke something, but I don’t remember anything about it.”
“She touched the tree my Lord,” Gendry Storm said quietly. Lord and Lady Baratheon stared at him intently and he in turn stared at his own boots. “And her eyes… they turned red. Like red fire. And she spoke with this voice… like a forge in the ground was speaking.”
“What did she say?” Lord Stannis asked, looking thunderstruck.
The boy opened his mouth to speak, but it was Cressen who spoke next. “Her words are engraved in my mind, my Lord. She said: ‘A child born from storm and garden! It is as it was foretold. The blood of the First Men still burns here, like the heart of the mountain. Send the harvest on. The dragonglass is needed on the Wall. Then the boy asked who spoke through her and she answered: ‘Another child of the storm! Well met! You have many miles ahead of you, child of the storm. Your father will need you.’
“I in turn asked who spoke and she said: ‘You stand in a Godswood. The Gods are here.’ I asked if they were the Old Gods and they said…. Yes. They replied: ‘We speak through this child as a conduit. You have found this place again. We wax. Send the dragonglass North. The Stark in Winterfell needs it. And the Maesters of Oldtown – they must not meddle any further. The Call has been sent. Magic has returned. The Others come. The Stark calls for aid. You are needed.’”
Lord and Lady Baratheon were both white by now as they stared at Cressen and then Shireen and then back at Cressen. “Did they say anything else?”
“They did. The boy asked what he had to do. They replied to him that he had to help his father, that the Storm King returns within him. And then they said one last thing: ‘You heard the Seer. He was touched by things that some would not have survived. And he gave his life – for this life. The bargain was struck. We will honour it.’ And then red fire enveloped your daughter – she was not hurt but the scars burned off her, the greyscale vanished. And she was whole again.”
Lord Stannis stared at the trees again and then at Shireen, whilst his wife appeared to be in deep shock. After a while he seemed to rouse himself. “Well now… well met again Gendry Storm.”
The boy bowed awkwardly. “My Lord.”
“You know who your father is now.”
“I do,” The boy said the words shakily. “I am glad… glad I was able to find this place. It’s… peaceful. And it helped the Lady Shireen.”
“I wouldn’t have found it without him Father,” Shireen said pointedly. “And he’s my cousin. He’s nice. And he’s not like Joffrey.”
Something flashed over the face of Lord Stannis, a mixture of strong emotions that were swiftly repressed. “Why were you two here today?”
She smiled and then waved her book at him. “I’ve been looking through the old histories of this place. I might have found a few references to it here and there. I’ll show them to you father. And Gendry thinks he’s found runes by the cairn.”
“There’s a rock over there by it, my Lord. It’s been protected from the rain by that overhang in the cliff. I can’t read what the runes say, but they’re there. And there’s a carving. I think it’s a man with horns.”
“I think that the cairn is the grave of a Green Man my Lord,” Cressen said sombrely. “There were deer horns on a scrap of leather by the cairn.”
Lord Stannis nodded absently and then looked at his daughter’s cheek again. “Cressen?”
“My Lord?”
“Has the dragonglass on the lower parts of Dragonstone been going to the North since this happened?”
“It has my Lord. I did not think that it would hurt.”
“Indeed not. Good. Why dragonglass?”
“The First Men always sought it out. I think that it was used to fight the Others.”
“Find out more. About the cairn too. Gendry Storm?”
“My Lord?”
“I owe you a great debt. I will talk to your father about this. Are you being trained to use that Warhammer he gave you?”
“Not so much my Lord, there hasn’t been time.”
“Bugger that,” Lord Stannis, sounding exactly like his brother for a moment. “I’ll teach you myself if need be. We have a great deal to do. And very little time, unless I miss my guess. Ser Davos?”
He stepped forwards. “My Lord?”
“The North is calling. Provision the fastest ship here for myself and my nephew here. We sail in two days. We are needed.”
Willas
The desk always had papers on it now. The new map of the Reach on the wall was a larger one than before. It had to be. There was too much to do, too much to organise. He knew what the message had been now. ‘The Garden’ was The Reach. There could be no other explanation. How could he make it bloom again though? Wasn’t it already in bloom? The number of plots being sowed with wheat or barley or indeed anything edible at all wept growing, but how much was down to him? Barely any, surely. That said, he kept organising, working out places to store the produce that would be grown, new places to make the jars that would be used for some things or the barrels for others. So much to do. So much to organise.
He looked over at the spear by the desk. Otherbane was unlike any weapon he’d ever seen before. The metal was odd for a start. He’d shown it to a swordsmith, who had peered at it – and then scrutinised it as hard as he had ever seen anyone look at anything in his life.
“Skymetal,” had been the eventual, stunned response. “It’s skymetal. And these stones… like glass. Obsidian I think, Lord Willas. Yes. Obsidian.”
He’d done his research since. Skymetal was something that the First Men had used for some of their most precious relics, relics long since gone. Or were they? Robert Baratheon wielded a great sword made of something similar these days. And travellers from the North spoke of how Ned Stark bore a great mace these days. An ancient mace. The name whispered was that of the Fist of Winter.
He was still researching the runes. They were difficult to determine, as their meaning could be ambiguous. “To hold the line, stone by stone, as the garden blooms behind.” What exactly did that mean? What line? The Wall perhaps? Should he travel there eventually? Surely he had to if the Others had returned. Perhaps the Reach had feed the forces on the Wall. That made sense too.
The problem was that he was not formally in charge of The Reach. Oh, he had support from Grandmother, but Father was still head of House Tyrell, Lord of Highgarden, Defender of the Marches, High Marshal of the Reach, and Warden of the South. But, he had to admit, his father was still an idiot. Amiable but an idiot.
He looked back at the papers in front of him. And then he heard the boots in the corridor. They stopped walking at his door and he looked up. Loras was standing there. “Father wants to see you. At once.”
He stared at his younger brother, who had a look of sullen confusion on his face. Ah. It had come. That moment of confrontation with Father. He stood abruptly, placed the letters he’d received from Oberyn and the Citadel in his pocket, grabbed Otherbane and placed it in the carrying sheath that he had had made, slung it over his shoulder and then strode out, at such a pace that a startled Loras had to scurry to catch up with him.
As they passed down the corridor he looked out. Grandmother was embroidering something whilst sitting next to Margaery. As they passed Grandmother looked up as if by instinct, caught sight of him and then narrowed her eyes, before handing over her embroidery to Margaery and then stood and reached for her cane. Good.
Father was pontificating to a Maester in his study, which did not surprise him. He was discussing how he had always known about the statue of Garth Greenhand or something like that. As soon as he saw his sons he straightened up a little and dismissed the maester with a gesture.
“You summoned me Father,” Willas said in a level voice. “Here I am.”
Father flushed slightly and then stood up. “Willas. I think that it is long since past time that we talked about your increasing… meddling in the matters of the governance of The Reach.”
Willas widened his stance slightly and then stared into his father’s eyes. “Meddling. I would hardly call it that myself. I would rather say that I have become more aware of how The Reach is being run. And I in turn would caution you against meddling in things that you know nothing about. This plot with Renly Baratheon to replace the Queen with Margaery... It is folly Father. It is as stupid idea as I have ever heard. And it must stop.”
His words seemed to stun Father for a moment, who first went pale – and then red with fury. “Stupid??? Boy, do you have the faintest idea what you are talking about?”
“I do.” He spat the words out with a cold certainty that seemed to puncture Father’s bluster. “It is folly Father, as I said. Yes, the King’s marriage is an unhappy one. But there is little reason to suppose that he’d suddenly send Cersei off to the Silent Sisters and then marry Margaery! My sister looks nothing like Lyanna Stark, even Robert Baratheon would regard is as a piece of political insanity, and do you really think that Tywin Lannister would sit back and let such a thing happen? Do you really think that Father?”
He could see Loras start to open his mouth and he turned on him in a flash. “Not a word, brother! Not a damn word! Your conviction that this madness contains even an ounce of sense is foolish beyond words. And Renly Baratheon is a fool if he thinks that this is possible. So – be silent.”
Loras shut his mouth with a snap, apparently stunned into silence. Father on the other hand was starting to swell with rage – or possibly bluster – again. “Willas, we are talking about the highest gambits possible in the Game of Thrones, a game of the highest stakes! Stakes beyond your imagination! We have a chance to place a Tyrell at the side of the Iron Throne, to have Tyrell blood tied to the kingship and-”
“No!” He bellowed the word, leaning forwards and making Father lean back in shock. “No. No chance. It is folly. Even if Cersei is torn down at Queen, her children are still there. Joffrey may be young but he is a sadistic little shit and do you really think that he will look kindly on Margaery if she replaces his mother? And then there are still Mycella and Tommen! For Tyrell blood to sit on the Iron Throne you’d have to have the King disinherit his three legitimate children for any so far unborn children that he’d have with Margaery! Do you see that happening? Do you?”
“He’s right, Mace, and you know it,” said a voice from the door as Grandmother strode in, her cane clacking, before sitting without ceremony. “Oh and your attempts at getting that young man to distract me from this meeting were as fruitless as it is possible to get. Imbecile.”
Father had turned a little pale at the arrival of Grandmother. Nevertheless he still rallied. “Mother, this is a private meeting, about-”
“About things that are far, far, above your head. Oh, you really are a blockhead. I admit it – I gave birth to an idiot. Mace, listen to Willas. He’s more intelligent than you and he’s right about one important thing.”
He nodded and then looked at Father. “The Game of Thrones is in abeyance. It is no longer relevant as things now stand.”
If Father had been shocked before then this stunned him. “In abeyance??? Willas – what are you talking about? The Game of Thrones has always been played and anyone who thinks otherwise is naïve! I didn’t think that my own son would be foolish to believe otherwise and-”
“The Call rendered it moot. The Call rendered everything else moot. Father, Winter is coming.”
Loras snorted to one side, whilst Father just stared at him. “And now you aren’t just foolish but you sound like a Stark! Winter… why are you talking about Winter when it’s still Summer?”
He pulled out the letters and threw them onto the desk in front of him. “Oberyn Martell and one Arch-Maester Garin from the Citadel have both written to me. They told me the same tale – talked about the same facts. There’s a Long Winter coming, Father. And we need to prepare for it, or The Reach will suffer.”
More staring from Father and Loras – and a resulting sigh of despair from Grandmother at such a reaction. “A long Winter?”
“Yes, Father. Apparently the Citadel is currently in the middle of a huge argument about it. Nevertheless they do agree that the stars have changed. Father, this Summer has lasted for many years now. A Winter of equal length could be coming Father. The Reach must prepare for it.”
Father kept staring at him. It was Loras who next spoke. “The Call?? You speak of this Call that the smallfolk babble about? That mummery?!”
“Loras, dear,” Grandmother said wearily. “Please stop talking. You can go away and polish your armour or something.”
His brother glared as much as he dared at Grandmother, who returned the glare with one that reduced him to a small child.
“Mummery?” Willas said coldly. “The Call affected me, Loras. It was heard across Westeros, let alone The Reach. It wasn’t just heard by the Smallfolk, nobles heard it too. The Redwynes have been sending supplies to the Wall. The Florents are as well. Even the Hightowers, ardent followers of the Seven that they are, have been talking about sending men and supplies to the Wall. They’re certainly growing more food than they normally would. Even the Tarlys heard the Call”
He clenched his fists and then leant forward over the desk. “Father, something is happening. Something old and powerful. Something that everyone with the blood of the First Men has heard, or been affected by. People are growing more food, cutting more wood for Winter, preparing more containers for storage. Everyone doing so has heard the words. The Others are coming. The Stark calls for aid. We are needed. Even Robert Baratheon has felt the Call. He wields Stormbreaker again, the ancient sword of the Durrandons.”
“There are tales about that sword,” Grandmother said darkly. “The fact that he holds it is an omen. Willas is right – something is coming. Something old and powerful.”
“The Tarlys… they came to Highgarden days ago. They saw you and not me. What did they want? What were you meddling in?” Father looked confused.
It was time. He unslung Otherbane and placed it on the desk. “This. They brought this.”
“The spear you’ve been carrying about? What is it? I meant to ask you but I’ve barely seen you for days.”
“It’s Otherbane.”
A startled silence fell. Father slowly turned white as he sank into the chair, Loras just stared at the spear and Grandmother just nodded as if satisfied by what Willas was doing and then leant back in her own chair.
“Otherbane?” Father finally gabbled. “The weapon of the Gardener Kings? The weapon that was supposed to have been destroyed at the Field of Fire? One of the oldest relics of The Reach?”
“Yes Father. The Tarlys brought it to me. It was hidden at Horn Hill by their ancestors after the battle, after the nephew of Mern the Ninth gave it to the then Tarly. It had to be hidden.”
“Hidden?” Loras asked. He was eyeing the spear with what looked like undisguised greed. “Why was it hidden?”
“There was a prophecy,” Grandmother said coldly. “It said that the spear has to go to the man within whom ‘the blood of Garth Greenhand rings true. The man who will find the Gardener’s Rest in Highgarden and restore the spring there. The man whose leg was broken and then remade. The man who saw the Field of Fire through Mern’s eyes’. That would be your brother Loras. So stop staring at Otherbane like a rabbit looking at a carrot.”
Father stood slowly. “It should be me who wields this spear. I am the head of House Tyrell. I am the heir to the Gardner Kings. You should have brought this to me as soon as the Tarlys gave it to you, Willas! This is my birthright!” He roared the last words as his face flushed with fury. “The Hightowers and the Florents sought this spear! This spear would cement the status of our family as the Lords of the Reach! To cement our control over Highgarden! Why did you not let me know at once about this!?!”
“Because of prophecy! Because of the Call! The Tarlys came to me! Did you hear the words that Grandmother mentioned? I found the statue! I made the spring flow again! I saw what the last Gardener King saw at the Field of Fire! I was all but there! This is not about you Father! This is about The Reach!”
“This should be mine!” And with that Father lunged forwards and laid a hand on Otherbane – and then suddenly he roared with agony as he recoiled back into his chair so hard that it rocked backwards and almost tipped. He was clutching at his hand – and then he opened it and looked down. There was a livid red line across it and for a moment Willas thought that he could see a whiff of smoke in the air over his hand.
Everyone stared at him – and then at his hand. And then at Otherbane. After a long moment Willas reached out and picked up the weapon carefully. Nothing. He balanced it on his palms for a moment and then clenched his hands around the haft of it. Nothing again. He shrugged and then re-slung Otherbane on his shoulder.
“Mace,” said Grandmother in an almost gentle voice. “There are strange legends about Otherbane. One says that it can only have one owner at a time. I think that Otherbane should remain with Willas. And I also think that you need to go hunting. Hunting a lot, I think. In fact it might be best if you stayed at your favourite hunting lodge and hunt there.”
Father gaped at Grandmother and then at Willas. And then he seemed to almost deflate in his chair. Willas looked at his father with a sense of sadness. A light seemed to be almost fading out of his eyes. Father sat there for a long moment, clutching at his hand – and then he stood up and walked out of the room slowly. He looked… tired.
Grandmother watched him go and then turned to Willas. “The Reach is in your hands now my boy. I’m proud of you. Now – try not to get us all killed.”
Ned
Tyrion Lannister was surprising him. He’d thought that the little man would have trouble on the trip, that he’d lag at times. Ned knew what it was like to push the pace on a trip. The ride to the so-called Tower of Joy still preyed on his mind at times. He remembered that ride all too well, as hope had warred with fear the entire time. But so far Tyrion Lannister had kept up with them very well indeed, partly because of his custom-made saddle. He had to say that he was impressed.
He was also impressed by Robb’s stamina. His son was riding with a grim determination and the manner of a veteran – so much so that both the GreatJon and Roose Bolton had mentioned that his boy not only rode like a man used to war, but that he also knew what to do whenever they made camp, such as order a privy to be dug well away from camp where it would not pollute a watercourse.
He’d answered that he’d taught the boy all that he knew, whereupon the GreatJon had just nodded and Roose Bolton had given him a flat look that showed a hint of unease, by Roose Bolton standards anyway.
Tonight they were staying at an old abandoned holdfast, about a mile from the road. If he remembered correctly it had belonged to House Redstark once, many years ago. The lost houses nagged at him at times, the knowledge that the North wasn’t as strong as it had been once was a weight around his neck at times. The North wasn’t stronger than it had been in his grandfather’s time, not as strong as he would have liked it to be. He’d worked hard to try to build up the North. But it never seemed to be enough.
The war that was approaching made things worse in a way. The North needed the South to hold the Wall. That said, the last time the Others had threatened the Wall the Kings of the North had been able to call on the First Men of the South for aid. He wasn’t sure, but something like that was happening now, thanks to the Call. The Mountain Clans of the Vale might just be the beginning of it. He still wasn’t sure what that message from Bronze Yohn Royce meant, and no raven had yet returned from Runestone. Odd, that.
Frostfyre was off hunting somewhere and he smiled slightly as he imagined the horror of whatever animals she would meet on that hunt. Robb, Jon and Theon were carefully feeding their own direwolf puppies in the corner of the intact part of the building that they’d reserved for themselves. It was good that they were close again. He had an odd feeling that they’d need each other. Theon seemed to be a different boy – no, man – from what he had been before. He seemed to think a lot more, certainly. As for Jon… well, being made an official Stark had taken some of the faint air of bitterness away from him. There was something different there now, a certain measure of gravity. And Robb – well, he had to admit that he was proud of the man he had become. He had learnt some very bitter lessons in that other time. The fact that he had not fallen into anger or despair, but instead had worked to learn what he had done wrong… well, that was a good thing.
He paused as he pulled his bedroll out of its container. He had the oddest feeling of satisfaction and ebbing hunger to…. to the North of where he was. Odd. Was the link he was sensing with Frostfyre getting stronger? Perhaps. He shrugged, put his things away tidily on the ground by his bedroll and then walked off to get supper from the communal fire that some of the men had started.
Speaking of starting things the GreatJon and Tyrion Lannister both had wooden mugs of foaming ale in their hands and the GreatJon looked as if he was teaching the man from the Westerlands how to quaff. The man from the Last Hearth was the right man to teach people how to do so.
Supper itself was a haunch of deer that had been caught two days before and had been hanging from the saddle of a supply horse since then. It smelt delicious as it revolved slowly over the fire and his mouth watered. It had been over the fire since it had been kindled and as he watched two men pulled it off and sliced the first strips of meat off it. He waited until there was enough for the men in the room and then nodded as some was placed on his plate and given to him. It was as good as it smelt and he almost inhaled it, watching as the haunch went back over the fire to keep cooking for the others.
“How long to the Wall from here, Lord Stark?” Tyrion Lannister asked once he’d eaten his share and then quaffed mightily.
Ned didn’t need to think about it that much. “Two days to the Long Lake. Faster to sail than ride up it, so another two days for that part. Then up the Kingsroad to Castle Black, possibly through Queenscrown to see how much needs to be done there. That last part will be the longest part. Ten or twelve days for that part, if we drive ourselves hard and are lucky in that no-one throws a shoe.”
Tyrion Lannister stared at him. “I’d heard that it took a month at the very least to get there.”
“Ned’s leading us,” GreatJon Umber grunted. “As I said – shit through a goose.”
“That’s a very unpleasant metaphor, Lord Umber. Inaccurate too. How fast does shit go through a goose?”
“I really couldn’t tell you,” the GreatJon replied with a grin. Then he looked at Ned. “The longest part of the whole thing will be persuading Rickard bloody Karstark that the Others have really returned. He’s a stubborn bastard.”
“He sent a raven pledging his support,” Ned pointed out mildly. “He should know.”
“Aye,” came the reply. “But he’s still a stubborn bastard who thinks that he knows better than everyone else and that his pride beats everyone else’s.”
“He’ll listen,” Roose Bolton said quietly. “He’ll have to.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Ned said, looking to one side as his son, nephew and ward appeared looking ravenous. “He’ll listen.”
Someone shouted a challenge outside and he turned to look at the door with a frown. After a moment a man at arms entered and then saluted him with a thump of a spear on a flagstone. “My Lord, a man of the Night’s Watch is here, demanding to see you.”
“Admit him,” Ned called, before standing. To his delighted astonishment Benjen strode in, a saddlebag slung over his shoulder. “Ben!”
“Ned!” And his brother strode up and embraced him in a rib-cracking hug that Ned returned in full force. “Thank the Gods – good to see you again.”
“And you.” Ned stepped back and looked at his brother. He looked tired, a little thinner but happy at seeing him. Then he saw the look he was giving him. “Your mission?”
“I did it,” Benjen said in a low, level voice. “I have what is needed. I have the proof you seek.”
Ned felt his throat constrict for a moment in a combination of exultation and dread. “You have the hand of a wight.”
“The hand – and also the head of one. We found cages for them, created by the First Men. It’s a long story – but I have what you asked for.” He looked about the room and at the men who were only now starting to notice Benjen, Robb, Jon and Theon included. “Ned, this is worthy of an announcement. They all need to see this.”
Ned nodded thoughtfully. “Aye.” Then he took a deep breath. “My Lords! Men of the North! Men with the blood of the First Men! Gather around!”
There was a susurration as the men all stood up and approached. By the bulging cheeks of the two other Starks and one Greyjoy they had taken the chance to stuff their mouths with whatever meat had been on their plate. He hoped that they wouldn’t be spewing it on the floor soon.
“This is my brother, Benjen Stark, First Ranger of the Night’s Watch. He has a tale to tell, of a mission I gave him. And something to show you all. A reminder of what we will be fighting. Benjen.”
His brother quirked an eyebrow at him, as he had of old, and then cleared his own throat. “Lord Stark sent me North, beyond the Wall. I sought a prey that none of us has seen for thousands of years. A wight.”
Silence fell, the muttering vanishing completely. GreatJon Umber stood there, his mug of ale in his hand and as grim a look as he ever bore on his face. Tyrion Lannister squinted up at Benjen to one side of the GreatJon, his face tense. Howland Reed stood to one side, his face darkened with foreboding and as for Roose Bolton… he was pale even by his standards. Of the others in the room all looked curious – and wary. Oh, so wary.
“And I found them. I found wights. Six of them. Both long dead and recently dead – but dead men and women that still walked. And fought. My companion and I killed them all, or rather cut them to pieces. Behold.” He reached into a saddlebag and pulled out a bag, peered carefully in and then extracted a cage. There was a head in that cage. That of a woman. And then suddenly the eyes flicked open and blue orbs stared at them all – before the mouth opened and closed with a hiss.
He did his best not to flinch and just about got away with it. Most of the others did flinch though – a groan of shock and horror rolled around the room, along with exhortations to the Old Gods to save them all. He nodded sombrely. “Look at it, all of you. That’s what we’ll be fighting. That and worse.”
A white-faced Tyrion Lannister was staring up at the head in horrified fascination. “What is that cage made of?”
“I don’t know,” Benjen said with a frown. “I found it at a place called the Overlook, by the Fist of the First Men.” He looked at Ned wryly. “It’s a long story.”
“Knowing you it would be, Ben,” the GreatJon said in a voice of forced joviality. “I think we need to hear it.”
“Aye,” said Lords Bolton and Reed at almost the same time as Robb. “We do.”
Benjen nodded and covered the cage back up again. “Then sit and listen. Oh – and is there some food?”
Ned swallowed. Ben might be used to severed heads of wights in cages, but he wasn’t. Not just yet anyway.
Jonos
The rider reined in his horse from a gallop in a great clatter of hooves and then leant over it to look at Tytos Blackwood. “They come my Lord,” he gasped. “They come. By the main road. They are kindling torches as they march. As to their numbers, I counted perhaps three hundreds. A hedge septon leads them, as was reported.”
Blackwood nodded at the rider. “Good lad. Take your horse to the stables and report to the Steward.”
As the rider walked away with his horse Blackwood looked at him. “It was a good thing that we came here together. Rumours are flying about the land like sparrows in pursuit of food.”
“Aye,” he replied, with a grim smile. “Always good to disappoint people by showing them that we meant what we said when we swore that great oath. Idiots think that our word is good for nothing.”
“Aye,” Blackwood rumbled. Then he frowned. “That hedge septon… he’s too young to be doing all of this. And to strike here of all places, at Raventree Hall…”
“There are reports of another Septon, an older more influential one, near God’s Eye. He sounds dangerous. I’ve heard of him before – he panders to the smallfolk, always criss-crossing the Riverlands and the Crownlands, helping with funerals and the like. The High Sparrow some call him.”
Blackwood pulled a face. “Aye, that black-footed swine. I’ve heard of him too. Pious on the outside and riddled with ambition on the inside. The face of the Faith Militant in these lands.”
He nodded sombrely. “He’ll have to be stopped. By any means.”
Blackwood sent an strained look in his direction. “By any means? Don’t get me wrong, I agree, but you follow the Seven.”
“I do indeed, but what he does is not right. Not right at all. He pits man against man and would have me kill you because you worship the Old Gods – and he would give people permission to kill or repress others based on their religion. And how high that would lift him amongst the Faith. He’s a greedy bastard who appears pious.”
Blackwood nodded, before looking back at the road. The sun had just set in the West and as they both looked they could see the speckles of light first appear on the road.
“They come,” he grunted, loosening his sword a little in its scabbard. “The rider spoke truly.”
“We’ll count their torches as they come.”
A short silence fell between the two men as they watched the speckles grow. The men were ready – both Bracken and Blackwood. Many were pale but at least they no longer snarled at each other behind he and Blackwood’s backs. He’d made it very clear that there was far more stake then they knew. The Call. It all came down to the Call.
“Word came from Stone Hedge, by the way,” he muttered quietly with a grim smile. “My daughter Bess… she wants to know about, well, the Old Gods. And worshipping them. I don’t know what to tell her. I was hoping that you might be able to give me a suggestion.”
Blackwood nodded sombrely. “My Bethany might be able to talk to her. Write to her I mean. She’s a good girl. Has a kind heart. Likes explaining things.”
“Aye, that would be right kind of you. And of her.” He shuffled his feet slightly. Small talk could be difficult at times. Then he sighed. The torches were coming straight for the main gate.
“Stand ready – but only act on my command,” Blackwood called out, and Jonos nodded fiercely. This was Blackwood’s lands. It would come down to his decision and no-one else’s.
The torches came on – and then as the dim figures approached the gates to the wall around Raventree Hall the crowd seemed to see the sight of the spears and then helmets and the men on the wall and in the gateway. A muttering went up that sounded more than a little surprised. He narrowed his eyes a little. Yes, it sounded as if they were surprised. Perhaps they’d expected to find just the usual guards – and not a small host of grim men.
Blackwood stepped forwards. “Who comes to Raventree Hall in such numbers? And armed as well?”
There was a confused rumbling from the crowd and then a man dressed as a septon stepped forwards with brand in his hand.
“And who is this? Do you lead this… rabble?”
The septon looked at him. He was indeed young, younger that he might have thought. But there was something in his eyes, a kind of intensity that bordered almost on madness.
“We are men of the Faith!” The Septon announced loudly. “We are men of the Seven! We may be lowly but we speak with one voice – that of the Gods themselves!”
He spoke the words almost by rote, as if he had either spoken them many times before, or listened to them being spoken many times. Jonos looked at the man. This one was trouble. “You claim to speak for the Seven?” He asked caustically. “I think not.”
The septon glared at him. “What would you know of the seven, pagan? We are of the Seven! We are true believers!”
“And why are you here?” Blackwood spat.
“The tree!” The septon bellowed the word – and after a heartbeat there was a ragged echo from the crowd. “We are here for the tree! The pagan tree!”
This did not get the reception that the septon was probably hoping for from Blackwood, who burst into laughter. After a moment Jonos realised why – and joined in. “A pagan tree? Trees are just trees! They do not believe in any god, other than rain and earth and sun!”
The septon glared at them both – and then he rallied and a strange, almost sly look crossed his face. “The tree is dead! And besides, we have permission to destroy it!”
“Permission from who?” Blackwood took a step forwards and placed a hand on the pommel of his sword. “I am Tytos Blackwood. LORD Blackwood! I am the lord of Raventree Hall!”
The septon took a step backwards – and then again rallied. “Lord Bracken himself sent us!”
His eyebrows flew upwards. Then he thought about it. Oh. Someone was trying to be clever, exploiting the old enmity between the two houses. Too bad that they were acting off old information.
“Liar.”
The septon swelled like a frog and just as he was about to shout something out Jonos opened his mouth again. “I called you liar. I am Jonos Bracken – Lord Bracken! And I name this man as a liar!”
The septon gaped at him as the crowd muttered. “No! You lie! Why would Lord Bracken be here?”
“To protect this place against idiots like you who claim to speak for the Seven!” Jonos roared at him. “I believe in the Seven too! But Lord Blackwood believes in the Old Gods – as did our ancestors! What is wrong with that? We have the blood of the First Men within us all, some in a torrent, others in a trickle, but we all have it!” He looked around at the suddenly silent crowd. “How many of you heard the Call? The Call to Winterfell? I know the words, they are carved in my heart – ‘The Others come. The Stark calls for aid. You are needed.’ Who else heard it? ‘Tis a part of me as it is of you all. And now how many would listen to this fool? Why is he here? Who has sent him? Did he hear it? Did he deny it? Deny that call from our ancestors?”
The septon was jiggling on the spot in what was either fear or frustration. “Lies!” He finally squealed. “All lies! Pagan lies! There are no Others! They are naught but a Northern legend and a lie! The High Sparrow has the right of it! We must purge the pagans! Burn the trees!”
Jonos looked up and then suppressed a fierce grin. Behind the septon, in the crowd, the darkness was growing – because torch after torch was being extinguished as people slunk away.
“You want to burn the tree? Then try to,” Blackwood growled. “But know this much – both House Blackwood and House Bracken are here. United. We stand together. We all heard the Call. And whoever draws a blade against us will answer to both us and to Lord Tully in Riverrun. Answer with their lives. This is not a time for men to fight each other. The Others are coming. Some of us have had the dreams. So tell me septon – where do you stand?”
More torches vanished from sight, like fireflies being snapped up by the night. The septon wavered – and then turned to face the diminished crowd. When he saw how few there suddenly were he seemed to shrink himself. When he turned back Jonos could see the sudden fear on his face.
“Be not afraid,” he told him as he walked up to him and placed a metal gauntleted hand on his shoulder. “You are a man of the Seven, as am I. But – tell me who this ‘High Sparrow’ is.”
“Aye,” Blackwood said as he approached. There was a squad of men with both spears and bows with him, and that seemed to hasten the disappearance of the crowd. “I would also like to know.”
The septon gave them both a look of uneasy terror – and Jonos smiled at him.
Jaime
He hated travelling by sea. It was very hard to tell exactly where the ship was, unless it was sailing off the Westerlands, it was very hard to exercise properly and above all else it was dull to the point of being terribly boring.
He leant on the railing and watched as some island or other in the Vale passed by. Very boring place, the Vale. Very rocky in places. All mountains in places. Other places were fetlock deep in horses. Very big on horses, the people of the Vale. Apart from those people at Runestone. They liked runes. What a surprise.
He sighed. He still wasn’t sure just why His Fatness had decided to go and see his old friend, the Bore of the North. Terribly boring man Ned Stark. All honour and enough stubborn rectitude to choke a pig. All that Cersei – and Selmy later on – had told him was that Baratheon had decided to relocate the Court to the North. Some crisis in the frozen wastes there, or beyond the Wall – as if anything could ever really live there!
Hearing cheering from the right he sighed and looked over at the deck. Robert Baratheon was standing there in breeches and a shirt and no boots. To one side Ser Barristan was standing with a slightly long-suffering expression. And on the other was the bosun, a large man with a big grin.
Baratheon clapped his hands together and then rubbed them, before grinning around him. “Right then! A straight race, up the rigging, to the crow’s nest and then down again. Ready?”
“Ready your Grace!” The bosun had an almost identical grin.
“Ser Barristan, if you would give the signal?”
“Very well your Grace. Do you both stand ready? Then – GO!”
Jaime watched bemused as each man ran to opposite sides of the ship and then jumped for the rigging, before swarming up it. The boson was a fast man and his hands were deft and sure on the ropes. Baratheon’s hands were less deft, but his arms were strong and he pulled so hard that at times he almost seemed to fly upwards. His legs were powerful as well. And he was grinning like a fool the entire time, as if he was having the time of his life.
The bosun was more experienced at the rigging though, as he reached the crows nest first and then started down. However, Baratheon wasn’t that far behind and as he started down he started to catch up, by the means of simply throwing himself down at regular intervals and using his arms to catch himself on the ropes. The crew were cheering them both on and much to Jaime’s surprise they reached the deck in a dead heat, before standing there, gasping for breath.
“A draw – an honourable draw!” Ser Barristan bellowed, and Baratheon straightened up and grinned again, before walking over to the boson.
“You’re a fast man, bosun Jermyn,” he gasped. “Very fast. A good race!”
“Thank you your Grace. If I may be so bold, you were bloody fast too.”
Baratheon laughed and then shook the bosun’s hand as the crew cheered like lunatics.
Jaime watched with a raised eyebrow as the assembled men broke up and Baratheon went over to talk to Ser Barristan. They both seemed to be interested in the rigging.
This was the fourth – no, the fifth – times that such a race had happened and Baratheon seemed to be faster and stronger than he had been that first time. He seemed like a man transformed from what he had been just months before. Oh, he was still large – but the muscle was back in many places. And he was driving himself hard. Very hard. Hours of practice with the sword. Sword practice on a ship at sea seemed like a bloody awful idea, and that was why Selmy was insisting on practice swords with weights on them, but it was actually an interesting challenge in terms of balance and keeping your focus. Jaime was learning a lot. For one thing he was learning that Baratheon really was a fast learner himself. No mistake was ever repeated these days.
It worried him at times. The Demon of the Trident seemed to be emerging again and there had to be a reason for that. Baratheon might seem like a creature of whim at times, but there had to be a reason for this new drive behind him now. Why the North of all places? What was all this talk about a ‘Call’?
He shifted uneasily for a moment. Something had been rubbing him the wrong way in King’s Landing, he’d had a nagging feeling that something was wrong, or that he was somehow in the wrong place.
Cersei hadn’t felt it of course. He wondered if Tyrion had? Or – and this was an amusing thought – Father perhaps? He suppressed a snort. Father? Admit to something as vague as a nagging feeling? Nonsense! Uncle Kevan perhaps and his late and very much lamented Uncle Gerion most certainly, but Father – no.
He looked back out at the far-off passing cliffs of some godsforsaken promontory or other in the Vale. The other ships of the squadron that carried the Court were also ploughing their way North and he looked at them idly. Why did he had the oddest feeling that the nagging itch at the back of his head was diminishing with every mile that passed?
The snort finally escaped him. Madness. He could imagine what Tyrion would do at hearing such folly – laugh until he cried. He was looking forwards to seeing his little brother again. Even if he would have to protect him again from Cersei’s petty cruelties.
The things he did for love.
Chapter Text
Sandor
“This is a very bad idea.” It was a simple statement of fact, but the little brat simply stopped and sneered at him.
“Nonsense, dog.” The brat looked both excited and terrified at the same time as they stood outside the King’s cabin. “It’s an excellent idea. I finally will get a chance to hold my birthright!”
From the way that the boy hissed the words he was so excited and yet terrified that Sandor strongly suspected that he was about to piss himself. Well, no matter. He was there to protect the brat and also teach him. There were times when he felt as if he should be protecting the brat from his own stupid ideas. This was one such time.
“I still say it’s a bad idea. His Grace said you needed more muscle on you before you can hold it. You’ve got arms on you like celery.”
“Silence, dog!” Joffrey Baratheon hissed. Then he looked about and turned the handle. The door opened easily enough. After all, who would be stupid enough to walk into this cabin? Oh wait, the brat. His father was upstairs practicing swordplay with the two men who Sandor genuinely respected at times with the sword, and they were skulking below like rats.
The brat darted into the cabin and then make impatient gesturing movements. Sandor shrugged internally and then walked in, closing the door behind him. The sword was on the King’s bunk – and a very dishevelled bunk it was.
As the brat walked up to that bunk Sandor looked at the sword. There was something about it that put his teeth on edge. It looked… somehow more solid than anything else he had ever seen before. That was the only way he could put what he felt into words.
“That sword is dangerous,” he finally said. “Your father can wield it. I don’t think you should. There’re something… strange about it.”
The brat stared at him – and then curled a lip. “Strange? What does that mean?”
Sandor glared at him. “Janos Slynt. When his head was cut odd by your father do you remember what the blade looked like? Clean – no blood. There’s something odd about that thing. Selmy’s always talking about it. Sword of the Storm Kings.”
This bought him a roll of the eyes. “Oh not you too! Selmy says this, Selmy says that – bah! Selmy’s an old woman! He’s just… old!”
“He’s a good swordsman. He against the Kingslayer would be a close thing.”
“Selmy against Uncle Jaime… why am I even still talking to you?” The brat gestured dismissively and then walked up to the sword and stared at it greedily. “You see this, dog? This is the sword of the Durrandons. The sword of ancestors. My sword!”
“Your sword eventually. Your father’s sword for now.”
“The blood of the Storm Kings runs through my veins, dog! This is Stormbreaker! This is the sword of my family and I am fated to wield it one day! And I will be the greatest king that Westeros has ever known!” And then he placed a hand on the grip.
As the brat’s fingers closed around the leather bindings he stopped dead as if paralysed. As Sandor eyed him with a tough of worry – was this a fit of some kind? – he then jerked once, twice… and then light briefly filled the room. There was a noise like a tiny bolt of lightning descending and then two things happened. The first was that Sandor seemed to hear a voice shout ‘FALSE!’ in his ear. The second thing was that Joffrey Baratheon flew across the cabin and crashed into the wall.
He stood there paralysed for a moment – and then he darted across to the brat, who was sitting there, staring at the sword as if stunned whilst holding his hand. As Sandor reached him he looked at it. A red welt was starting to rise across the palm of the brat’s hand, as if he had briefly touched a red-hot poker.
The brat’s face worked in terror for a moment and then he looked down at his hand for a moment. “It… it bit me. The sword… it bit me!”
“Let’s get you out of here,” Sandor muttered, taking a backwards glance at the sword. “That sword is your father’s and it knows no other man. Or boy. And this never happened, right?”
The brat nodded jerkily and then scrabbled to his feet and fled. As he passed Sandor sniffed slight. Oh, someone needed new smallclothes. Too bad. The little shit should have listened.
Aemon
“I don’t like this.” Alliser Thorne did not sound like a happy man as they rode through the tunnel. “I know that it has to be done. But that doesn’t mean that I have to like it.”
Aemon smiled thinly. At least Thorne was a man who stated his mind clearly. And at least he was speaking his mind in the tunnel and not in the midst of the Wildling camp.
“None of us like it,” Qhorin Halfhand muttered. Benjen Stark had summoned him to Castle Black before his departure for the South and the old ranger had been deeply shaken by his first sight of the head of the wight. “Doesn’t feel right.”
“Has to be done though,” The Lord Commander grunted. “With the Others coming with an army of wights we can’t risk their numbers growing any further. This must be done. And based on what we’ve heard about the old days… this war with the Wildlings is something that our ancestors would never have wanted.”
Various grunts greeted this pronouncement. And then they rode on, out of the tunnel and out into the open air. It was a fine day, he could tell by the lack of snow and by the very faint warmth on his face from the sun.
On they rode, with the riders to each side of him warning him about the ground ahead, into the Haunted Forest, where the ground was thick with old fallen leaves and pine cones. After a while they reined in.
“Company,” Qhorin muttered. “Wildlings.”
“We are here as arranged,” Jeor Mormont called out. “We are here to parlay.”
Aemon heard the sound of feet in the leaves ahead. “Aye,” said a voice. “We are here to take you to Mance Rayder. Under terms of parlay. We’ll not harm you.”
“As if you could lay a fucking finger on us,” Alliser Thorne muttered, too softly for anyone but Aemon to hear him. “Gods, but this is ironic.”
“Lead on,” the Lord Commander commanded, and on they went. From the sound of it there were more wildlings in the trees and Aemon sighed a little. A flight of arrows and they’d be all dead and the Night’s Watch would be headless.
Deeper into the forest they went – and then he smelt the first wisps of smoke. Somewhere ahead of them was an encampment. When he heard the words “There’s a lot of the buggers,” from Qhorin he knew that he was right.
As they approached the encampment he hear the sound of rising voices. The Wildlings were gathering. And by the sound of some of their voices there was some confusion in the air.
“That’s the oldest man I’ve ever seen,” he heard one say, a girl with a very Northern accent. “And his eyes – what’s wrong with his eyes?”
He turned in her direction. “They no longer work, young woman. But my other senses have adapted to their loss.”
“How did he – I mean… what good is a blind Black Crow?”
“He’s the Maester of Castle Black, Ygritte. And he’s worthy of a great deal of respect. Maester Aemon. I am glad to see you looking so well.” The voice was a familiar one.
“Mance Rayder. It has been many years since we last met. I believe that I still had my sight then.”
“Aye.” A cough of discomfort. “I am heartily sad that you lost the use of your eyes. I remember how much you loved to read.”
There was a cough to one side. “Mance.”
“Qhorin.” Ah. Of course. The two had once been friends. “And the Old Bear himself, as well as Ser Alliser Thorne. Welcome all. No Benjen Stark though?”
“Rayder.” The Old Bear sounded curt. “We must speak.”
“Aye, we must. There are some you need to meet as well.” There was a pause, as if he was looking about. “Here. These are Tormund Giantsbane. And The Lord of Bones, also known as Rattleshirt.” The introductions were punctuated by the sound of raucous sniffs from one side and what sounded like bone grinding on bone from the other. “And we will talk in my tent.”
From the smell of the tent that he was gently guided to its construction must have required a lot of seal fat. Oh and skins that had been cured, very likely by an expert. He was escorted to a chair made from wood. After a few moments a goblet of some kind was placed into his hands. “There you go Maester Aemon,” said Rayder kindly. "Something warm for you. My wife swears by it. It’s got five types of herbs and I think one moss. Good for you though.”
“My thanks,” Aemon replied softly before taking a sip. It was, indeed, delicious. “Thank her for me please.”
“So you have a wife now,” Ser Alliser said sourly. “When you broke your Oath you didn’t do it by halves did you?”
There was a slight pause and then a scrape of a chair, as if someone had seated themselves in it rather firmly.
“I did what I thought was right at the time,” Rayder said in a voice that sounded as if he was trying to be very patient. “As I do now. I went South weeks ago to meet with Lord Stark. After I heard the Call. I know now that he knows of the full danger that we face. That we all face.”
Another short silence. Qhorin broke it. “You asked why no Benjen Stark. He’s heading South as we speak, bearing the head of a wight. A present for the Lords of Westeros.”
“He must be on a bloody fast horse then. It’s still full Summer down South and a wight’s head will rot fast there. Faster as he reaches places like Dorne.”
“Ah,” Aemon said drily. “Fortunately our ancestors were wiser than us in that regard. We have been making discoveries in Castle Black. Amidst other places. And one of those discoveries was a set of cages large enough to hold the hand – or the head of a wight. Apparently they slow decay. They were made by the First Men.”
“I have one here,” Jeor Mormont rumbled. Aemon could hear folds of cloth being disturbed and then sound of a cage being placed on a wooden surface. “Benjen Stark found the first up near the Fist of the First Men, at a long-hidden place called Overlook.”
“So that’s what he was there for,” Mance said. There was a scrape as he presumably picked the cage up. “Tormund, you said that your scouts had seen him near there.”
“Aye,” said a new voice, presumably that of Tormund. “They said he was wandering about there. Said that he met The Wanderer there as well.”
“He was looking for wights there,” The Old Bear rumbled. “He found them, thanks to this Wanderer. Coldhands he calls himself. There’s a tale there. He… he was once a Stark. He’s hundreds of years old, at least. Benjen said that he had some kind of duty or task.”
“Our people have always known about him,” muttered Tormund. “He wanders the Haunted Forest. Rides an elk. We were always told never to bother him. Don’t know why.”
“That cage… I’ve seen one of those before,” said a new voice. “Up near Hardhome. In one of the caves. Broken though.”
“Is that so, Rattleshirt?” Rayder sounded like a man thinking deeply. “Damn it. I wish would had known of these before. I could have taken one with me to Winterfell.”
“How far South are they spreading?” Ser Alliser barked. “In what numbers? And how many Others are there? What do your scouts say?”
Rayder sighed. “We avoid them. If we have to observe them it’s from a distance. No-one in their right mind goes anywhere near them, Thorne. Not if they want to live to report back.”
“I did not know that your people were such fainthearts,” Ser Alliser said with more than a note of scorn in his voice. “Surely you observe the enemy?”
“The enemy can lie under your fucking feet and rise from the snow and choke the life out of you before you know it!” Tormund roared. “What do you know of wights, Southerner? Real wights, not heads in cages? Shambling men and women with faces that you once knew? Could you kill a friend who had been turned? Could you? I have! You know nothing!”
“Enough!” Aemon roared the word with a savagery that surprised him. “Enough. There is too much at stake for us to start to squabble like children. Mistakes have been made in the past. We know from our records now that once the Wildlings – the Free Folk as you call yourselves – acted as scouts for the Night’s Watch, in the days just after the building of the Wall. That once we were united in fighting against the Others. Those days must return, if we are to stand a chance in the war that is to come. We all know the stakes. We must allow you South so that your people do not add to the army of wights that the Others have assembled. That for the Wildlings it is a matter of flight – or a fate worse than death.”
A rather embarrassed pause followed. “Your pardon, Maester Aemon,” Ser Alliser muttered eventually. “I was just… we need information.”
“And my people need to get South of the Wall,” Rayder said quietly. “The Others are pressing Southwards with every day that passes. The Free Folk need to escape them. We need your tunnel at Castle Black.”
“You’ll need more than our tunnel,” The Lord Commander answered. “How many Wild- how many of your folk are coming South?”
“I can call on a hundred thousand.”
“I heard that you mentioned that number before. But how long would it take your hundred thousand to pass through the one tunnel at Castle Black?”
The pause that followed was longer than the last one. “That’s a very good point,” Rayder said eventually. “Add on the giants and their mammoths… it would be a bit tight.”
“How many giants have you got?” Qhorin asked.
“More than we had a month ago. Their numbers doubled when a group came in from the Frostfangs.” A short silence. “They… brought something surprising. Someone surprising. A Child of the Forest.”
Aemon felt his jaw drop in shock. “Truly?” He asked the word with more than a hint of squeakiness in his voice. “A Child of the Forest? I thought that even you Wildlings had lost sight of them?”
“We had,” Tormund almost whispered. “Almost shat myself when I saw that face. Heartstring, that was its’ name. Had a warning for us.”
“It said that the Enemy – the Others presumably – were preparing something by the sea, South of the Frostfangs,” Rayder said quietly. “Also said something odd. Said that Tormund and I had to go to the Nightsfort. We have to help a man through a hidden gate there, with two others. A man with a golden mind and a boy who died and fell through time. Something about fixing the links between magic North and South of the Wall.”
Shock rippled through him. Robb Stark. They were talking about Robb Stark. And now he was on very dangerous ground. The news of what had happened to that boy was restricted to just Benjen Stark and himself at Castle Black. Ned Stark had insisted on that. He needed to talk to Stark about that. The Old Bear needed to know.
“There is indeed a hidden gate at the Nightfort – the Black Gate,” he said quietly. “Few, it seems, know of it. As for the other two men… this has the sound of prophecy. And such things are… dangerous. Prophecies are never what they seem to be. I must think about this. Think very deeply about this. What else did this Child of the Forest say?”
“It seemed to be delighted that Ned Stark holds the Fist of Winter. Which got the son of the Thenn very excited. The Thenn are coming South. All of them.”
“All of them?” Now it was Qhorin’s turn to sound astonished. “I thought that they’d never leave that Valley of theirs?”
“The Stark holds the Fist. So he commands them now. That’s what they said.”
Yet another brief silence. “Well now, that should make life interesting,” Ser Alliser said drily. “Ned Stark with a small army of Thenns at his beck and call.”
“Something’s happening,” Rayder said quietly. “Something very old is waking up. And there are powers involved that both awe and frighten me.”
“All of us feel the same,” Jeor Mormont muttered. Then he sighed. “Right then. Lord Stark is on his way to Castle Black, where he has summoned the Lords of the North. He will explain to them what he has ordered, as he has written to me to request. You are to be allowed South of the Wall and into the Gift and the New Gift. We have men out now working out where you are to go. Let me make some things very clear. No raiding is to be allowed. No rape, no murder, no thieving. A long winter is coming and we will need everything we can get our hands on in terms of food grown and preserved. Things are different South of the Wall. Ways are different. I’ll not lie to you, it’ll be hard. Hunting will be a bit different for a start. And as for growing crops – have any of your people grown wheat or barley? Oats even?”
“Some,” Mance replied. “You’d be surprised what can be grown in some places North of the Wall. We’ve been doing it for thousands of years. But I take your point. When can we start coming through the Tunnel at Castle Black?”
There was a rasping noise that meant that Jeor Mormont was rubbing his beard with one calloused hand. “In a few days’ time. We need to open up the other tunnels and gates in the nearest forts on the wall. Deep Lake, Queensgate and Oakenshield are at least half-manned now and in decent repair. That’ll make four tunnels. Add on the Nightsfort with this mysterious Black Gate and that will be five. With Eastwatch-by-the-Sea and the Shadow Tower as well, that makes seven. And we’ll try to open a few more.”
“Some of our people are at Hardhome as well. If ships could be sent there, then that would make passage South easier.”
“I’ll have Cotter Pyke send some ships there. He has quite a few these days. A lot of volunteers for the Wall have arrived since the Call went out. A lot of help.”
“Your pardon Lord Commander,” Aemon broke in. “Master Rattleshirt – you said that Hardhome had the remains of a cage? Could there be more there?”
“Maybe,” came the reluctant answer. “Hardhome has been a ruin since the night it burnt. No-one knows how or why to this day. There might be some more cages in the caves. It’s a cursed place. There are bones everywhere in some places. Why do you need more cages?”
“We know so little about them,” Aemon mused. “Not even what metal they were made from. Just that they were made. The more we have the more proof we can send South that wights exist. Even the smallest proof might help.”
“Well then,” Rayder said with a certain grim satisfaction, “If you need the heads of wights to take back with you I believe that we have three at least. My Lord of Bones here struck the heads off a group of three wights two days ago. I had him keep them just in case for this meeting, in case you needed proof. You can send them South now. That should convince even a Dornishman.”
Sarella
Father would be annoyed at first at her change to their plan, but after he got her letter he’d understand, she thought as she looked across the railing at the trees on the far coast to the West. They were clawing Northwards using quite a bit of sail and she hoped that the Captain knew his business. He said that he did, and the fact that he happened to be of the Salty Dornish meant that she took him at his word. They were certainly flying along.
She’d been quite intrigued by her mission when Father had told her about it. The more she travelled North the more that intrigue deepened into something else. She had met so many people, all talking about the same thing, in so many different harbours. The Call had been sent out. The Others were coming. The Stark had called for aid. They had to do something to help out.
What had sparked this? The fact that some – but not all – of the Houses of the Stony Dornish had also heard this Call was interesting. It implied that those who had heard the Call had the blood of the First Men in them. Which made sense, based on the legends. The First Men had fought the Others, therefore it made sense that their descendants would hear this Call. The problem was that surely the Others were legends?
Well, she had to keep an open mind, and that was what Father had stressed. To find out what was going on, to absorb as much information as possible and then send it all back to him. She was to get to Winterfell as fast as possible.
But she wasn’t at Winterfell. She had started off heading for White Harbour, but after a few days she noticed that two of the passengers were not what they seemed to be. They appeared to be a pair of merchants from the Summer Isles. They were not though. The boy, oh, he had Summer Isles blood, she could tell just by looking at him, but it was mixed with something else. He was a grave boy, serious and dutiful. When he smiled it almost came as a surprise.
The other man was the reason why she had changed her destination, which was now to wherever the Seven Hells they were now eventually headed. She had recognised him at once. Father had made all of her sisters memorise the faces of every Lannister in the main line at Casterly Rock. This one had come as a surprise though as he was supposed to be dead. Gerion Lannister was supposed to have sailed into the Smoking Sea of Valyria years before and then vanished without a trace, just as so many others had also done the same. Uncle Doran had banned Dornishmen from trying to get to Valyria. It was tempting, given the treasures that they had stored up there – but the price was too high. No-one ever returned from that place.
Until now. Interesting. He’d lost an eye and was older, but it was him, she knew it.
And what was even more interesting was that even in White Harbour, away from Dorne, Gerion Lannister kept hiding his identity. Jason Hill, he called himself, whilst his son was Patrek. She knew the boy’s true name though – Allarion. Why would a Lannister need to hide his identity though? Where had he been? Where was he going?
She had observed them both, very carefully, using every trick, every stratagem that she had wormed out of Father. Changing her appearance was easy. Making sure she was not seen was trickier. Gerion Lannister may have lost an eye but he had gained guile.
Anyway, she was now in one of the disguises she had created beforehand. She had bound her breasts, cut her hair severely, removed her earrings and put on the robes of a novice at the Citadel. As far as everyone – bar the Captain – knew, she was a novice called Alleras and she – sorry, he – was headed to the Wall to gather information for the Maester he was training under.
She’d only had to threaten one sailor so far with her knife, after he had admired her arse and then commented on how much a boy like him might learn from a real man.
She looked back at the shore. She’d written to Father from White Harbour and she hoped that he got the letter soon. It wasn’t just the fact that Gerion Lannister was still alive. The bay of White Harbour had been full of ships. The Company of the Rose had arrived there and word had it that their mysterious leader was a Stark. Word also had it that Lord Manderly was headed to Castle Black, to meet Lord Eddard Stark and the rest of the Lords of the North. Something was happening, everyone was talking about it, even if few could agree on what it was.
Gerion Lannister had looked about, listened, talked to his son intently about many things, including the need for good furs, and had then taken ship – this ship – bound for Eastwatch-by-the-Sea.
She’d passed on one last thing to Father in that letter. Gerion and Allarion Lannister were guarding something. She didn’t know what, but they were guarding something.
Life was not going to be boring. At least she had bought new clothes as well. With a lot of fur on them. The North was fucking freezing.
Bran
By the end of the first day he was convinced that being the Stark in Winterfell was boring. It involved lots of parchments, some of which he had to sign. It also involved times when he had to listen to Mother and Maester Luwin talk about things that sailed far over his head, like the animal husbandry bits and the work on the Broken Tower that seemed to involve more Language of the Eyebrow on their part. He wasn’t sure what was going on there, but Mother had told him very firmly that he was to go nowhere near it.
He had very briefly considered the fact that as the Stark in Winterfell he could give himself permission to climb things again. Then he’d thought about what Father would say about that and the idea very rapidly died.
The days that followed confirmed his decision that this was all very boring.
At least he could escape the tedium at times and go off and train with Robert and Edric. His friends had more freedom than he did at the moment and it rankled more than a bit. Robert was riding Surefoot whenever he could, whilst Edric was being taught about warhammers by Ser Rodrik Cassel himself, who knew quite a bit about it. But then Ser Rodrik seemed to know a lot about every kind of weapon.
He liked the fact that Cassel and his nephew knew so much about so many weapons. That said, Jory did seem to walk about with a silly grin on his face at times. He’d seen him talking to Mother about something the other day, after which he’d walked away so fast that it had almost been a run. And now all of a sudden people were baking pies and being cheerful and talking about torches in the Godswood.
Grown-ups could be very odd at times.
He sat in the chair now and stared dismally at the things he needed to ‘sign’ on behalf of Father. To one side Mother was sorting through a few things that needed to be organised.
And then Maester Luwin rushed in, looking more than a bit unsettled. “My Lady, ravens have arrived. One from King’s Landing and one from White Harbour.” He handed them both over to Mother, whose eyebrows shot up as she read them.
“Oh,” Mother said eventually. “The King is coming here. Ned expected that. But this other message… The Company of the Rose has returned? Led by an Edric Stark? And with dozens of cousins of the Lords of the North? What is this?”
“The message is from Ser Wylis Manderly, Lord Manderly’s eldest son. I have seen his hand before my Lady. And there was news before from Pentos that the Company of the Rose was going there, seeking passage across the Narrow Sea. Lord Stark wanted confirmation before he left for Castle Black.”
“The Company of the Rose?” Bran asked. “Father told me about them once. Their forefathers refused to bend the knee to Aegon the Conquerer. I asked him why and he didn’t know. Is that about that funny book that was in that pile? I saw it earlier?”
Mother and Maester Luwin both stared at him. “What funny book, Bran?” Mother eventually asked.
“I saw it earlier,” he said, rolling his eyes a bit. “Part of that pile over there that Father has piled up. It’s the red one with all the numbers, that he didn’t understand. I noticed it because it’s got an embossed thingie on the spine of the book. Well, I mean that I noticed it the other day. The light hit it. You were talking about my duties whilst Father is away. I was… a bit bored.”
Mother exchanged a long look with Maester Luwin. They seemed to be amused about something. And also a bit exasperated. After a moment Mother stood up and crossed over to the pile of books, sorted through them quickly – and then came back with a red book, the one that he had been talking about. She peered along its spine. “A rose indeed. You have keen eyes Bran. Well done.”
“Better eyes than mine – I never saw that,” Maester Luwin grumped, before sticking his hands in his sleeves, a sign that he was thinking very hard. This was a bad thing. It meant more Language of the Eyebrow.
Sitting down she carefully opened it. “I remember this one,” she said softly. “Ned had no idea what these figures meant – and the other books were more important. Or so it seemed at the time. I don’t think that Ned really looked at this properly.”
Bran looked it. There were a lot of lines of numbers. Some were in black ink, many were in green ink and some were in red ink. Sometimes there were notes by them. And the writing was all different. The last page of writing made Maester Luwin gasp slightly. “That is the hand of Lord Stark’s father, my Lady. Lord Rickard Stark wrote those numbers – and those words.”
He frowned at the numbers and the words. Something about… Braavos? And some kind of protection?
“The dates…” Mother mused. “The last one is dated… it’s dated to just before my Goodfather left for King’s Landing.”
“Left for his death you mean, my Lady,” the Maester sighed. “Well now… it must mean something. We must puzzle out the meaning. Especially as this Edwin Stark says that he rides for Winterfell to present, erm, a ‘list of those who have returned to their families – and some who will refound lost estates’ – whatever that means.”
Mother and Maester engaged in another staring competition, whilst Bran yawned so hard that his jaw cracked. Yes, being the Stark in Winterfell was no fun at all.
Jon Arryn
The sun was starting to head down to the horizon as he entered the room where the Small Council was to meet. He was early, but then that was a good thing. It gave him a chance to sit and collect his thoughts.
He tired too easily. He had headaches at times. He felt old and worn out. But he was an Arryn and he was temporary Hand of the King, at least until the reins of governance had been switched to a functioning Court in Winterfell, or wherever Robert decided to base himself until all this was dealt with.
The map on the wall caught his eye for a moment and he sighed deeply. What would it be like to just drop everything after the word came that Robert was ruling properly again, with Stannis as his Hand? To go home. Back to the Vale. Back to the Bloody Gate and the Eyrie, to the Mountains of the Moon and all the sights and sounds and smells of his youth. What would it be like?
If only Lysa had given him more sons. It was just him and Robert though – he refused to call him by Lysa’s ridiculous nick-name. ‘SweetRobin’. Fah. Robert Arryn would one day rule the Vale. And his son would have to be strong.
He rubbed his head again as the familiar ache appeared and then disappeared, before pouring himself a small glass of watered wine. Pycelle had told him that he had to rest, had to relax, had to wait for his strength to return eventually. That meant waiting. He hated waiting.
Boots sounded in the corridor and he turned to watch Renly Baratheon stride in with the new Master of Coin, Lord Orton Merryweather. It was not exactly an orthodox choice. The big man from the Reach with the truly impressive nose had a good head for law – and oddly enough for numbers. He had not been their first choice, more like their third choice. But another Florent would not have been a good idea, and old Lord Stoutheart… well, Weakheart might be a better choice. The man had beamed at being told that he was being considered for a position on the Small Council – before clutching at his chest and dropping dead on the spot.
Merryweather was a decent choice. A safe pair of hands was what they needed. Not an overly clever man – after Baelish he’d never trust a man who said that he was good with coin. Not after that poisonous little weasel.
So far Merryweather had proven himself to be courteous, reasonably astute, very well travelled and husband to a remarkably beautiful woman from Myr.
“Lord Arryn,” Merryweather said with a short bow. “You are well?”
“Tired,” Jon replied with a slight smile. “I tire easily. But Lord Stannis made me temporary Hand until he sends word from Winterfell that he has rejoined His Grace, so I must do my duty.”
“I am still a little unsure as what your title is, Jon,” Renly said with an easy smile. “Acting Hand? Temporary Hand? Second-Hand?”
“Most droll, Lord Renly, most droll,” tittered a voice to one side. Varys glided into the room, on silent slippered feet. “I see that we are almost all here?”
A shuffling and harrumphing heralded the arrival of Grand Maester Pycelle, who blinked at them all rheumily, before focussing on Jon. “And how do you feel today my Lord of Arryn?”
Tired of everyone asking me that bloody question, Jon wanted to shout at him, but instead he smiled a little. “Tired, Grand Maester. And yes, I am taking the powders you prescribed for me in warm wine. Heartily foul they taste too, but they are having an effect.” What he didn’t mention was the fact that Quill had hired a trusted man to test everything. If he died tomorrow then he wanted everyone to know why – and who.
The Small Council found their seats and sat. Jon looked about and then leant forwards a little. “Well, my Lords, The King apparently passed Gulltown two days ago, so he should at the very least be level with the Fingers by now. A few more days and his party will be at White Harbour.”
“I found it rather telling that they didn’t take the Wheelhouse,” Renly said with a slight smile that turned to a grimace. “Although the Queen’s reaction once she finds out that it was ‘forgotten’ will be interesting.”
“And loud, I suspect,” Varys muttered just loud enough for Jon to hear him. “Very loud.”
Pycelle shook his head. “A fast journey. Most inadvisable in the place like the North. Very inhospitable place.”
“Grand Maester, that wheelhouse loses or breaks a wheel roughly once every twenty miles,” Renly pointed out dryly. “If the road is bad, sometimes even more often. It may be relatively comfortable, but it’s damned slow. And Robert’s moving fast at the moment. Damn fast, even by his standards. Cersei and the children will get a lesson in riding. That and discomfort. Might do them all some good.”
Pycelle harrumphed again, whilst Merryweather looked politely baffled.
Varys broke the moment. “In the meantime my little birds have been singing some interesting tales to me. There has indeed been fighting by the God’s Eye. Apparently some claiming to be members of the Faith Militant tried to get to the Isle of Faces to burn the Weirwood there to the ground.”
He said it very matter-of-factly, and Jon felt his stomach freeze in terror. “Varys, please tell me that they failed. There has long been an unspoken compact regarding the Isle of Faces. It has to remain intact. It must not be touched. The last thing we need is a war between those who count themselves First Men and those who count themselves Andal.”
“Oh they did indeed fail, my Lord,” Varys said. “But it is the manner of their failing which is interesting. According to my little birds the Faith Militant was being opposed by some local villagers with ties to the Isle, led by a former soldier. When the Faith brought a number of hedge knights… well, there seems to have been something of an intervention. Erm… mounted men dressed as Green Men from the Isle.”
The terror was replaced with astonishment. “Green Men? From the Isle of Faces? On the mainland?”
“Yes my Lord. Led, according to one rather insistent source of mine, by a very tall old man who some said was the Green Man.”
The astonishment deepened. “The Green Man. The Green Man?”
“I’m sorry,” Merryweather broke in, “Who is this Green Man?”
Jon leant back in his seat and then raised both eyebrows. “I don’t know. The Green Men keep very much to themselves. All the Crown has ever known about them is that they recruit from those with the blood of the First Men. Sometimes there are tales about how they are selected. Some say that they are called there. Sometimes they’re from the North. Sometimes they’re from the Stormlands. A few are Stony Dornish. They go to the Isle – and then they never leave. Never. The Green Man leads them. It’s a position, a rank filled by many over the years. How he’s chosen is a mystery.
“But there have been tales of those who have travelled to the Isle of Faces to consult with the Green Man. Some say that they have their futures predicted there. Or they’re given just a hint about their fate, or if what they do is wise or not. Legend has it that Edmyn Tully visited the Green Man of the time after Aegon burned Harrenhall. What they talked about is a mystery. Legend also has it that Addam Velaryon went there during the Dance of Dragons. To be told what, no-one knows – it’s a mystery.
“And there is one final meeting. I have heard that Rhaegar Targaryen visited the Isle of Faces not once but twice – once just before the Tourney at Harrenhall and once just before the Ruby Ford.”
Varys nodded sombrely. “I had heard that as well, my Lord. I was never able to find out why he went there.”
“Surely all that these Green Men have is, well, superstitious rubbish,” Pycelle broke in. “Legends from the time of the First Men?”
“Then why would Rhaegar Targaryen go to them?” Merryweather muttered. “I remember him well. He was a strange man at times, much concerned with prophecies.”
“He was a Targaryen, almost the last of the Targaryen’s,” Renly muttered. “His father was a madman. Any wonder he was strange?”
“He could admittedly be odd,” Varys conceded. “But as others have sought advice from the Isle of Faces… well, who knows? And I must confess that the Isle has been one of the few failures for my little birds. King Aerys once wanted to know what was happening there. I was unable to find out for him. Or, for that matter, his Grace King Robert. One little bird I sent there was once found wandering about a village afterwards, with no memory of what had happened.”
Jon rubbed at his forehead tiredly. “Very well – the Green Men are involving themselves in matters in Westeros for the first time in centuries. We must talk to this Green Man to find out what they want. And we must send word to Winterfell about this. The King must know, as must Ned. What else?”
“There are confused reports of rising of the Faith Militant near Raventree Hall and High Heart,” Varys muttered. “Apparently Ser Edmure Tully has ridden forth from Riverrun to confront them at the latter. And there are odd reports from Dorne. More and more of the Stony Dornish have been seen heading North. Oh and something odd also came in from The Reach. Apparently Lord Mace Tyrell has retired to his favourite hunting lodge, leaving the running of The Reach to his eldest son Willas Tyrell.”
Renly looked puzzled at this, whilst Merryweather smiled slightly. “I have joined the Small Council at a time of crisis,” the latter rumbled when he saw Jon raise an eyebrow at him. “Much as I admire Lord Tyrell, Willas Tyrell is… the best of the Tyrells, in my view.”
Renly had turned a slightly odd colour and was opening his mouth to say something when a fist pounded at the door. “Come!” Jon shouted, slightly irked at the interruption.
Quill strode in through the openening door with a message in his hand which, after approaching and bowing quickly to Jon, he handed over. “From the Foxhold my Lord.”
Jon looked at Quill. The man had an odd look in his eyes, like an odd kind of triumph. Taking the letter he looked down at it. Shock roiled his mind for a moment. Then he smiled grimly. “Your pardon, my lords. It seems that my wife has been found. Lord Cassley writes from the Foxhold that her party sought refuge there as she was very ill.” He passed the message over to Pycelle, who scrabbled at it with interest in his eyes. “It seems that I did indeed stab her back in her attack on me.”
“Oh woe,” Renly quipped. Then he sobered a little. “Your pardon. Stabbed where?”
“In, er, the arm, Lord Renly,” Pycelle replied. “The wound corrupted. It seems that Lord Cassley’s Maester tried to save her arm at the elbow, but was unable to do so. Instead he had to amputate it at, erm, the shoulder.” He put the message down. “A most serious procedure. My Lord, you must prepare yourself for the possibility that she will not survive this. From what this message says the Maester of the Foxhold has no small skill, but this… this would be a grievous blow for even a strong warrior.”
“At least she has been found,” Jon said heavily. “And she is no longer a threat to my son. And if she lives then we will get a reason from her as to why she attacked me. In the meantime Lord Cassley also writes that he rides for King’s Landing. Humph. I wonder why. He isn’t bringing Lysa.”
“Indeed not my Lord,” Pycelle muttered. “Such a trip would mostly likely kill her.” Then he paused. “Cassley… Cassley… I thought that the Lord of the Foxhold was Lord Cawlish?”
“Cawlish died without legitimate issue,” Jon said quietly. “Lord Cassley is a former sellsword who I trust absolutely.”
“A former sellsword,” Pycelle harrumphed. “Are you sure that such trust is warranted, my Lord? Such men are hardly noble. Hardly trustworthy.”
This triggered a slight cough from Varys. “This sellsword, Grand Maester, is the man who caught the late and very much unlamented Petyr Baelish.”
Pycelle absorbed this for a moment. “Ah,” he said eventually. “Well then, at times an infusion of new blood is most welcome. Most welcome indeed.”
Tyrion
The oil in the lantern to one side was starting to run out, judging by the dying of the light. He peered at it crossly and then sighed and closed the book. Time to stop reading and start sleeping. It was late enough as it was.
He ran a hand over the spine of the book and then placed it on his chest and stared at the ceiling. Dacey’s Father had been a very gifted historian. A very gifted writer, come to that. His writing had been organised, neat but elegant. He had known when to differentiate between known facts and theories about possible facts. And he had had an excellent way of laying out the possible facts behind legends, explaining, verifying and knowing when to admit that something was too outlandish to be true.
There was so much in this book. No wonder Ned Stark had been very thoughtful when he had handed it over, saying that Dacey would need to make copies, many copies.
And there were hints about some of the weapons of their ancestors. The Fist of Winter – which old Lord Surestone thought might be hidden somewhere in the crypts of Winterfell – had been thought to be made from metal found in a fallen star, one that had fallen near Winterfell itself. There had been a little treatise about naming habits, as well as mention of other weapons. Dawn was mentioned, as was the spear of the Gardener Kings. And some kind of axe in Casterly Rock, one that had apparently vanished at least two hundred years ago.
Other things were mentioned as well. Greenseers and Green Men. The Isle of Faces was apparently very important to all First Men, as it was a proper Weirwood grove, as opposed to the odd tree here and there South of The Neck.
Speaking of South of the Neck there was even a short list of families with First Men blood that had been known – or rumoured to have been known – to have the Greensight. Much to his interest, the Casterlys were on that list, which meant that the Lannisters were as well. Those with the gift had, it seemed, dwindled quite a bit since the arrival of the Andals, but it still emerged every now and then.
He wondered who the last Lannister with the Greensight had been. It wasn’t something that Father had ever talked about. In fact it was highly doubtful that Father would ever talk about that. Or think about it, come to that. Although he might raise a scornful eyebrow at the very mention of it.
Then he narrowed his eyes a little. There had been an odd reference to one Tyrek Lannister. Wait… he had been the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch hadn’t he? The one who had ordered the abandonment of the Nightfort?
Speaking of the Nightfort, he made a note to look up any mention of that as well. There had been some odd references in the chapter about the building of the Wall about ‘artefacts’ that had been used at the building of the old castle there. Something about a seat of sight, or something like that. Lord Surestone had stressed that the tale was an old one and obscure even for the North.
Lord Surestone. He blinked a little in the dying lamplight and then reluctantly placed the book to one side. He needed his sleep. But he still cursed the name of Ser Willem Bootle, the man who had most likely murdered Lord Surestone. Damn that man. He would naver now have the chance to meet such a brilliant writer and historian as Lord Surestone, and the Gods alone knew how rare it was to read a genuinely good new history book these days.
He blew out the lamp and laid back in the absolute darkness that had fallen. Tonight’s camp was another holdfast, this one occupied. The local lord had been a bit stunned by the approach of Lord Stark and his party, but he had made them very welcome.
Benjen Stark was no longer with them – he had ridden south at dawn, headed for Winterfell. His tale had been a fascinating one… a lost base once used by the Rangers of the Night’s Watch, a man who had been wandering possibly for centuries, a real tale of magic… and of wights.
Wights. He’d seen something that few had for thousands of years – the severed and still-moving head of a wight. He knew that they were out there, he’ knew on an intellectual level that such things existed, but to see one… Well, it made it all suddenly very real. The threat was out there.
Father needed to see that head. So did Robert Baratheon. It might just kick the latter out of his sloth and lethargy. Perhaps.
He rolled over and closed his eyes. More hard riding tomorrow. What fun. At least the saddlesores were starting to respond to treatment.
Edmure
The main courtyard of Riverrun was filled with noise as he strode out of the doorway and into the crowd. All around him men were heaving themselves into saddles, checking cinches or doing any one of a hundred little things as they prepared themselves to possibly go into battle.
He looked at the crowd grimly and then cursed himself for being a soft-headed fool. That it had come to this – riding out against men of the Riverlands. Sadly they were now men of the Faith Militant, who would not listen to reason and who had to be stopped from doing something stupid.
Burning down Godswoods – Seven Hells, burning down anything – was incredibly stupid. With Father ill that made him effectively Lord of the Riverlands and there was no way that he was going to have people setting Godswoods on fire and then raving about the Old Gods and pagans. The Andal invasion had been hundreds of years ago. He had no intention of restarting those hatreds. Plus, the Faith Militant appeared to want quite a bit of power.
He set his jaw slightly. If some of them had to die in order for peace to be restored then he was happy with that. He hated the thought of it, but he had no choice.
What he really needed was the time to get word to Ned and ask what was going on. The Call had shaken him far more than he cared to admit. It had shown that there was something happening to the North, something that was old and powerful and capable of reaching those with the blood of the First Men.
Including him. Which… frightened him a little. He was faithful to the Seven, he had been brought up with the lessons of the Seven in his ears from various Septons, but the Call… that had called to something else, something deeper, within him.
The leather armour he was wearing chafed a little in places and he pulled at it slightly as he approached his horse. Roan snickered at him a little as he caught sight of him and he eyed him back. “Behave, you.”
Naturally the Maester arrived just as he was putting a boot in the stirrups. “Sir Edmure!”
He removed his boot and then glared at the man. “Yes Vyman?”
“Lord Tully is awake again and wishes to see you at once!”
Father was awake? He’d been ill for a few weeks now but perhaps it was starting to pass. He nodded and then looked about for his Master at Arms. “Tymon! Take the men out! Head for High Heart at once – I want that place protected at all costs. I’ll join you as fast as I can – my Father needs me.”
Tymon nodded sombrely and then started to shout orders. As the men began to file their way out over the drawbridge Edmure strode off to Father’s room.
To his surprise he found Father pulling on some boots, huffing as he did so. He looked tired and ill, but he was fully dressed. He scowled at him. “Father, you are not coming with us. You aren’t well.”
Father returned the scowl for a moment before sighing. “I know,” he said quietly. “But I was at least going to see you off. And there’s a lot to do.”
“I know,” he replied in a level voice. “This mad Septon must be brought to justice. I like it not… but it must be done.”
“Yes,” Father said heavily. He finished pulling his boots and then sat back and looked at Edmure. “You must be strong for what lies ahead. This… movement, this rising by those who would bring back the Faith Militant – it must be stopped. Every Lord Paramount will agree on this, even that idiot in Highgarden. It’s foolish beyond words. And… there’s something in the water, Edmure. Some current is stirring in the deep waters. I feel it. Something’s coming.”
“The Call to Winterfell?”
Father nodded. “That… concerns me greatly. We must made Riverrun ready for whatever storms are ahead of us.” He sighed. “Any word of the others?”
Edmure shook his head slowly. “No sign of Uncle Brynden for many days now. The last sighting had him headed towards the God’s Eye. There are no more reports of fighting there at least. The Isle of Faces seems to be safe after some kind of skirmish, but I have sent a raven to Harrenhall to ask Lady Whent to find out what happened there.”
He paused and pulled a face. “As for her… there is no sign at all of her. I still can’t believe that she would do such a thing.”
Father shook his head, as stony-faced and grim as Edmure had ever seen him. “She is dead to us. For her to do what she did… I never want to hear her name again. Thank the Gods she didn’t kill her husband. Jon Arryn is one of the best men I have ever met. What she did…”
“I know, Father. I know. When she is found then she will meet justice.” His gaze dropped. His own sister…
“With that, and the fact that Brynden has vanished, I have made a decision. You must marry. And soon.”
He stared at his father. “I must?”
“Yes. You ride to fight the Faith Militant today. What if you are wounded? Or killed? At the moment the succession would pass to Cat’s second son, Bran. He is a good lad, but what does he know of Riverrun? Or the Riverlands? He may look like a Tully, but his heart is based in the North. He’s Ned’s son and a Stark. The Tully name must live on. It must live on through you.”
Father stood on slightly shaky legs, before turning and placing his hands on Edmure’s shoulders. “I wish that I could ride with you. I wish that I could fight with you. But you must do this. I have shielded you a little too much from things like this perhaps, but no more. I am proud of you. Do your duty and then return to Riverrun. We must find you a wife.”
He looked at Father, his mind whirling. Father sounded so… driven. He nodded slowly. “Very well Father. But I would beg of one thing from you. Please – no Freys.”
Father laughed shortly, a laugh that turned into a cough. “Agreed! I would not pair you with any of the Late Lord Frey’s daughters!”
He smiled back at Father and then took his leave, before striding back to the courtyard. Roan was being held by a stablehand, with a small honour guard nearby. Edmure mounted quickly and then nodded at the others, before spurring Roan out of the gates and over the drawbridge. He had a hill to defend against some madmen.
He really needed to have that word with Ned. What had he started?
Chapter Text
Alek
They furled the sails once they caught sight of the island up ahead. It wouldn’t do to arrive in daylight. Not on their mission. No, dark deeds like this needed a dark light. There would be the barest of new moons tonight.
He tried to ignore the mutterings around him in the big longship. Not everyone liked this little trip that they had been ordered to take and young Drenn had had to be… spoken to by Gelmarr. He’d waved his knife under the boy’s nose and told him to shut the fuck up, or that he’d slit his fucking throat and leave him for the seagulls to peck out his eyes.
That said… Drenn had a point. Damphair had given him their orders and there was something about that man these days that set his teeth a little on edge. It was the eyes. There was something mad about his eyes. He paused for a heartbeat. He’d just used the word ‘mad’ about Damphair. That was bad.
As the sun started to kiss the horizon he squinted along a bearing towards the island, noted which way the wind was blowing and then kicked the men into life. “Row, you maggots! We’ve got reaving to do!”
They rowed. They rowed the way that Ironborn did, properly and with the occasional curse about any idiot who was a bit behind the stroke. As they rowed darkness fell.
They reached the shore roughly when he had planned to. It was all a bit rough and ready in terms of timing, not that he cared that much as they dragged the boat up onto the shore. Their orders were simple. Get to Harlaw, raid the harbour, burn a few ships and then leave. Their job was to provoke Lord Harlaw into doing something stupid, he knew that.
He knew something else. He was nervous. This was a bad idea. The Reader was not a fool. Many scorned his books – what kind of Ironborn needed books? – but the man wasn’t a fool. Damphair though…
Perhaps two or three ships instead of just one?
But he had his orders. He led the men along the beach and up the path that led to the nearby harbour. They marched in silence and with every step a vague foreboding grew a little inside him.
As they reached a slight dip before the harbour he sighed and then stopped the men with a muttered command. “Torches,” he hissed. “Light the torches. Now – fast and hard. Kill when you have to, burn whatever you can. If you see a possible saltwife grab her if you can. But remember this – we are doing this fast and if I have to leave a bloody fool behind because he forgot that, then I will.”
The men nodded grimly in the darkness and then they started lighting the torches. As they readied themselves he drew his sword, sucked in a gulp of air, opened his mouth to shout the command to attack – and at that moment an arrow thwacked into the eye of the man with the torch standing next to him.
There was a moment of absolute shocked silence and then as the man started to collapse bonelessly to the ground more arrows emerged out of the night, straight for his men and especially those who were holding torches.
Fuck it, he cursed to himself as he looked around, the torches had killed his night vision. Where were they? Then he caught sight of more arrows headed his way and he ducked, which meant that an arrow meant for his head instead went over him and into Gelmarr’s throat. Blood sprayed everywhere like a small bow wave breaking.
“Charge,” he found himself shouting. “At them!”
But it was the others who charged first. Another volley of arrows and then the ground shook as men emerged out of the darkness. They were fully armoured, with swords, spears and shields and as they came they shouted just one word again and again. “Harlaw! Harlaw!”
They were ready for us, he thought dazedly – and then an arrow came out of nowhere and punched through his leather jerkin and into his right shoulder. Agony hit him and he let out a choked scream as the sword fell from his hand.
The attackers were in amongst his men now and they were carving them up. They fought as a unit, whilst his shocked men fought on their own. How had they been ready?
Then his mind caught up with his eyes. They were losing. His men were dying before his eyes. He reached down, picked up his sword, suppressed a moan at the flair of agony from his shoulder and then bellowed: “Back! Back to the ship! Disengage and back to the ship!”
He heard the odd cry of acknowledgement, but as he watched the men started to be overrun by the attackers. There was an exultant tone to the cries of “Harlaw! Harlaw!” now, and even the odd cry of “The Reader!”
A spear point jabbed at him and he barely had the strength to fend it off with his sword – and then he ran, stumbling here and there. Others followed him, but few of them, all too few. The pain from his shoulder was bad, but he didn’t want to die and he somehow kept one foot placed clumsily before the other.
An arrow came out of the dark sky and hit the back of the man in front of him, who let out a choked scream and then went down. He tried to swerve, but his legs were shaking badly and instead he fell over the body. The shock caused agony to flare up in his shoulder – and then darkness took him.
When he opened his eyes again he blinked muzzily at the sky. Where was he? And then the pain hit. Fuck, he was on Harlaw. And he was on his back? Had someone turned him?
Boots crunched on gravel and a men with a torch approached. He was dressed in armour, but he knew his face. The Reader himself.
“Alek,” he said grimly, before bending over him. “Ach. You fool. To use Ironborn tactics on Ironborn… I had men with Myrish glasses on the high ground near the best points on the island before sunset every day for the past two weeks. Waiting for something like this. We saw your ship at last light. More than enough time to get ready.”
There was a word for this, wasn’t there? Oh yes. Irony. He smiled weakly and then coughed wetly. “Ordered to.”
“By who?”
He coughed wetly again, used his good hand to wipe at his mouth – and saw the blood smeared there. Fuck it. Who cared now? “Damphair.”
“Why?”
“Punish… you. Provoke you. Get you… to do… something stupid.”
The reader nodded shortly. Then he looked at him again. “I have had enough,” he said in a voice like nothing Alek had ever heard before, “Of Greyjoy stupidity. Asha?”
“Nuncle?” The word was said by a woman in full armour who approached carrying a torch.
“Send the raven to Old Wyk. Tell the Stonebrows that the time is now.”
“Yes, my Lord,” The woman said after a moment and then she strode off.
Alek coughed again, blood on his hand again. “Harlaw? End… me. Mercy… stroke?”
The older man stared down at him. “You were a good man once,” Harlaw muttered. “I owe you this much.” He pulled out a knife and the last thing that Alek ever saw was it coming down on his throat.
Jaime
The run in to White Harbour was... interesting. It certainly wasn’t boring. The number of ships in the Harbour, or the estuary leading to the harbour seemed to surprise the captain of the ship they were travelling on.
“Busier than normal,” he muttered as Jaime joined him at the rail. “Two or three times the vessels that would normally be here. Something’s up.”
He looked at the boats and then raised his eyebrows. “I’ll take your word for it, good Captain. I wonder why it’s so busy then?”
The other man shrugged. “I don’t know Ser Jaime. Wait – I recognise that ship.” He pointed at a departing vessel that to Jaime’s eyes looked exactly like all others apart from a slightly different shade of sail and then grabbed for his speaking trumpet. “Ahoy there! Is that the Pentosi Rock?”
There seemed to be a flurry of shouts on the approaching ship, as it folded a sail – wait, furled a sail, all this sailing parlance bored him – and slowed a little, and then a man was standing on its bows with a speaking trumpet of his own. “Aye – is that you Corlen? How are you not dead yet?”
“Skill,” the Captain drawled. “At least you’ve got your scow pointed the right way, bow-first!”
“I’ve told you before, I was drunk that time,” came the response. “What’s amiss?”
“What’s amiss? Why’s the harbour so crowded?” They were walking down the length of their ships as they shouted, with Jaime a fascinated spectator.
“Northmen going home. We helped ship the Company of the Rose across the Narrow Sea. There were a lot of the bastards, with a lot of equipment. Coin too. Paid me well. Oh and there’s others coming in from all over Westeros. You heard of this Call?”
The Captain hesitated just a moment. “Aye,” he finally shouted back. “Fair made my skin crawl. I heard it.”
“Rather you than me. Strange times, my friend, strange times. I’m off back to Pentos. Odd things happening there too.” And with that he waved, bellowed an order to hoist more sail and passed from earshot.
Jaime and the Captain watched the ship go, both frowning. This was all most odd. Perhaps he should have listened more to what was being said. And then there was a shout of “Look out below!” that heralded the arrival of the Fat King as he climbed down a rope and landed on the deck remarkably lightly. He eyed the King for a moment. The man was dressed almost like a sailor because he now loved to climb rigging (to the point where Cersei had been eying the rigging with a certain glint in her eye) and it was starting to show. He was not fat, not any more. Heavyset perhaps, but not fat. A lot of muscle had come back in a remarkably short space of time.
“So, the Company of the Rose has returned. Varys said that they were on the way.” Baratheon peered at the city ahead. “The North. The North… a hard place, but a beautiful one. Breeds good men and women. The biggest of the Seven Kingdoms, by size! Aye, and now the most mysterious…” His voice trailed off, his eyes on the distant horizon, or on something that Jaime couldn’t quite see. “Oh aye, there’s a war coming. I smell it in the air. Best get ready.”
By the time that the ship had broken out the royal standard and then started to approach the main wharf there was a crowd assembled on it. A pinnace had gone on ahead of the flotilla and word had obviously spread that the King had arrived. In pride of place was a carpet, with a rather fat man wearing a greenish surcoat with a merman on it standing at the end. The problem was that it wasn’t the right fat man.
Baratheon, now dressed properly, strode down the gangplank and as he set foot on land the crowd knelt almost as one. He strode up the carpet, with Jaime and Selmy not too far behind and then stopped.
“Your Grace,” the kneeling man ahead of him said, “White Harbour is yours.”
Baratheon gestured for the kneeling fat man to stand up. “Ser Wylis Manderly is it not?”
“Aye Your Grace,” Manderly said as he stood with an effort, the others standing as well after a few heartbeats.
“Is your father ill or something?”
Ser Wylis looked the King in the eye. “He is gone to Castle Black, Your Grace. Lord Stark has called the Lords of the North there.”
Well, this was unexpected. Selmy’s eyebrows flickered slightly. Jaime stole a look at Baratheon’s face, which had a look of deep concentration. “Has Ned Stark called his banners then?”
“Not yet Your Grace. He has called my Father and the others to Castle Black for a council of war though. And to spy out the lie of the land methinks, North of the Wall.”
Now this was pure idiocy. However, Baratheon rocked backwards on his heels for an instant and then exchanged an odd look with Selmy. “The Call was loud here then?”
Ser Wylis bowed his head and nodded. “Like a thunderclap Your Grace,” said hoarsely. “It was heard by us all. My father was very shaken. We all were.” He straightened up. “Something dark is coming, Your Grace.” He said the last words intently.
Baratheon looked at him and then nodded. “Aye,” he said after a long moment, as he laid a large hand on the fat man’s shoulder. “When is your father due in Castle Black?”
“In the next day or so Your Grace, if things went as was planned.”
This made Baratheon pull a face. “Not much point in me heading up there then. By the time I get there Ned’s council of war will be over. Very well – Ser Wylis we will need your hospitality for a few days as we prepare for the trip to Winterfell. I will meet Lord Stark there.”
Ser Wylis nodded. “Of course Your Grace. We have quarters prepared for you and your family.” He nodded respectfully as something behind them all and Jaime turned slightly to see a slightly sour-faced Cersei march down the gangplank, with her children behind her. “Oh – and we have messages for you at the New Castle. Ravens brought them from Kings Landing and other places.”
Baratheon nodded and then turned to his steward, a hard-faced Stormlander called Flinders. “Unload what we brought on the ships. We stay here for a few days and then move to Winterfell. We’ll be moving quickly. Do what you must, as I discussed with you on the ship.”
“Aye, Your Grace,” Flinders muttered and then vanished off.
Baratheon wanted a fast trip to Winterfell? With the wheelhouse that Cersei liked to travel in? He must have knocked his head on something, Jaime thought with a hidden grin.
“So, Ser Wylis, let us ride for the New Castle,” Baratheon rumbled as he strode through the parting crowd. “And you can tell me all about what’s been happening. Oh – and what of the Company of the Rose? I heard that they had returned?”
“They have, Your Grace,” said Manderly as he followed. “Their leaders have left for Winterfell. A Stark leads them.”
Baratheon paused for a moment and then strode on with a laugh. “A Stark?”
“A distant cousin to Lord Stark.”
“Ned will find that passing strange – but then he’s always wanted a large family!”
They strode on, but all of a sudden Jaime felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He carefully looked at the crowd around them, looking for any eyes that lingered. He had the oddest feeling of being watched all of a sudden. And then after a long moment it went away. He shrugged internally and then carried on walking to the waiting horses. Imagination.
Robert
He looked at the pile of messages with some trepidation. He was tempted to send for a large ale and then put it off, but no. He was King and he threw himself into them. They had all been marked for his eyes only and if anyone had read them then he’d have their guts for garters.
He had to admit something. Stannis might be a pain in the arse at times, but he was a good Hand. His reports were succinct, informative and bloody good. The first messages were about the fighting near the God’s Eye. Something had happened there to damp everything down and he wondered what. Someone had stamped on the Faith Militant there, good and bloody hard. Excellent. He wished he could have been there.
He reached for the next message, opened it – and then his breath caught. Jon. Jon had woken up. He found a massive grin stealing over his face, before he stood up from the desk and then all but dancing in glee around it. Then he caught himself. Damn it, he had to act like a king.
He turned back to the message. Jon was awake… and he was recovering. Pycelle thought that he would make a full recovery as long as he did not exert himself, and he snorted at that. Oh, he’d make sure that Jon didn’t exert himself, even if he had to lock him in a fully-equipped room with ever luxury known to man.
The next messages were routine and then he reached one that made him stop dead again. Stannis had gone to Dragonstone because… a Godswood had been found there? On Dragonstone? That rocky dragon-carved island? That made no sense at all.
Then he paused, his mind whirling. No, wait. Things had been mad enough of late. Stannis would not have gone without a bloody good reason, and besides he was due to follow them to the North eventually.
More messages and then something written in Stannis’s own hand. “From Lord Stannis Baratheon, Hand of the King, to His Grace the King Robert Baratheon. Travelled to Dragonstone to investigate report that Godswood found by Shireen Baratheon and Gendry Storm. Story true. Lost Godswood found and Heart Tree. Shireen cured of greyscale scars. Old Gods have made their presence felt. Travelling at once for White Harbour with my family.”
He sank back into the chair in utter shock. This was… this was astonishing. A sweet child, Shireen. Not pretty, but she had a good heart and an even better mind. But there was always that sadness that lay like a blanket around her. The greyscale. Not something that had ever been her fault, but it was something that made people stare – and then look away. And she knew it as well.
And now she was free of the greyscale. How? How? The Old Gods. They existed. He had known that before, but now he knew that for certain. He looked down at the message again. Astonishing. Well, Ned would probably give one of his looks when he heard of this. That look that said ‘I told you so, but did you listen? Of course you bloody didn’t.’
Someone was shouting something outside in the corridor that led to the room and he looked up. Oh. The Scold was here. The bloody Nag. And sure enough she burst in, followed by a slightly red-faced Ser Barristan Selmy.
“There you are!” Cersei shouted. “You dolt! You dullard! Did you think that it was funny not to bring the wheelhouse? To make your family suffer? Your own family?”
“We need to move fast to Winterfell,” he said quietly, his mind still spinning more than a little. “The wheelhouse would have slowed our progress. So I didn’t give orders for it to be brought.”
“So your family means nothing to you!” Cersei bellowed and he saw Selmy wince for a moment – and then he looked at him properly and frowned.
“Your Grace, is everything alright? Has there been any bad news about Lord Arryn?”
“No – no. He woke up. That’s good. But then there’s this.” He handed it over to Cersei, who took it with a frown that was almost a sneer. Selmy peered at the message too.
When Cersei looked up there was a new look on her face, one that was perplexed. “Is Stannis mad? Nothing can cure greyscale scars. And what’s this about a Godswood on Dragonstone?”
“I don’t know. That’s what he said though.” He stood up again. “Something’s happening, Cersei. Something bigger than anything that anyone can imagine.”
She stared at him, baffled. “This is nothing but insanity. And if you think that I have forgotten about the wheelhouse then you’re just as mad.” And with that she threw the message at him, whirled and stamped out.
That left Ser Barristan Selmy, who just stared at him. “Your Grace?”
“We train now, Ser Barristan,” he said in a voice like stone. “War is coming. I must be ready. You must be too. The North is where we fight this war.”
Robb
The boats on the Long Lake were… something of a revelation. He’d expected some kind of barge organisation, towed by different teams of horses at a good steady pace, but instead there were large ships with sails that looked almost as if they came from the Riverlands.
When he had asked Father about them, he had looked amused for a moment and then coughed slightly. “Well, I did ask your mother. And Theon had a few suggestions about things he’d read as well. Seems to work. The winds mean a bit of tacking but it’s faster than a horse. And we’ll be travelling at night as well. Cabins on these things aren’t much, but we’ll have to put up with it.”
He nodded and looked at the direwolves, who were gravely sitting in a row, Frostfyre at their head, watching the shore go past with a look of grave fascination. Theon was standing by a stanchion, also staring out at the shore and he walked over to join him. “You alright?”
Theon started slightly and then smiled slightly. “Just thinking.”
“About what?”
His friend – and Theon was still his friend, so many things had been crammed into just a few months – paused, his jaw working a little. “The future,” he said eventually. “What it holds. For me, for the North, for… for my family. I don’t know what to do, Robb. I just… don’t. What can I do?”
“You mean other than bring up a direwolf pup, fight at our sides as we fight back the Others, save the Wall and all of Westeros?”
A smile came and went quickly. “Aye – that’s quite a bit there, isn’t it? But if I survive it – oh don’t look at me like that, I’d heard Lord Stark’s tales, war is a game of bloody chances and hard fighting – then what? Back to the Iron Islands? I barely remember them and besides I doubt my father would want me now after so many years of being a Greenlander.”
Theon sighed. “My uncle Rodrik – Lord Harlaw, the Reader – wrote to me, you know. Said that Father was obsessed with the old ways, the iron price, as a means to strengthening his rule. Mentioned the Rebellion as well. Thing is – my father’s an idiot. He thought that he could gain independence for the Iron Islands by taking on the rest of the Realm. How many died until he realised how wrong he was?”
A silence fell as Robb stared at him. “You don’t want to succeed your father, do you?”
“I… I don’t know, Robb,” Theon said in a choking voice. “I don’t know. I’m a Northerner now, not Ironborn. I worship the Old Gods. I have a direwolf. The Iron Price means nothing to me now. I know what the cost of the Iron Price is. Blood. The Ironborn wouldn’t want me as their lord. I wouldn’t them as it stands now.” He sighed again, before laughing slightly. “Of course, I have to live long enough to make a decision. You’re right – we have a war to fight. A war against something that we have to win again. What did you think when you saw that wight’s head?”
He remembered the look in the face of that dead woman, the way that the mouth worked, the way that the blue eyes swept around the room. And the mingling of horror and fascination that he’d felt. That was before the wrongness of it all hit him. The fact that this was something… unnatural. Evil in fact. “I knew that we have a war that we have to win on our hands. Have to. We have no choice on this. We win or we all die.”
“Aye,” said a voice behind them and they both started. Father had somehow appeared behind them and he looked at them both with as serious an expression as he could muster, something that made Robb swallow nervously. “You do have the right of it. We win or we die. That is all we can think about for now. That said – Theon, you will get a better idea of what you want as times goes on. Fate would not be fate if it did not have surprises in store for you. From what I have heard things are.. tense… on the Iron Islands at the moment. Your father seems to have decided to ignore the Call. That is not a popular choice for some, such as your uncle Lord Harlaw. Theon, I am reading the ravens from the Iron Islands very carefully. If your father does something stupid…”
“Then he will show himself off as an utter fool,” Theon said bleakly. “I understand, Lord Stark. I cannot – no, I will not – fight for him. I don’t care about being his heir. Asha can be his heir.”
Father nodded sombrely. “From what I’ve heard recently, she might not want to be his heir either.” And then he strode off along the deck.
Robb exchanged a long and troubled look with Theon, before his friend finally shrugged. “Never cared much for the name Greyjoy anyway. What can be grey about joy?”
Which was a good point. Robb raised his eyebrows and then nodded. “Just don’t be a Greystark, brother. Too much history there.”
Theon shuddered. “The Boltons again,” he muttered. “No. Greymist perhaps. I’ll think about it.”
Robb nodded again, before they both went back to watching the shore slide past.
“Do you think that The Imp has his eye on Dacey Surestone?” Theon asked eventually.
“If he does he’ll have a lot of people watching him as they sharpen their swords in front of him,” Robb replied with a certain grimness. “My cousin’s been through enough of late. That said, if he brings her Bootle’s still-warm heart on a plate, we might look on him a little more favourably.”
This bought him a bark of laughter from Theon. “It might at that. Well. How long to the Wall?”
“At this rate… a day to the end of the lake. At the rate that Father rides, two days after that to the New Gift. A day to Mole’s Town perhaps? And then to Castle Black.”
Theon shivered a little and then looked back at the shore. The Kingsroad could be seen from here and there was a trickle of wagons and other traffic going North. “Hard riding.”
“Urgent riding. We win or we die.”
Brynden
They made camp in a small wood that evening. The party of Green Men was already smaller than it had been, with several of them travelling off in different directions. They were to do a little gardening, the Green Man had rather cryptically told Brienne and himself, in some places that had been neglected.
As they built the fire Brynden noticed with a slight start that they were close to a ruin. It might have been an old holdfast, or a tower, built from large stones and it looked older than anything he’d seen for some time.
“I’ve camped here before,” the Green Man said softly as he saw Brynden looking at the ruin. “A long time ago. When I had a squire called Egg.”
Egg? Then he made the connection. “That was King Aegon?”
“It was. A good man. The best of the Targaryens. We walked around the ruins. Wondered who had built them. Speculated on the stones. Egg thought that this place had been built by the First Men.” He smiled slightly. “Different times. Happier times.” His eyes glittered for a moment. “That was before Summerhall. And before I… knew things.”
A short silence fell as they looked into the fire. After a long moment Brienne looked at the Green Man. “Where do we go now?”
“High Heart. We will be needed there.”
“How can you tell?”
The Green Man smiled slightly, before standing. “The first time I was here I found something. Walk with me.”
They exchanged glances and then stood, following the old man as he led them through the trees and past the ruins. They passed the crumbled remains of a wall and then he saw it. A Heart Tree. There was a Heart Tree here.
The Green Man strode up to it and looked at it with some fondness. “There are more of them in the South than you think. Hidden here and there. In woods, by ruins like this. Waiting for people to remember them. Ready to come alive again.” He gestured at the ground, where small white-stemmed saplings with red leaves were starting to sprout.
“When the Call went out, people started to remember. The Old Gods strengthened from that. And the Heart Trees heard it too. Magic lies not just in the hearts of men and women but also in the air, in the water, in the earth. Weirwood trees tap into that. And that means that they can be used to those who are… attuned to them.”
“Like Green Men?” Brynden asked shrewdly.
“Yes. You’ll learn to do it.”
“Why did you choose us again?”
“You both see to the heart of matters. See the truth, even if it hurts. Which is why you are needed. It is hard to see the truth at times. We face a hard future, with prophecies making it hard to see that truth. And prophecy is something that can be twisted, abused and just simply misinterpreted. I have seen it happen right in front of me. Which is why we are here. I need to show you both something.”
“I thought you already had – the tree.”
“The tree is a tool. It can be used to see what has passed. You have already seen one glimpse, back at the Isle of Faces. Now it’s time to show you another.” He placed his burn-scarred hand on the white trunk and then extended the other in their direction. “Touch my hand, both of you.”
He swallowed nervously, noted that Brienne did something similar, and then reached out and touched the age-spotted hand at the same time that she did.
And then fell into darkness. Down he fell and then he sensed her next to him. Down into the darkness – and then he felt the ground beneath his feet. Looking about he saw that they were in the Great Hall again. There was a fire burning in the hearth and the Green Man was sitting on a chair staring into the flames, his hood raised so that the horns loomed over his head.
And then the doors at the end opened and a silver-haired young man strode into the hall. Brynden stared in astonishment. “Rhaegar Targaryen,” he muttered. “By the Old Gods. Just as I remember him.”
There was a combination of swagger, annoyance and curiosity about the way that the younger man strode up to the Green Man. “Your men,” he snapped, “Are insolent. I am the Heir to the Iron Throne, but they actually told me that only I could enter this hall.”
“My men – and women – are loyal to me. And your title means nothing here, Rhaegar Targaryen. The Isle of Faces is outside the Realm. That was agreed a long time ago, by Kings and Princes now long dead.”
The Prince stared at him for a long moment. “They say that you can see the future.”
“I have that curse on occasion.”
“Curse?”
“The future is never an easy thing to see. It can be like... a broken window. Shards give a slightly different view, depending on your perspective. Sometimes it’s clear. Sometimes it’s only obvious the closer you get. And sometimes it’s only when it’s past that you can see it.”
This seemed to irritate the younger man. “For some it is very clear indeed. There were Dreamers in my family. And I have read of prophecy extensively. I know what I have seen.”
This in turn seemed to amuse the Green Man. “You do, do you?”
“I do,” the Prince said firmly.
“Then why are you here?”
“Because… because I read that people had come here to consult with your predecessors.”
“Addam Velaryon. And others. They came seeking answers. You seem to think that you already have them. So why did you come, again?”
Rhaegar Targaryen folded his arms for a moment. “Because I want to know if I am doing the right thing. Because I want to know that I am right, that only through me can the Song of Ice and Fire be sung. That only I can bind the Realm closer together at the end of a war that I think is coming.”
The Green Man stared at him for a moment, before sighing. “Nothing I can say will convince you. I can sense that. You are both right – and wrong. Prophecy is difficult to interpret. It can be slippery. Nothing can be as it seems. You must be careful – and the Song of Ice and Fire, the prophecy of the Prince that was Promised, has been discussed by those who think they are wise for centuries. Longer than that. Everyone has a theory.”
“My theory,” said the Prince in a low and terrible voice, “Is correct. It fits the facts. I know it. I feel it.”
“Then you do not need to be here. Have fun at the Tourney. Beware of laughing trees. By the way, I hear that your father is coming to it.”
The Prince stiffened. “What? No, he is at King’s Landing. And how would you know?”
The Green Man said nothing in reply, just staring back at the Prince, who flushed a little and then stirred irritably.
“Very well. I must go. Perhaps we will meet again.”
The Green Man looked straight at Brynden and Brienne for a moment. “Oh we’ve met before today. And because of what you said we’ll meet again. It is inevitable now.”
Rhaegar Targaryen looked confused – and then seemed to shrug before turning on his heel and walking off to the doors. As he left the Green Man sighed deeply. “So that is what they have been reduced to.” Then he looked at them again. “One window closes and another opens.”
Brynden opened his mouth to ask what he meant, but then the darkness fell again. He felt as if he was being pulled forwards for a moment and then when he opened his eyes again he was back in the Great Hall again. Once again the Green Man was sitting by the fire, staring at the flames with his hood up. There was a chair opposite him.
Once again the doors opened – but the Rhaegar Targaryen who entered was different. He wore armour that gleamed with rubies. But his eyes did not gleam. They were sunken and he looked as if he had not slept properly in weeks. His hair was caught in a queue at the back of his head but he looked somehow unkempt.
The Prince walked slowly to the fire and then sat in the other chair. “You knew I was coming then,” he said in a voice filled with tiredness and something else that Brynden couldn’t put his finger on. “As you said.”
“I did. You march to war.”
“I do. Cousin Robert marches South. I intend to meet him head on.”
“Yes, you will meet him. You do not look well.”
The Prince smoothed his hair unconsciously with a hand that shook a little. “You were right,” he said eventually. “I did not see the truth after all. I just saw what I wanted to see. Everything… everything has gone awry. The Realm is broken into pieces. Because of me. Because of my pride.”
The Green Man stared intently at him. “There’s more than that, isn’t there?”
The younger man stirred uneasily in his chair. “I… I am ashamed of what I have done. I thought… I thought that it had to be done. But when she heard that her father and her brother were dead, killed by my madman of a father… she wanted to leave. I couldn’t allow that. I had to… to force her.”
A short nasty silence followed. “So you are now both a prince and a rapist?”
The Heir to the Iron Throne stirred again in his chair, blood rushing to his face – and then he seemed to cringe internally, to twist. His hands came up to cover his face for a long moment. “Yes,” he whispered. “I… I thought it had to be done. The Dragon needs three heads.”
“You were certain?”
“I was.”
“And now?”
Silence. Then: “I… I do not know.”
“Then you have at least learnt a little from this. Not enough, but a little.”
Rhaegar eventually seemed to drag his hands down and gaze at the Green Man. “When will the nightmares end?”
“When you are dead.”
He shuddered at that. “I thought I would unite the Realm from a terrible danger.”
“Perspective is everything.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Not yet. What do you plan to do next?”
“Ride North. Fight Robert and his army of rebels. End this war.”
“How? By killing Robert Baratheon? How will that end the war?”
The Prince frowned. “He is their leader. Without him-”
“Don’t be a fool, boy. He is their figurehead. Your father has murdered a Lord Paramount in a horrible manner. Every Lord Paramount has good reason to be nervous now. Do you think that killing Robert Baratheon will stop the Northmen from wanting vengeance for their slain lord and his murdered eldest son? Or stop the men of the Vale for fighting against the death sentence that your father has levied on Jon Arryn? Do you think that it will stop Ned Stark from seeking you out for taking his sister?”
Rhaegar Targaryen closed his eyes as if in pain and then covered them with one hand. “No,” he said tiredly. “But this war must end.”
“If you march North and you win, what will happen to your father? I have heard that he is as mad as Aerion Targaryen was, or even madder. He burns people alive, boy. And he enjoys it. Enjoys it so much that he rapes his wife, your mother, after each burning.”
The hand came down. “My father…”
“Your father is a lunatic, a murderer and a rapist. And in that last part – the apple did not fall far from the tree, did it not?”
“You cannot judge me, or my father-”
“I have every right!” The Green Man bellowed the words and there was a slight susurration in the rafters as something seemed to stir. “I was there when you were born! I knew your father well!”
The Prince stared at the Green Man in shock. “Who… who are you?” He asked in a small voice. “You cannot have been a Green Man all your life.”
The Green Man reached up and pulled down his hood. “You would not remember me. I helped deliver you. I held you in my arms and just before I gave you to your mother you opened your eyes and looked at me – and in that moment I knew that Fate would not be kind to you. I placed you in your mother’s arms, lit by the fires that claimed my friend the King and my namesake, his eldest son, and I knew that something terrible was coming.”
Rhaegar Targaryen stared at the old man, stared as if he did not believe the evidence of his own eyes. “Then…” he stopped, before rallying. “Then you must be… no. No, that’s impossible. You’re dead. You died at Summerhall.”
The Green Man pulled his sleeve back and held up the arm with the terrible burn scars. “I nearly did. I came here instead. I was once Ser Duncan of the Kingsguard, once called Ser Duncan the Tall.”
The Prince stared and stared – and then he seemed to almost shrivel in the chair, his eyes going even deader, if such a thing was possible. “You were said to have been the finest knight in the Realm,” he said eventually.
“I was just a knight.”
“What... what would my great-Grandfather have thought of me?”
The Green Man curled a lip. “Very little,” he said shortly. “You have been, put simply, a fool. A cruel fool.”
The Prince flinched at those words, as if he had been struck. After a long moment he looked at the Green Man. “You once advised my great-Grandfather. Advise me know. What must I do?”
“You know, in your heart, what you must do. There is one way to end the war. Seek out Robert Baratheon. Face to face. Fight him.”
“But… but he is taller and stronger than me. He would…” His voice came to a halt as he looked into the implacable eyes of the Green Man. “Ah,” he said eventually. “Ah. I see now. Yes. I am the given sacrifice am I not?”
“You asked what would end the war. You also asked when the nightmares would end.”
“Of course.” A short silence fell. Then he stood up slightly shakily. “Thank you for your advice. It seems that I have a battle to fight, if not for the reason I first thought.”
“I have never had to give such painful advice.”
“But it is still appreciated.” And with that he walked away to the doors, his shoulders still slumped, a look of defeat hanging over him – but also with a certain grim purpose.
“He goes to his death,” Brynden muttered and just for a moment Rhaegar seemed to turn his head in his direction and frown slightly, before leaving through the doors.
Brienne nodded, a fierce look on her face. “Good,” she muttered. “He will pay for his crimes.”
And with that they were suddenly back at the Heart Tree. The Green Man lowered his arms. “Rhaegar Targaryen thought he had read a prophecy correctly. He was wrong. Come, let us eat. And I will tell you of the Prophecy he mentioned.”
Bran
Mother had finally told him what the excitement was all about. Apparently Jory Cassel was to marry Annah, Robert’s nursemaid. Not that he seemed to need a nursemaid much these days. He was too busy running about with Edric and Bran, to the point where according to Annah he was ‘starting to stop looking pasty’.
This was confusing, Robert looked nothing like a pasty. But he did look a bit browner from all of the sun. And all the riding that they’d been doing. And the archery. And the sword practice. Although in Edric’s case it was Warhammer practice.
It was odd to have such good friends. As in people who weren’t family. The past month had been fun.
Except that he still couldn’t climb the walls. Not that he missed it all that much at the moment. All the riding, archery, swordplay, dealing with paperwork and above all running around and playing was a bit tiring.
And now there was going to be a wedding. It was all very odd. At least Jory and Annah seemed very cheerful about the whole thing. Mother seemed amused and a bit wry, Ser Rodrik Cassel seemed to be lost in memories at times and Septa Mordane was grumpy for no reason that he could fathom.
As for Arya, she rolled her eyes every time the wedding was mentioned, whilst Sansa seemed to be taking notes and blushing half the time every time she looked at Domeric. Who, it had to be said, kept blushing as well. When he wasn’t practicing on that harp that is.
At least Domeric was still giving them all riding lessons. Robert was getting quite good on Surefoot, while Edric was getting to know his favourite horse, Greylock. As for Bran, he’d finally chosen a horse. Star had, well, a star on his forehead and a way of staring at him in a slightly long-suffering manner. Seemed to like Summer as well.
He looked over at the Broken Tower. The top wasn’t that broken any more. According to Maester Luwin it wouldn’t be quite as tall as it had been, but it would be habitable again in a few months. There was scaffolding in places and the ivy that had once covered part of it had gone.
If he had still been allowed to climb then the Broken Tower would no longer have been a challenge. Which was a shame.
Someone was shouting at the gatehouse and he looked over. Edric and Robert were also looking at the gatehouse – and then the gates opened and a solitary figure dressed in black rode through. He blinked. That rider looked familiar. The black rider rode in, shouted something jovial at an approaching Ser Rodrik, who bellowed something back – and then Bran recognised him.
“Uncle Benjen!” He called out, and his uncle looked his way as he dismounted, pulling off his saddlebags with care.
“Bran! How are you, lad?”
“Well thank you,” he replied, remembering his manners. He was the Stark in Winterfell after all. Then he looked at his friends. “This is my Uncle Benjen, First Ranger of the Night’s Watch.”
Robert and Edric stared at his Uncle, who was striding towards them. “So, Bran. Who are your friends?”
“This is Robert Arryn, son of Lord Arryn,” Bran said, gesturing to Robert, who placed his hand over his heart and bowed. “And this is Edric Storm, natural son of His Grace King Robert Baratheon, the First of his Name.” He was quite proud of the fact that he remembered all of them. Edric also bowed formally.
Uncle Benjen regarded them all gravely, a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth. And then he bowed back at them. “Honoured to meet you both.” Then the smile went away and he looked around. “I need to talk to your mother, Bran.”
But all he had to do was look about and then point. Mother was already scurrying towards them, Maester Luwin and Ser Rodrik in her wake.
“Benjen!” Mother said as she approached. “How good to see you again. Ned’s on the road to Castle Black and-”
“I saw and spoke to him on the road Cat,” Uncle Benjen said as he kissed her on both cheeks. “And he sends his love. That mission he sent me on? I succeeded.” He said the last two words with a certain something in his voice that made the other three grown-ups go pale.
Mother clutched at her chest for a moment. And then she rallied slightly. “You have… a hand?”
Uncle Benjen eyed Bran and his friends for a moment. “Something… larger. Cat, Winterfell needs to see this. This confirms everything. We need people to see this. Even the boys here.”
“They are too young!” Mother protested. “Benjen, how can you suggest such a thing?”
“Because Winter is coming,” his uncle replied in a low and terrible voice. “Ned’s right – it’ll be a Long Winter. And we will be fighting back the Others at the Wall. And if the Wall falls, then the next place to rally is Winterfell. A Long Winter means that these lads here will be men by the time it ends. They need to know what they’ll be fighting. They need to know the threat.”
“Benjen, they are children.”
Uncle Benjen just looked at Mother. “They need to know, Cat. Not Rickon, he’s too young, but the others – they need to know. This is important. This will be their war soon. They will not be children forever. And Bran is old enough now to witness executions. I was when I was his age.”
There was what appeared to be another debate in the Language of the Eyebrow for a moment – and then Mother’s shoulders slumped and she nodded slowly. Then she paused. “Are Rhys, son of Daner and Shagga still here Ser Rodrik?”
The big man frowned for a moment. “Aye, my Lady,” he rumbled, “They are. The Vale Tribes are moving North to the Wall in stages. Lord Stark made it very clear that there not to be any… excesses.” For some reason he looked at Bran briefly as he said the last word, as if he had been about to say something else.
“Call them to the Great Hall, if you please Ser Rodrik,” Mother ordered with a sigh. “And Arya and Sansa. Domeric too. And as many of the senior servants as possible. They will all need to see this.” And then she turned to a baffled Robert, Edric and Bran. “Boys, you must come with us. There is something you must see. Ben – is it safe?”
“It’s in a cage. It’s a long story, but the First Men made cages to slow the rot on such things, so that it could be taken South to show that they existed.”
“A wise idea,” Maester Luwin muttered, his eyes gleaming a bit. “Cages made from what though?”
“Do you know,” Uncle Benjen muttered as they all walked towards the Great Hall, “I don’t know Luwin. It’s an odd colour.”
By the time that a crowd of people had gathered in the Great Hall Bran’s curiosity was afire, as was Robert’s and Edric’s. Arya looked irritated, whilst Sansa and Domeric came in together and seemed to have made up their own Language of the Eyebrow.
The arrival of the two clan chiefs from the Vale always made people stare, if only because Robert’s guards always scowled a bit. Before he had left for Castle Black Father had told Bran that life in the Vale was complicated and that there had always been war between the Mountain Clans of the Vale and the Arryns, over a war that had been going on for years. However, the clan chiefs had been told by Father that Robert was his ward and therefore a protected guest and that the Fist of Winter would protect him. And that had been that.
Now the two men, one grizzled and slim, the other hulking and bearded, came in, bowed awkwardly and then stared at Benjen.
“For those that do not know him,” Mother said loudly, so that the buzz of conversation stilled almost at once, “This is my Goodbrother, Benjen Stark, First Ranger of the Night’s Watch. Some months ago now my husband, Lord Stark, gave him a mission. Benjen?”
“Aye,” Uncle Benjen said as he stepped forwards. There was something square on the table in front of him, covered with a black cloth. “Lord Stark commanded me to venture North of the Wall and to find a wight, a servant of the Others. A wight is a walking corpse, an unnatural thing animated by the fel magics of the Others.”
Bran blinked at this, as the crowd buzzed again. Many had gone pale, although Septa Mordane had gone a funny colour and seemed to be muttering something.
“I succeeded,” Uncle Benjen said loudly, and silence fell. “I found a wight.”
Bran stared at his uncle – and then he looked at the square thing, nudged his friends and pointed.
“And I took its head,” Uncle Benjen said harshly, before pulling the cloth off the square thing. Underneath was a cage. And in the cage was a human head. He swallowed thickly. Because the eyes of the severed head – had it been a woman? Yes, a woman – in the cage were wide open, moving backwards and forwards, whilst the mouth opened and closed as it hissed.
There was another moment to utter silence – and then the crowd groaned in shock and horror. Mother was white with shock but seemed to be rallying, Maester Luwin was staring at the head in rapt fascination, Ser Rodrik was scowling at it in hatred, Jory Cassel and Annah were holding hands, Sansa had gone as white as a sheet, almost as white as the Septa, whilst Domeric just stared at it, Arya was very wide eyed and the rest of the crowd were showing a mixture of reactions. As for his friends, Edric’s mouth was hanging open in astonishment, whilst Robert had screwed his face up in disgust – and then in thought.
And then there was the reaction of the Mountain Clan chiefs. Both were pale, both were trembling. But both were glaring at the severed head with what looked like hate. “The old enemy,” he heard Shagga boom. “The true enemy. We fight!”
But it was the reaction of the Direwolves in the room that got everyone’s attention. After a moment of staring they seemed to shake themselves – and then their ears went flat, their nostrils flared – and then they all threw their heads back and howled a howl of warning that set his teeth on edge and silenced the hall again. Warning, he could hear in that noise. Warning. They come.
And then he wondered how he knew that.
Jon Arryn
He peered down at the map and sighed tiredly. He was getting stronger, but slowly. Oh, so slowly. That said, he couldn’t afford to be tired at the moment. There was too much to do.
At least Ser Davos Seaworth was back. True, he was back with confirmation of the astonishing news that was a Godswood on Dragonstone and that Shireen Baratheon was no longer scarred by greyscale, news that had made Pycelle puff like a leaky bellows as he protested that it all had to be some kind of trick, or foolishness or… the look on the face of Ser Davos had made the old man finally splutter to a halt.
He was glad that Seaworth was back in King’s Landing and that it had been his son, Devan, who had taken Stannis and his family to White Harbour. Ser Davos was proving to be the exact medicine that the Gold Cloaks needed. He had that right blend of stern but also avuncular leadership. He also set an example with that leadership. And above all he had an ear to the ground. The smallfolk of King’s Landing were not to be dismissed. He knew that. They made up the servants of the city, of the Red Keep, of in fact the Realm. And what they knew was priceless at times.
Especially now. Something was going on at the Great Sept. He had heard of Septon hissing insults at Septon, of Septas sneering at other Septas. Division, denial, derision… it was a toxic brew. And one that was bubbling away mightily.
It was those bloody statues of the Seven. He knew that it was. Ever since the day that the statues had turned to face North the Septons had been having one long drawn-out shouting match as to the cause of it all.
He had men picked by Quill watching the Great Sept. There could be no hint of the return of the Faith Militant. Not now. The problem was that he had no idea what the toxic mess that was brewing would result in.
The map drew his eyes again and he sighed a little. The unrest seemed to be dying in some places and flaring up in others, like a forest fire that was being constantly hit by light showers. It was… worrying. He just hoped that Hoster Tully had a better grasp of things than it seemed at the moment. Reports from Riverrun said that his Goodfather had not been well recently.
A knock on the door drew his attention to the entrance and he looked up to see Quill standing there. “Yes, what is it Quill?”
“Beg pardon my Lord, but there are reports of a disturbance at the Great Sept.”
Of course there were. He sighed and straightened his tunic slightly. “Very well. Saddle my horse. It seems that I need to have a little word with the High Septon.”
“Very well my lord.” And Quill strode off quickly.
Jon sighed again and then looked out of the window. He could see the top of the Great Sept from here and he almost cursed the place. He should have taken a leaf out of Tywin Lannister’s book and installed a more reliable High Septon. The current one was a fat idiot who bent like a twig at the slightest breeze.
He read a few reports tiredly, wondered vaguely if he would ever be free of this weariness and then nodded and stood when Quill returned to tell him that his horse was ready. Gale was indeed ready, a fast but patient horse and the latest in a long line of horses that he had ridden at various times.
Quill had organised a strong escort, using some of the extra men that had recently come in from the Vale and who were loyal only to House Arryn. They surrounded him as he rode out of the Red Keep and then down into the stink of the City. The Great Sept was a bit of a ride away and he had always wondered if the Targaryens had planned it that way - to keep the Faith of the Seven at arm's length, to make it very clear that whilst the King followed the teachings of the Seven, he would not take any nonsense from them.
As they approached the Great Sept he frowned a little. A rider had been sent ahead to tell of his approach and that rider had returned to tell Quill that the High Septon had been deep in conclave with his senior priests, but that he would of course welcome the acting Hand. But as he rode towards the doors to the great building he could see that there was no-one there, not even a guard.
"Do not dismount," he told his guards softly as they halted at the doors. Unease prickled at him. "Something is wrong here."
And then one of the doors opened and the High Septon stumbled out. Jon opened his mouth to ask where in the name of the Seven Hells he had been - and then he stopped. The fat man's clothing was disordered, his hair was dishevelled and there was a look of shock on his face.
"High Septon?" he called. "Are you well?"
The High Septon looked at him slowly, took a shambling sort of step in his direction - and then he fell forwards, smashing into the stone flagstones with a terrible force, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. And in the middle of his back, where the clothing was almost black with blood, was a knife. Blood was now running across the flagstones and he could tell at a glance that the wretched man was dead.
There was a sudden shocked pause - and then every man around Jon drew his sword and glared around. Someone to side screamed and with that a small crowd of smallfolk started to gather.
It was at that point that the doors to the Great Sept creaked open again and this time a small crowd of Septons hurried out. They were led by a short man in a robe that had more than a few streaks of blood and Jon could tell at a glance that this man was trouble. His face was pale, his eyes were glassy with madness and he had a knife in his hand.
"So die all enemies of the Faith!" The man screamed and then kicked at the body of the High Septon. "Brethren! We are victorious!"
A cheer went up, mostly coming from the parts of the crowd that were just as glassy-eyed as the man with the knife.
"And what," Jon roared at them, suddenly almost too angry for words, "Is going on here? Who are you? What have you done?"
The madman stopped kicking the dead High Septon and then stared at Jon. His mouth worked for a moment and then he pointed at him. "Brethren! Look who the Seven themselves have given up to us! The traitor Jon Arryn! The man who has been consorting with the pagans of the North! The man who would have us grovel before trees! He must be a pagan himself, surely!"
There was a growl from the Septons, albeit a slightly uncertain one, and Quill and two others danced their horses to in front of Jon protectively.
"I am no pagan," Jon said eventually, through clenched teeth. "I follow the Seven. But the people of the North are not your enemies. And the Statues of the Seven did not warn of them, but of something else."
"Naught but lies!" The Septon screamed at him. "The Seven demand a war, a holy war against the pagans of the North! And we shall give it to them!"
Jon sighed and drew his own sword. "No," he said sadly, "You will not." He could hear horsemen approach at a canter, but he did not dare look to see who they were. Instead his gaze was on this murdering religious lunatic. He should have kept a better eye on the Great Sept.
The crowd of Septons took a step towards Jon and his escort and he peered at the people behind the lunatic. Some of them looked as if they were having second thoughts. Others looked as raving mad as the Septon with the knife. Speaking of which, the man was now pointing at Jon. "This man," he raved, "Is a defender of pagans! A defender of their tree gods! He must die, now!"
"No," said a rather familiar voice behind Jon. "He must not. You on the other hand are a rabid twatwaffle, and you'll not be missed much."
And with those words came the solid twang of a crossbow and all of a sudden there was a bolt sticking out between the eyes of the madman with a knife. He had just enough time to look astonished, before collapsing in a boneless heap next to the body of the High Septon.
There was a ratchetting noise and then Bronn Cassley rode forwards at the head of a grim-faced knot of men, pulling back the drawstring of the crossbow that he was carrying. "Any more volunteers for martyrdom? It's very cheap, just a quick bolt between the eyes." He completed his resetting of the drawstring, dropped a bolt into place and then aimed a rather worrying smile at the Septons.
There was a moment of absolute shocked silence - and then the doors to the Great Sept opened again. This time the man who came out at the head of another group of Septons was the grey-haired second in command of the previous and unlamented High Septon, a man called Greenstone. He was carrying what appeared to be the bloodstained leg of a chair and he looked as if he was about to explode with rage. Then he saw the bodies - and the horsemen.
"Ah," he said after a long moment. "I see that justice has been done." Then he bowed in the direction of Jon. "My Lord Arryn, I apologise for this. Certain... doctrinal differences, shall we say, got rather out of hand. My colleagues here will soon return to the fold. Or face similar consequences."
The first group of Septons, or at least those who could count and then realise that they were not just outnumbered but also faced a group of men armed with swords and at least one crossbow, shuddered - and then put down what passed for their weapons. The few holdouts were disarmed.
"Thank you, acting High Septon," Jon called out at Greenstone, who looked a bit startled for a moment before nodding seriously in his direction. "Please let me know if you need any assistance in restoring order to the Great Sept."
Greenstone glared at the few Septons who looked as if they were about to make trouble. "Perhaps a few men with crossbows? I feel the need to have some lessons taught to some here."
And that was it. The Septons seemed to have everything under control, so Jon turned Gale with a few nudges from his feet and then rode back up the hill towards the Red Keep, gesturing for Bronn to approach as they rode.
"I hear you found my wife."
"I did at that. Or rather she fell into my lap. Her party were wandering about, looking for a Maester to treat her infected arm. What did you have smeared on that blade of your my Lord?"
He smiled thinly. "My father taught me well."
"Oh, I'll not deny that. He must have taught you very well." He paused. "Your wife's servants twigged what had happened eventually. I've got them all at the Foxhold. Couldn't bring her though. My Maester said that the journey might kill her. Taking her arm off at the shoulder - not an easy thing. Any word from the Foxhold?
"None. Which means that she still lives."
"Good."
"If you couldn't bring her here, why did you come?"
Bronn looked about idly at the crowd of people gawking. "We need a private place for that."
He nodded in reply. "The Tower of the Hand?"
"I don't trust that place. Too many odd little holes in the ceilings of too many rooms."
Ah. A good, if worrying, point. "Then where?"
Bronn looked about idly - and then pointed at a small tavern to one side. Jon nodded, told Quill to keep a close eye out for spies and then cantered up to the place, with Bronn just behind him, and dismounted.
Getting hold of the common room cost him a dragon, but it was empty and did not contain small holes anywhere at all. Bronn entered, nodded with every appearance of satisfaction and then pulled him close so that he could whisper in his ear: "Your wife had a letter from Petyr Baelish on her possession. In a locked box."
Dread gnawed at his heart for a long moment. "And what did it say?"
Bronn looked about the room again for a moment. "Saying," he said in a very low whisper indeed, "That the King's children are not his own, but rather that of her own brother."
There was another long moment. Then Jon swallowed. "Do you have this letter?"
"I have." He pulled out a leather folder with a lot of intricate stitching that held it closed. "And I give it all up to you. I'll not have Foxhold razed to the ground by Tywin bloody Lannister."
Jon took the letter as his mind whirled. Was this the only such letter? What if there had been more? What else was out there about the King's Great Matter?
"This letter-" he started to say, only to be interrupted.
"Letter? What letter?! I know nothing of any letter, my Lord."
Jon looked the former sellsword for a long moment. "Good man," he said eventually. "Tell me, is there anything you need from me?"
Another pause. And then: "I understand that my Steward is the natural daughter of the former lord of the Foxhold. Could she be legitimised?"
"Can I ask why?"
"She was there when your wife arrived. And we read... a certain piece of paper together. She can keep her mouth shut. I would like to see her rewarded."
He looked at Bronn carefully. Yes, he was no longer a sellsword. "I will see it done."
"Thank you my Lord."
"Tell me something Bronn, why is it that you always seem to be in the right place at the right time?"
"Trouble tends to seek me out and tweak my nose for a dare, my Lord."
And with that Jon laughed for what felt like the first time in a very long time.
Myrcella
So far the North was not what she had been expecting. Mother had told them all that the North was a savage place filled with pagans and wild animals. So far White Harbour had not been any of that. The white walls were everywhere, the harbour was large and efficient and it seemed to be a true city in every sense of the word.
And she had to admit that it was a lot less… stinky… than King’s Landing.
That said, there were things that she did not understand. The fact that the people of White Harbour were so intent on something that she didn’t understand was one thing. They seemed to be convinced that Winter was coming for a start.
Yes, it was colder than King’s Landing, but not cold enough for snow. It was confusing. Why were they so certain? They all seemed to be so busy, preparing, growing, sowing, barrelling, bottling… the entire city was buzzing. And there was an awful lot of talk about sending help to the wall.
She watched everything from the walls of the New Castle. Mother appeared to be in a permanent rage, whilst Father was ranging about the place, sometimes with what looked like half a tree on his shoulders again.
Father… Father had changed a lot these past few weeks. He was no longer the slightly morose but often angry man that she had become used to, the man who would just grunt at her in the mornings when they broke their fast together. Now… Father would smile at her and make jokes and comment on how pretty her hair looked. He’d joke with Tommen too, like a great bear playing with a small cub.
He didn’t treat Joffrey any differently though. There was something there, a layer of reserve between those two. If she didn’t know better she could have sworn that Father didn’t trust her brother.
Good. Joffrey… he wasn’t right. There was something very wrong with him at times, something that he tried to hide. Worse, he thought that he was succeeding in hiding it.
“Princess.”
She started slightly at the unexpected voice and then turned. Wylla Manderly was standing there. She was… odd. She had blond eyebrows but she had dyed her hair green. It looked a bit peculiar. And there was something about her that puzzled Myrcella. The other girl had a high thin voice, but there was something about her that seemed very, well, deep.
“Hello Wylla.”
“Would you like a tour of the New Castle? You and Prince Tommen?”
Tommen? She looked around, confused – and then she saw her brother as he ambled into view, a rather large and slightly confused cat in his arms.
“Myrcella!” He burst out when he saw her, before striding up to her. “Look at the size of this kitty! I shall ask Father to knight him as Ser Sleepy!”
“My Prince, his name is Jaspar,” Wylla said. “And… he seems to like you. Normally he scratches strangers. How odd. This is normally his time to take a nap. Or three.”
Tommen had also started a bit at hearing the voice of the green-haired girl, but then he relaxed a bit. “He is a bit heavy,” he conceded. “Perhaps I should put him down?”
“Yes, Tommen,” Myrcella said with a smile. Then she remembered her manners. “A tour of the New Castle, Lady Wylla? I would be very glad to see your home.” Eyeing Tommen out of the corner of her eye she paused. “Wouldn’t we, Tommen?”
Tommen was watching the retreating form of Jasper with a certain amount of sadness, but then jerked upright. “We would? Oh, yes. Of course!”
Wylla Manderly turned out to be a good guide. She showed them all around the New Castle, explaining all the various parts of it and being especially proud of the point where both harbours could be seen – something that surprised both Tommen and herself.
“There are two harbours?” Tommen asked, astonished.
“The layout of White Harbour is deceptive,” Wylla Manderly told them with a slightly odd look on her face. “It has… surprises.”
The last thing that she showed them was the Sept, a very beautiful place indeed, with a set of statues of the Seven that made her pause to reflect on their nature.
“Your Sept is very lovely,” Tommen muttered, awestruck.
“I know. But… I don’t pray here anymore,” Wylla admitted quietly. “Not anymore.”
Myrcella was about to ask why when they all heard the sound of boots on flagstones – and then she cringed internally as Joffrey swept in, Sandor Clegane just behind him. Her brother was wearing a new cloak, rich red with black fur around the shoulders. His hands were gloved – he seemed to like gloves a lot these days – but there was still that look of angry petulance on his face.
“Ah, there you are,” Joffrey drawled as he looked about the Sept. “How… quaint.”
“Prince Joffrey.” Wylla bobbed briefly into a curtsey. “I was just showing the Princess and the Prince about the New Castle.”
“Yes,” Joffrey said curtly. “Your father has given me a tour as well. Odd that your grandfather isn’t here.”
“He is at Castle Black my Prince.”
“He should have been here to greet my Father, the King.”
“The distances were too great.”
This seemed to annoy Joffrey, but he seemed to rein it back after a long moment. “So this is your Sept,” he said eventually. “Where you pray. You are unique amongst the great houses of the North, I believe? You pray to the true gods.”
Oh seven hells… But she remained quiet. Joffrey was in one of his tiresome moods today. He was best appeased and then avoided. She didn’t want to see his nasty streak come out.
Wylla Manderly looked at Joffrey until he seemed to become restive and shift from one foot to the other. Only then did she speak: “Most of my family pray to the Seven here, my Prince. I and a few others do not.”
“There is another Sept?”
“No my Prince. We pray to the Old Gods. At the Heart Tree in the Wolf’s Den, the old citadel of White Harbour.”
“There is a Heart Tree? Here? A true one?” Joffrey sounded surprised – and mocking as well.
“Yes, my Prince.”
“I would see it. Never seen a real Heart Tree. Show me. I command you.”
Wylla said nothing for a moment but then curtsied again. “Then follow. We will need to warn the guards there.”
“Why?”
“Because the Wolf’s Den is now a prison. But that is where the Heart Tree is.”
Sandor Clegane went before them to the old keep, despite the fact that Wylla Manderly had indeed sent a message ahead of them. The Wolf’s Den had black walls that did not look in good repair but which still stood. And it looked ancient, old beyond words.
Inside was a Godswood – a true one. Not like the one at the Red Keep back home at King’s Landing, a real one. White trunks of Weirwood trees, red leaves… and in the middle a huge tree with a carved face. The Heart Tree. Just looking at it made her shiver a little.
Wylla Manderly walked up to the tree and then placed a hand on it. “I have prayed here every day, since I heard the Call. As have others. My new cousins come here too.”
New cousins? Myrcella was about to ask about that when all of a sudden Joffrey snorted with derision.
“The Call? That mummery? There was no ‘Call’. I doubt that it happened. I heard nothing.”
Tommen was suddenly staring at his feet, his face turning more than a little red and she knew in that moment that he had heard at least something. She did indeed still feel that odd pull North. But she also knew that they could not say anything to Joffrey that might gainsay what he had just said.
Joffrey could be cruel at times.
“I heard it, my Prince,” Wylla Manderly said scornfully. “I heard it loud. ‘The Others come. The Stark calls for aid. You are needed.’ It was heard throughout White Harbour. It was heard throughout the North.”
Joffrey looked at her and then at the Heart Tree, his face working. “Mummery,” he repeated angrily. “Mummery!”
“Truth,” Wylla Manderly said in calm response. “Nothing but truth. The Call was sent out. We have answered it. The blood of the First Men is strong here. We Manderlys may have come here as refugees from The Reach, but we still hear the old songs of our ancestors. And we heard the Call. Magic returns, as was foretold. You should know of that.”
Confused, she looked at Tommen and then at Joffrey. “Foretold?” Joffrey asked, playing with the glove on his right hand as if something pained him.
Wylla Manderly placed both hands on the Heart Tree. “Storms break at Storm’s End,” she intoned in a voice that seemed deep and strange. “Bran built it well. When the sword wakes at Storm’s End, Storm Kings will as well.”
And then she turned quickly and looked at them. And for a moment Myrcella thought that she could see something red in her eyes.
Edd
It was very quiet in the trees as they rode North. A bit too quiet for his liking. In fact he didn’t like this whole mission. The First Ranger had been very clear in his in orders, before he’d gone off South with that wight’s head. He wasn’t sure what was worse, going South with a rotting head or going North to look for something that he didn’t know even existed.
They said that the head was in cage that would slow the rot. However, no-one knew how. It was a cage. He shivered a little and then pulled his cloak a little closer. Wights. There were wights out there. Wights and possibly worse than wights.
As they rode he looked about carefully. Ser Jaremy Rykker led the ten men and he wasn’t bad. Not as good as the Halfhand or the First Ranger, but not bad. The Halfhand was said by many to be the best, but he’d bet on the First Ranger. Benjen Stark had a way about him. He could be a bit dour at times, but he knew his business when the boot met the shit and went squish.
There was a break in the trees ahead and he caught his first glimpse of the Fist of the First Men on this trip. It loomed on the horizon like a great… well, a fist. The First Men called a spade a spade. And in this case a fist. He wondered for a long moment why they had abandoned it and then shook the thought off.
One of the supply horses lagged slightly and he checked that it was alright. Just a tussock underfoot. He eyed the tussock carefully. What might a wight look like under snow or branches? Then he looked back at the trees. No sign of any hooded men on elk either. That was an odd one, that was. The First Ranger had been bloody clear about that too. This ‘Coldhands’ was to be left alone.
Whatever he was.
On they went and soon the hills by the Fist started to loom. He eyed them as well. He’d ridden past them before. To think that this Overlook place had always been there was… well, it was vexing. They rode on and before the sun had passed too far overhead they were riding down a small valley, with Ser Jaremy carefully consulting a little map that had been drawn by the First Ranger.
“This way,” he said eventually and then led them further down the valley, towards a great cliff. This was mad. There was nothing there, was there?
But then he noticed that there was a cleft in that cliff and before he knew it they were trotting through old gates and into a cave beyond it. He stared in astonishment. It was just as the First Ranger had described it – almost a stable, with a passageway heading off.
They had brought torches and lamp-oil, but Ser Jaremy was cautious as he led and five others up the stairs, leaving the others to unload the horses. “The gates were open – anything and anyone could have wandered in here. We search as we go up.”
Along the passageway and then up the spiral stairs that led up, every nerve stretched as they watched and listened for anything at all. Nothing. Up to another doorway and then a room beyond that, filled with light. He stared at that. There was a wall, with holes in it filled with some kind of crystal. The sun was shining through.
And there were passageways off the room. Two other rooms as well, one some kind of barracks and the other an office with a desk. The barracks had bedframes that seemed to be made from wierwood, as they were still strong. As for the passageway it led to another stairway, this one headed down to a round room. It was warm there, with a pool fed by a warm spring that bubbled up from one corner of it. Oh and there was a line of privies to one side. He peered down one. It smelt like… water? Perhaps an underground river or something. Smelt nothing like a privy in other words.
By the time that he trudged back up to the main room with the wall with holes Ser Jaremy was in something of a taking. “That this place should have been lost from memory! ‘Tis perfect for the Watch! What a treasure for Rangers!”
“Aye,” Dywen muttered to one side. “I’ve ridden past here many a time before. And I remember many a Brother who died of injury or cold not far from this place who might have been saved if I had known of it. How could it have been lost?”
“’Tis the doom of men that we forget,” Edd pointed out quietly. “Time, pestilence, men being secretive… it all adds up. It’s been a long time since anyone was here.”
“Then let us make the best of it,” Ser Jaremy said very firmly. “Let’s get the supplies up here. I want the bedding laid down and a meal prepared. This was once a base for the Rangers. It shall be again.” He peered at the sunlight outside. “According to the First Ranger this Coldhands mentioned caches on the Fist of the First Men. The Lord Commander wants to know what those caches are and why the Others would be on the Fist. Weapons that could be used perhaps? We have a job to do.”
Oberyn
He put the message down and then scowled at the nearest wall. Every time that he thought that he had found firm ground again under his feet, what with all the news of the Stony Dornish going North, a Long Winter being on the horizon and his daughters being their usual unruly selves, something happened to knock him off balance yet again.
This time it was this news from Pentos. It was confirmed. It was all confirmed. Motapis was dead, which was a shame – the man’s greed could be used to make him willingly jump through all kinds of hoops. Viserys Targaryen was dead as well, which was actually a good thing, given that he seemed to have been as raving mad as his father at the end.
He had never mourned for that madman. Their vengeance was for his sister and her children. And now that vengeance was delayed. Delayed but not forgotten. Never forgotten. Not Elia. One day he would sit back and watch as Tywin Lannister choked out his last breath in front of him.
Oh and Daenerys Targaryen had somehow hatched three dragons. Odd, that. Three people seemed to have died and three dragons had been born from a terrible fire. There had to be a link. Three dragons. Daenerys Targaryen would be a power one day. If she lived that long. Dragons took their time in growing. It was worth pondering on.
Sighing he turned and left the room, passing down the long corridor outside that led to the Water Gardens. He did love this place, but coming here always left him with a pang of sadness. Elia had liked it as well.
Hearing the sound of clashing blades he looked over to one side. Tyene was sparring with Obara. Judging by the smirk on the latter’s face his younger daughter was still learning how to use the spear properly.
“Watch your feet, Tyene,” he chided her gently. “Fighting with a spear demands a different stance and way of balancing yourself.”
“I’ve told her that, Father,” Obara grinned. “She never listens to me!”
“If we were fighting with daggers then I would have won three times by now!” Tyene snapped.
“Maybe,” Obara scoffed. “But not likely. You are too impulsive sister.”
“I’ll show you impulsive!” And with that she launched a flurry of attacks with her spear against her sister. But he could see at once that Obara was going to win this one. Her stance was better, she parried more crisply and above all she didn’t overbalance. Within a heartbeat Tyene was on the ground, winded from a blow to the stomach from the butt of Obara’s spear.
He looked at her carefully and then smiled as he helped her up. “Tyene, you need think a little more before you move,” he told her. “And watch your feet.”
“Yes… Father…” Tyene gasped as she rubbed at her stomach and then glared at her sister, who raised an eyebrow and then smirked at her.
After her moment of triumph Obara looked at him. “Father, you have Tyene learning the spear, me learning the bow and Nymeria learning the daggers. Why?”
Oberyn smiled at his daughter. “Because all of a sudden I think that we should all treat a day when we do not learn something new as a day wasted.” His smile faded a little. “This is important, daughters. We must all change the way that we do things, the way that we think. We must learn new things, fight in new ways. Something is coming, something dark and terrible and Dorne will not be untouched by it. We must have our eyes on the horizon, our eyes on the threat. The exact shape of it is not yet visible – but it is there and we must prepare.”
They both stared at him for a long moment – and then they both brought their spears up before them and formally saluted him. “Yes Father,” they chorused.
After kissing them both on the forehead he left them there, sparring and snarking at each other again. The Water Gardens stretched on ahead, a very beautiful place indeed.
Doran’s location was signalled by the hulking presence of Areo Hotah, who seemed to be trying to suppress some kind of emotion. He nodded at the man – and then discovered what was affecting the man. Doran Martell, his brother, was standing. He was wincing a bit as he rocked back and forwards, but he was standing.
Oberyn must have made some kind of shocked noise, because Doran turned towards him and then waved a finger in his direction. “I hold you responsible for this, brother. This is all your fault, and I am annoyed.”
The words were sheer madness and he paused to run them through his mind again for a moment. Then he finally said: “What?”
And this brought a clap of the hands of delight from his brother, followed by a laugh the like of which he had not heard from Doran in quite some time. “To see your face! Oberyn Martell at a loss! Mother would have cried laughing!” Doran shook his head. “You recommended that clever young Maester to me, young Robas. He has made a study of gout, you said, try and listen to him you said. Well, I did and this…” he shuffled a few steps. There was still some discomfort in his face, but nothing more.
“The pain is not as bad?” Oberyn asked.
“Not as bad,” Doran replied. “Oh, I can stand and walk, but I cannot run. Robas told me to stop drinking the finest red wines and move to other lighter ones, he gave me a list of things I should avoid eating… how the stomach and the feet are connected he did not say. But his advice has helped me. And he has some herbs for me.”
He absorbed this and then nodded in a baffled manner. “Well… good. Wait – why are you annoyed?”
Doran rolled his eyes as if he had said something stupid. “Because all the things I should not eat are the things that I truly love to eat!”
Oberyn looked his brother up and down. “Too bad. It’s worth it to see you on your feet again.”
His brother nodded, sombrely this time. “Yes. I need to be on my feet. I need to get fit again. Too much time in that chair, too much time getting soft and flabby from the pain. No more, brother, no more. Sunspear will see me again.”
He looked at Doran and then nodded. “Then when you are ready we will get you back in fighting trim. There is much to do, my brother. Much to do.”
Chapter Text
Sarella
She woke up slowly. Everything seemed to be fuzzy about the edges, as if she was waking up after a night of very heavy drinking. Only she had not been drinking. She frowned. Where was she? The last thing she remembered was riding next to the wall, her cloak half around her head, feeling so very cold… and them oddly warm and then fuzzy and… that was it.
She looked about. She was on a bed. A rather distressed-looking, bed, but a bed. She had a lot of furs piled on top of her and some oddly warm things were to either side of her. She poked at them carefully. Stones. Warm stones. Wrapped in cloth?
“I see that you are awake,” said a voice to one side. She looked over. There was a large fire going at a hearth and Gerion Lannister was standing at it, warming his hands. “Good. You had us worried. Any headache?”
Headache? Confused she shook her head. “Erm… no. Who are you?”
He tilted his head at her and looked at her with a mirthful eye. “You know very well who I am. You’ve been following us for the past two days now. Until you fell off your horse that is. My son and I would like to know why. That said – I have my suspicions.”
“You are Gerion Lannister.”
“I am.
“You’re supposed to be dead.”
“I got better.”
She opened her mouth for a moment and then coughed roughly. “Do you have any water?”
“Better than that – soup. Allarion is getting it now.”
“Where are we?”
“Rimegate. The castle isn’t in as bad a state as we thought. Judging by the stacked stones and limber someone’s been working on this place. We met a few volunteers in Long Barrow who said that they’d been working on repairs all along the Wall. And they built this place well. This is the room of the commander of the castle, in the old days. And it will be again I think.”
She eyed him carefully. After a moment the door creaked open and the boy came in. He was holding a small copper cauldron, with a cloth around the carrying handle. From the steam that came off it – and that amazing smell – here was the soup. The boy placed a ladle into the cauldron and used it to transfer some of the hot liquid into three rough bowls, one of which he handed over to her, along with a spoon.
The soup was lumpy and filled with carrots and some kind of root vegetable. She didn’t give a damn, because it was warm and filling and gave a feeling of heat inside her. She slurped down every scrap of it and then lay back down. She felt… better. Less cold. “I still don’t understand what happened to me.”
Gerion Lannister looked at her owlishly. “You’re Dornish,” he said as if they explained everything. Then he saw her baffled look and sighed a little. “This is the North. This is not the Lands Beyond the Wall, but this is the Wall and this is the North and this place is colder than anywhere you have ever been in your life, yes? You bought a lot of clothes at Eastwatch by the Sea. That doesn’t mean that they were necessarily the right clothes, or that you wore then the right way. You’ve been cold ever since you came here, I’ll guess. And that you didn’t ask anyone about clothing here.”
She stared at him again. “You might be right,” she said reluctantly. “But surely-“
“Too much wool soaks up sweat. It’s not good for you when it’s very cold but you’re being active. You need furs and wool in the right order here. I once came to the North to escort the son of an old friend of mine to the Wall. I learnt a lot then. I passed it on to my son. I’m not sure that he believed me at first.” He grinned at his son, who looked a bit abashed. “But he does now!”
“Yes, Father,” the boy said dryly. “You were quite right.” And then he directed a green-eyed look at her that made her feel as if she was being intently studied.
Gerion Lannister poured her another bowl of soup and then looked at her as well. Then he smiled slightly. “So then, what’s your name?”
“Alleras,” she eventually said through a mouthful of hot soup. “I’m studying to be a Maester.”
The man and the boy swapped looks. “Original,” Gerion Lannister said after a long moment. “Because when we found you by your horse and picked you up you slurred that you were called Sarella.”
“I wasn’t in my right mind,” she said after a moment.
“And your voice was higher.” Allarion said. “Not deliberately pitched lower, like it is now.”
“That was the cold.”
“Give it up, girl,” Gerion Lannister said kindly. “You have given it a good go, but the time for subterfuge is past. The more I look at you the more I realise that I know why you have been following us. You are Dornish – with something else. Summer Islands I think. Your eyes – the shape of them I mean – are familiar. Same as your nose I think, and your hair. My home is on the Summer Islands. And I hear things. The tale of a female ship captain who was seduced by one Oberyn Martell, the Red Viper of Dorne, is one such thing.
“And the fact that he had a daughter with her is another such thing. You are that daughter I think. Sarella Sand. Oh, stop that girl. I see your fists balling under the furs. We will keep your secret. Women this close to the Wall are rare – although less rare than they used to be – and are to be protected. The Night’s Watch, I have recently heard, is more than it recently used to be. More than the dregs that were sent to the Wall. But enough of those old dregs are still there to worry me a bit.”
His face stilled. “I am not my brother,” he said forcefully. “Tywin and I grew up watching our father make mistake after mistake after mistake. He was a weak man, our father. But Tywin responded by overly strong. There were times when he confused cruelty with strength. I know that now. He placed his family over what was right. And what happened to your aunt was not right.”
She stared at him for a long moment, before closing her mouth with a slight snap. “You are a very odd man, Gerion Lannister. You see well – for a Lannister.”
“I am now a Lannister of the Summer Islands. And I see far further then my brother. You’re following us because I am a man that your father thinks is dead. But why were you in the North at all?”
“My father sent me. The Stony Dornish have been sending help to the Wall. He would know why. So would my uncle, Prince Doran.”
Gerion Lannister looked at the ceiling for a moment and then at the floor. And then at his son, who raised an eyebrow at his father.
“You did not feel it then?” Allarion asked.
“Feel what?”
“The Call.”
“What call?”
“The Call North. It’s why we’re here. It’s something others have heard. I heard it in my dreams – ‘The Others come. The Stark calls for aid. You are needed.’ Father said that we were going to Winterfell at first, but then our destination changed. The Wall instead. The Nightfort precisely.”
“The Nightfort? Why there?”
Allarion looked at his father, who smiled slightly. “I dreamt that we needed to be there. Now – rest. Sleep. We start in the morning.” And with that they both left, closing the door behind them.
She stared at the door and then at the ceiling. Well. She had come for answers to Father’s questions. Perhaps she’d finally found a place where she’d get those answers.
Edd
He woke up at dawn, stretched in bed and then stared at the stone ceiling. He’d had the best night’s sleep that he’d had in ages. That probably meant that something bad was going to happen today. He had a feeling about these things.
So with a sigh he got his things together and went down to the bathing area to have a quick scrub. The water was warm without being too warm, the soap lathered nicely and all in all he had a thoroughly enjoyable wallow. He was drying himself on a rough blanket and dressing when the others started trickling down. Even Dywen came down, and he was a man not noted for being particularly clean at times.
Ser Jaremy went down last of all and only when Edd came up from the bathing chambers. He was a good man. The men came first, especially of late. It was as if he had become aware of just what had changed of late.
After breaking their fast quickly they went down to the horses, saddled them and then opened the gates and rode out. They left one man as a guard, with orders to close the gates and wait for their return.
“There’s something out there,” Ser Jaremy muttered to him as they rode for the Fist of the First Men. “I feel it in my bones. Not close… but out there.”
Edd shivered a little and watched the horizon a little more attentively than before. And Ser Jaremy was right. He felt it too.
The closer to the Fist they got the more he marvelled at it. The walls were broken in many places, but once they had been tall. Wind, snow and the years of the ages had brought them low, but once this had been a strong place. As he dismounted he stared at the surrounding landscape. Bleak wasn’t the word.
“I wonder why they came here?” Dywen asked as he joined Edd in staring at the view.
He thought about that for a long moment. “I think that they were afraid,” Edd said seriously. “There’s nothing here to defend. No towns, no cities, no villages. No roads or rivers. No, they came here to get away from something. And I’m not sure that it worked.”
“Why do you think that then?”
“Why else would they have built the Wall?”
“A good point Tollett,” Ser Jaremy said quietly, before hefting one of the staves they were all carrying. “Right then – we’re looking for caches. So, we’ll use the staves to probe the snow. Form a line, a foot apart and probe. Probe and walk.”
It made for a very dull morning. For first an hour and then another hour, by the path of the Sun, they probed. And found nothing. Apart from a moment of excitement when Jerl found a skull. They all paused to view it suspiciously, but it seemed to be just a skull.
And then they kept at it. “What would a ‘cache’ look like, anyway?” Edd grunted as he stabbed the snow with his stave, found nothing, stepped forwards and stabbed again. But this time his stave went ‘clunk’ as his hit something about a foot below the snow.
“What the Seven Hells is that?” Dywen muttered.
Edd sank down and swept the snow to one side with his hands. After a moment he felt something. Stone. Worked stone. “Ser Jaremy! I’ve found something!”
The knight was by his side in an instant, as they all started to pull at the snow. Jarl pulled out a shovel from his backpack and they let him work for a moment. What emerged from the snow was a round capstone. And it was covered in runes. They all stared at it for a long moment.
“And that, brothers,” said Ser Jaremy, “Is a bloody cache. Right. Get that capstone up. Rollen? I want you to copy those runes in the best drawing you can manage. Record it all. Tollett – you found it. You open it.”
He nodded and then, with the others, pulled the capstone up. It weight a bloody tonne, but they got it up and off so that Rollen could brush the snow off and then start to copy the runes. Maester Aemon and the First Ranger had been very clear at that. Any runes were to be copied.
Which just left the cache. He reached down and scrabbled. Yes, there was something there. A bundle. He pulled it up. “It’s a cloak,” he muttered as he stared at it. “A cloak of a Brother of the Night’s Watch too!”
Placing it on the ground in front of him he stared at it – and then he undid the rotted leather straps that bound it. Something clinked inside it and as he opened it stone ground upon stone. “Dragonglass,” he muttered as the contents were revealed. “It’s all dragonglass.”
“Dragonglass knives,” Ser Jaremy corrected as he picked one up. It had old leather wrapped about the bottom of it. Then he pulled out another one. “And spearpoints. Look at this. Look at it all, Brothers. These are weapons to be used against the Others. This is what we’re looking for. Keep probing! There must be more!”
They kept at it, this time with more heart. Hour after hour, as the sun passed overhead. They found a cache just before noon, when they had some bread and cheese, and another just after noon, both containing dragonglass weapons.
“Look at this stone – it must have taken hours of work to get it like this,” Edd muttered as he fingered one spearpoint that had caught his fancy. The colours were amazing – black, then red then almost as clear as glass. “What with chipping or knapping it. Hours.”
“They made it for a purpose,” Ser Jaremy muttered as he looked at the horizon. “And a Brother of ours thought it important enough to bury here. Keep looking.”
They kept looking. One more cache was found, this one empty, and then nothing for a long time. Finally, as the Sun started to sink down to the horizon, they found one more. And like the first one it was Edd whose stave thumped against stone in the discovery of it.
Once again their hands discovered a coverstone. And once again he pulled out a bundle that had once been the cloak of a Brother of the Night’s Watch. It had dragonglass in it. But this time it also had something else. A horn. And a well-worked one, with what looked like silver bound around it at both ends. And there were runes on those silver bands.
Ser Jaremy stared down at it for a long moment. “This is important,” he growled. “I know not why, I just feel it. Tollett?”
“Ser Jaremy?”
“You’ll get this to Maester Aemon. You understand?”
“Aye, Ser Jaremy.”
They all stood up, the silence broken only by the scratch of Rollen’s pen, and Ser Jaremy looked about at where they had left their tracks. “We’ve done our job today Brothers. We’re covered everything here. Back to the Overlook, now. The Sun’s setting and… there’s something out there. I can feel it. Replace the coverstones, cover them in snow, erase our tracks as much as we can – and then we ride.”
He was right, Edd could feel it. That sensation that someone or something was out there was getting stronger and he joined the others in covering and smoothing, before they got on their horses and trotted – and then galloped – down from the Fist. Back down over the small river that somehow ran through the snow at the base of the Fist and then back though the valleys that led to the gates of the Overlook.
Ser Jaremy blew his horn once as they approached and the gates opened slowly, one leaf at a time, closing behind them as they rode in. Only once the doors clunked closed did Ser Jaremy seem to relax. “Lock the gates,” he said grimly. “We keep a vigilant watch tonight, Brothers. There’s something out there.”
A few did not look convinced. Edd was not one of them. He helped with dinner that night, carving a salted ham that needed quite a bit of boiling to get the salt off, but he was left with a feeling of… well, he wasn’t quite sure. It was a cold night outside, that enough could be seen through the crystal windows. A white mist was rising on the Fist of the First Men.
He went to bed with that feeling. And he wasn’t surprised to be woken when it was still dark. Dywen shook him awake. “Ser Jaremy needs us all awake now. No lights.”
They did not need them. A full moon was hanging in the air, and the light was shining through the crystal windows. All the lamps were doused and Ser Jaremy was staring out at the Fist.
“You need to see this, Brothers,” Ser Jaremy said in a hoarse voice. “You must all see this.”
Now very curious Edd looked though one of the windows. He could see the Fist… and then he saw them. The white figures striding slowly about the Fist. They seemed… very white. Very pale. No cloaks, from what he could see. After a long moment his mind seemed to realise what he was seeing. “Wait,” he muttered, “Are those… are they… Others?”
“They would seem to be,” Ser Jaremy muttered quietly. “Look them. So cold outside now. Look at that freezing mist! Yet they wander about, without a care. Wait…”
And then a group of other… men? appeared. They… well, there was no other word than ‘shambled’ past the Others. Edd stared in horror. “Were those,” he asked eventually, “Erm… wights?”
There was a strained silence for a long moment. Ser Jaremy broke it. “I think so,” he muttered almost dazedly. Then he seemed to shake himself and recover his balance. “Brothers. We ride for the Wall tomorrow. We leave this place provisioned but we ride. Because we’ve seen something that no Brother of the Night’s Watch has seen in more than a thousand years – the enemy had indeed awoken.”
Edmure
They were all going to die. He cursed himself for being a fool. They were all going to die and it was all his fault, because he hadn’t listened. Hadn’t listened to Father, who had tried to talk to him about basic military matters. Hadn’t listened to Uncle Brynden, who had talked about scouting and ranging during his various visits to Riverrun. And he hadn’t listened to Cat, who had told him that it was time to give up playing about and take being the heir to Riverrun seriously.
He looked down the hill as the sun set. The good news was that they’d made it to High Heart before the mob of Faith Militant-inspired smallfolk. The bad news was that he’d sent too many of his men off in ranges to either side to secure various points and try and get more help from various holdfasts. Because if he hadn’t behaved like a blithering idiot then he’d have more than the 50 men he had with him now, on top of a high hill that was too steep to mount a proper mounted charge on, facing a mob of at least 500 smallfolk.
Odds of 10 to one. Normally 50 well-armed and well-armoured men, on good horses, against a mob of even that number would break them in one charge. Maybe two. However, they required level ground and they needed the mob to not be holding torches that might make even warhorses shy.
Yes, he was an idiot. If he made it out of here alive then he’d make up for it all by pestering Father for every scrap of information about strategy, tactics and the other bits of warfare, no matter how niggling and foolish. And then he’d track down Uncle Brynden – where in the name of the Seven Hells was he? – and do the same with him.
He chewed a lip for a moment. Perhaps Cat’s son Bran would be less of an idiot when he inherited Riverrun. No more Tullys. Tully blood would hold Riverrun, but not the Tully name. Because of him. Yes, he was an idiot.
A knot of torches started to move up the hill and he sighed. Well, at least there would be a parley. And they might get lucky. Smallfolk were not trained soldiers. If they did attack then it would be bloody.
“Ser Edmure? There’s a parley coming.”
“I know, Tymon,” he replied quietly. “I see them. Have the men stand ready.”
“Aye, Ser Edmure.”
“Tymon?”
“Tell the men that should we prevail then I’ll buy them a barrel of Arbor Gold.”
“I shall Ser Edmure.” He stared to walk off and then stopped. “Ser Edmure?”
“Aye, Tymon?”
“Honoured to serve, Ser Edmure.”
“Thank you.” And with that he walked down the slope to meet the parley, with Tymon a few others joining him. They had torches as well and as they walked he heard the snap and boom of the banner on the hill behind him as the wind took it.
The last of the sunlight illuminated the group coming towards him, but as he looked he cursed under his breath. The smallfolk were being led by a Septon. Not just any Septon, but that bloody Septon. The one they called Blackfoot. He was dressed in a shapeless robe, his bare feet were filthy and his hair was dishevelled. And as he approached he saw a beatific smile on his face – and the look of madness in his eyes. Oh, yes. This one was trouble.
“Ser Edmure,” the Septon said in the gathering gloom. “What an unexpected pleasure.”
“Blackfoot,” he replied, and as he said the word the smile slipped for an instant on the face of the Septon. “What do you want?”
“My people call me the High Sparrow.”
“Your people? So you lead them then?”
“I minister to their needs. I provide spiritual guidance.”
“So you’re now moving from that to arson? And murder?”
“I seek the death of no-one, Ser Edmure. I will raise my hand to no-one.”
He glared at the wretched man and the men behind him, with their pathetic attempt at armour and their rusty weapons. “No, but you’ll allow others to take up arms against those you see as your enemies. I see that, as clear as day.”
Blackfoot looked at him. It was a slightly surprised look, as if he was startled that Edmure had said something so pertinent. “We are here for a most noble cause. We are here on the behest of the Seven. Would you stand in our way?”
“You are here to burn this hill and those stumps to the ground. At night. Providing a sign that all for miles around can see – that you will destroy all signs of the First Men. And that I will not allow.”
“The stumps are symbols of false gods,” Blackfoot said piously. “Evil and false. It is the duty of all who follow the Seven to confront and chastise such false gods. Those who stand behind me represent the smallfolk. Would you really stand against them?”
He took a measured step forwards. It was increasingly dark now, with just the torches providing light. “I would. You do not seek to confront false gods, you seek to raise the banner of the Faith Militant. And the king will not allow it. Neither will my father. And neither will I. What’s next after those stumps? The Heart Trees at places like Raventree Hall? And then? Will it be men and women next? There are still those who worship the Old Gods here in the Riverlands. Would you burn them out? Kill them? Set them on fire? Where is the evil then?”
“The smallfolk do not worship the false gods.”
“Not all of them. But some of them. And who here heard the Call?”
Blackfoot narrowed his eyes a little. It seemed that the conversation was not going the way that he had anticipated. “This ‘Call’… a call to worship false gods, methinks. If it happened. And even if it did – your goodbrother sent it out. He worships the false gods.”
“Many do. Would you burn them as well? Would you have the North descend on the Riverlands? On you? No, it wouldn’t be you, it would be on others. You want power. I see it in your eyes. You seek to dominate.”
There was a long pause as they both stared at each other in the light of the torches. Blackfoot smiled a grim and terrible smile at him. “Ser Edmure, move your men or we will take this hill. By force if we have to, but we will take it. And scorch it.”
“You can try,” said a very familiar voice to one side. He looked to one side, too surprised to speak. “But you’ll not succeed. You can burn each and every stump, but they won’t die.”
“Uncle Brynden!”
“Edmure.” The Blackfish emerged out of the darkness. He seemed a bit different, as if the grey at his temples was less prominent. And he had oddly shaped cloak pins on each side of his neck. To his left was a blonde woman with one hand gripping the pommel of a sword and on his right was a tall old man in dark robes, with something on a hood. “You keep interesting company, nephew.”
“Unwelcome company,” Edmure growled. There were others in the darkness behind his uncle and he felt his heart lift a little. “You heard why they are here.”
“Aye,” said the old man. “We heard. And it will not stand. As Ser Brynden said, burning the trees will never get rid of them. They were cut down years ago – but the stumps still stand. Why would that be?”
Puzzled he looked at the man. “I don’t understand.”
Uncle Brynden sent him a slightly exasperated look. “They have deep roots, Edmure. Deeper roots than you might think.” Then he glared at Blackfoot. “And far deeper than in your worst nightmares. Hello again, Septon. We meet again. Your men failed at the God’s Eye. Did you think to succeed here?”
Blackfoot stared at the Blackfish – and then smiled slightly. “The knight and the woman at the village. Of course. You rode away from our great and holy task.”
“A task that we ended,” the old man said grimly. He stepped forwards, tugging at his hood, so that it came up. As it did Edmure could see horns suddenly sprouting on either side of the old man’s head. He stared, transfixed. No. Surely not.
Blackfoot also seemed to be stunned. “No,” he said eventually. “This cannot be. Your kind has gone from this world. There are no Green Men.”
The old man smiled a strange and terrible smile. “You were wrong. You were looking in the wrong places.”
“Then you are all pagans and we will end you!” Blackfoot snarled. “I see what you are! I see what you are all too clearly!”
“You see, do you?” The old man said the words softly. He paused as if he was listening to something. “Tell me – what do you see now?”
“I see you and – what? Relight those torches, you fools! Relight them!”
Edmure stared at the man in confusion, as did Blackfoot’s men. “High Sparrow? Erm – the torches are still lit. We did not douse them.”
“Fool! Of course you did, why else would it be so dark so suddenly?” And then the Septon staggered a little as he looked about. “The stars! Where are the stars?”
And in that moment Edmure saw that the eyes of the Septon were now pure white. He looked at the old man, who was now staring at the terrified men standing behind the Septon. “Punishment for his crimes,” he said. “Tell those below to go home.”
There was a long moment – and then Blackfoot’s men broke and ran, running for the crowd at the bottom of the hill, screaming at them to go, to flee, that the High Sparrow had been blinded by the Old Gods. Flee. Flee.
Tyrion
If he survived this trip and ever returned to Casterly Rock he’d have to tell Father a few things about Ned Stark. Namely that the man could march at a truly brutal speed. And at the same time get his men to ride at that same speed. He looked at him now, at the head of the column of men, the huge direwolf loping effortlessly at his side.
Father had often described Ned Stark as being an honourable fool. Father, to be honest, didn’t know what he was talking about in this case. Ned Stark was not a fool. It was just that he was the Lord that the North needed. He commanded the North in a way that few others could. Father would not do well in this cold, harsh, but oddly beautiful place. It wasn’t really a place for much artifice or dissemblance, because such things could get you killed at some point if you were not very lucky.
No, the North was a place where you kept your friends close and your enemies even closer. He didn’t want to imagine what Winter would be like up here. Bone-chilling beyond his worst nightmares no doubt. And someone like Ned Stark had the kind of standards of bone-headed honourably noble behaviour that made him appallingly popular.
Father would be roundly hated up here. And would probably have controlled things with a rod of iron, before having that rod wrapped around his neck and then be tied to a large rock, so that that he could be kicked into the nearest lake.
Ned Stark’s travelling speed also meant that he was a military threat should he and Father ever fight each other. And he really wasn’t sure who would win that little fight. Father’s campaigns tended to be brutally direct. Ned Stark on the other hand seemed to fight with no amount of cunning. And from what he had overheard when it came to Ned and Robb Stark discussing tactics and strategy, Robb Stark was even better. Which made no sense whatsoever, given the age of the boy.
No, he was missing something. He was missing something about the boy’s companions as well. Theon Greyjoy, according to his sources had once been an arrogant little prick who clung to being an Ironborn like some children clung to their toys. Well, that description was no true of the grave young man who was riding in front of him now, one hand tickling the ears of his alert little direwolf. The Greyjoy boy was… well, he was a man of the North now. He was wearing a plain doublet and he prayed every day to the Old Gods. Why? What had happened?
As for Jon Stark, the former Bastard of Winterfell… well, the lad had a grave demeanour at the best of times, as if he was always a bit weighed down by something. Which was… interesting. No-one knew who his mother was. Of his father there could be no question – he looked more like a Stark than Robb Stark did – but there was something mysterious there. There had always been those stories about the Great Tournament at Harrenhall, the last flash of light before darkness fell on the Targaryens, where apparently Ashara Dayne had made the young Ned Stark blush. Had it been anything more than a blush? He didn’t know.
He had a lot of fun guessing though.
He could see that a rider was approaching ahead of them and reined in as Ned Stark raised a clenched gauntleted fist in the air. “Slow!” The Lord of the North shouted. “Walk!”
“Riders on the road ahead, my Lord,” he heard the rider gasp out. “They bear the banners of the Karhold.”
“Karstarks then? Aye, I thought that we might meet them,” GreatJon Umber boomed. Then he looked at Lord Stark. “Cheer up Ned, he’s your bloody cousin.”
“Distant cousin,” Ned Stark muttered. “With a few marriage alliances back and forwards in the past. Loyal but dour.”
“Scratch a Karstark and you’ll find a Stark,” Roose Bolton said to the other side of him, and there was a mutter of laughter.
“Aye, right enough,” sighed Ned Stark, before raising his hand again and then bringing it down forwards to signify a canter. “Ride!”
They soon caught up to the other party on the road ahead, who had obviously seen their banners and then dismounted. As they drew level and reined in the entire Karstark party dropped to one knee, sending the odd incredulous glance at the motionless figure of Frostfyre.
“Lord Stark,” a large rawboned man older than the GreatJon and with a bigger beard intoned, “The Stark In Winterfell, House Karstark of the Karhold stands ready. The Long Night comes. Command us.”
“Rise, Lord Karstark,” Ned Stark said as he dismounted, before smiling and embracing the older man. “Well met. We have much to talk about.” He tilted his head at the direwolf. “Including her.”
“Aye,” Lord Karstark rumbled. “Aye, we do. I’ve brought my sons. All three of them. The Call was strong at the Karhold.”
Hearing a slight babble of voices Tyrion turned to see that three younger men were talking enthusiastically with Robb and Jon Stark, as well as the Greyjoy boy.
After a moment the Karstarks remounted, the column somehow shook itself into some kind of shape and they restarted their ride North, hard and relentless. The Karstarks seemed to be quite familiar with the speed and intensity of Ned Stark.
And then they crested a hill and slowed, and the word came through for Tyrion to ride to the head of the column. He spurred his horse on and then reined in as he approached Ned Stark, who was leaning against the pommel of his horse and staring North. The moment he noticed him he smiled slightly. “There you go. Our destination.”
Confused he stared ahead of them. Fields, yes, the road, yes, hills up ahead to one side, yes… wait. Wait. There was a gleam of something almost white-blue far ahead. “Is that… the Wall?” He asked the question hesitantly.
“Aye, that’s it.” Ned Stark said the words with a slight sigh. “That’s the Wall.”
He thought about saying something like “Will we be there by this afternoon, before my arse becomes one giant blister,” but he restrained himself. Instead he asked: “When shall we get there?”
“Tomorrow,” Ned Stark grunted, before looked at him and smiling a little. “Yes, it’s that damn big.”
“By all the Gods,” Tyrion muttered as he stared North. “It’s huge.”
“Aye,” Ned Stark replied. “And our best defence against what lies on the other side. My Lords – RIDE!” And with they were off again.
The Wall awaited. As did a cushion for his arse.
Victarion
He was in a foul mood as he walked into the castle at Pyke. The weather matched his mood – damp and wet. And this was to be a meeting that he was not going to enjoy, he could tell that straight away. Well, they had to be told the truth. Because it was all their bloody fault, the fools.
Guards took one look at his face and either stiffened to attention or got out of his way as quickly as possible, almost scuttling like crabs. Good. He was in no mood to be stopped, diverted or asked by some snivelling underling asking what he was doing there.
He found his brother in his solar. Balon Greyjoy was sitting in his usual chair, staring at the fire that was burning in the hearth. Damphair was standing next to him and they were having a subdued conversation, one that stopped the moment that they both noticed his arrival. It wasn’t hard, as he slammed the door closed behind him.
“Victarion? What do you want here? I did not send for you.”
He looked his brother in the eye. “I came to report on the status of the Iron Fleet. Because you need to hear this from me. We now have a third of the ships that we had yesterday.”
There was a stunned silence and then Balon came out of his chair as if someone had just set fire to his arse. “WHAT???”
“I said that the Iron Fleet now has just a third of the strength it had yesterday. Two thirds of it have sailed away.”
Balon stared at him. “Sailed away? Sailed away where? Victarion, what in the name of the Drowned God has happened?”
You happened, you idiot. The words were on the tip of his tongue, but he swallowed them. “A message came from Harlaw. And another one from Great Wyk. Those captains and crew from those two islands sailed as soon as they heard it.”
Balon and Damphair looked at each other. They seemed startled by the names of the islands – as if this was something that they had not anticipated. “What message?”
He fixed them both with his best glare. “That they were betrayed. That you had attacked Harlaw and would attack Great Wyk next. That you were purging the Iron Islands of everyone that claimed to have heard the Call. And that you denied the Call. Denied help for Winterfell. Denied help for the Wall.”
Balon exchanged another look with Damphair, the latter baring his teeth in a silent snarl of rage. “Not all the captains and crew were from those two islands though!” Balon said eventually.
“No, but do you really think that all those who heard The Call came from those islands? Don’t be a fool, brother. And do not dare tell me that it was all ‘Greenlander mummery’. You insult me with those words. I was at sea when I heard it. At sea. No mummery there. I heard it.”
Damphair clenched his fists in rage. “Nonsense! Mummery and foolishness! The Drowned God told me that-”
“I don’t care what the Drowned God says!” Victarion roared with a fury that surprised him. “The Iron Fleet that we have spent so long building is gone. Reduced to a fraction of what it had been. The ships have sailed for their home islands, the men will not obey you, not until they feel safe again.”
Balon was staring at him as if he had gone raving mad. “I am the Lord of the Iron Islands!” he shouted eventually. “This is my dominion! My islands! This is rebellion!”
“No, this is you not listening to your own people,” Victarian shouted back. He was angrier than he had ever been, angrier with both his brothers for their mishandling of this whole matter, angry with them for thinking that this could be controlled with their usual lack of tact. “You have not even sent a raven to Winterfell asking what is going on, you simply declared the whole thing to be a Greenlander lie – and then killing people who disagreed with you. And that is beyond foolish! Who else will you kill? A dozen? A hundred? A thousand? Ten thousand? The Call was heard. It cannot be unheard!”
The other two men in the room were both pale now – Balon from shock and Damphair from what looked like fury. The latter broke the silence. “The Drowned God denied this ‘call’ to me! Our God, the God of the Iron Islands! Would you have me deny him? We stand by the Iron Price and the Old Way!”
“And in the meantime the Iron Fleet is weakened! We are weakened! This is war now, brothers! The only way that this can end is for Ironborn to kill Ironborn!”
His words caused a silence, one that was broken by a timid knock on the door. “What is it?” Balon snarled, and the door opened to reveal Maester Qalen, looking old and frail – and pale. He was holding a scrap of paper that looked as if it had come via a raven.
“My Lord,” the old Maester quavered, “A message. From Lord Harlaw.” He handed it over and then almost fled.
Balon unrolled the message and then stared at it, with Damphair reading it over his shoulder – before throwing it onto the table with a foul oath. Victarion snatched it up quickly. ‘If you send reavers against reavers then you must pay your own price. We who heard the Call will send help to Winterfell. Tell Damphair that I have read the runes – and know the truth about his mad god. We do not follow him now.’
He looked up. Balon was sitting in his chair again, whilst Damphair was staring at the message. He had gone a strange blotchy colour about the face, whilst his mouth worked in what was either prayer or… something that he just couldn’t make out.
“’Mad god’?”
“Lies,” Damphair muttered in a low and terrible voice. “Lies. Victarion?”
“Yes?”
“Take your fleet and burn Harlaw to the ground. Raze the island. Salt the ground and tear down the buildings. Start with High Harlaw.”
He stared at the Drowned Man. “I do not take orders from you,” he said softly. “I take orders from our brother, the Lord of the Iron Lslands. And such orders would not make things better, but far worse!”
“If Harlaw has read the heresy within the runes – that had been long thought destroyed – then he must die. They must all die. The Drowned God is all.”
He looked into the eyes of the man who had once been his favourite brother and saw the madness that dwelt within. “Balon – brother – this is madness.”
“What else can we do?” Balon asked and he could hear the despair in his voice. “Harlaw stands against me – against us – so what else can we do? He would rebel against us. He would listen to Winterfell first, rather than Pyke – and me. We must break him. Him and these other rebels. We are Ironborn. There can be no other way.”
“Brother-”
“There can be no argument about this!” Balon slammed his fist down on the arm of his chair. “No debate! We have to hold to the Drowned God! Without him we… we are nothing! All these islands hold is iron. We have no wood. Little land for crops. We harvest the sea, but we cannot get everything from there. Trading is… weak. We have always taken what we need. We need to do that again. The Drowned God commanded us to do so. Without him…” Balon paused and seemed to search for words that hurt his lips. “Without him we are just a band of men on barren islands who have nothing but iron. The Drowned God unites us. If Harlaw denies the Drowned God then Harlaw must die. There can be no other way.”
He stared at his brother. He knew that he himself was not much of a thinker, but there seemed to be some gaping holes in Balon’s logic. “If we burn High Harlaw and salt the island will that not also weaken us?”
The Lord of the Iron Islands stared into the fire. “We are Ironborn. What is dead may never die, but rises again, harder and stronger. Harlaw will recover. Eventually.” He looked at Victarion. “This is my… Castamere. This will strengthen us eventually. Go. Do as our brother said.”
Victarian closed his eyes for a long moment and then sighed. “Very well. I disagree, but you are my oldest brother and also Lord of the Iron Islands. I will obey.” He turned to Damphair. “Look at me, priest. I might die obeying your command. But if I return then I will spit in your face and tell you that it wasn’t worth it – and then describe the faces all of the men, women and children you had me kill. So look at me.”
But Damphair would not. He had closed his eyes again and was praying. Victarion stared at him for a long moment, and then at Balon, who was staring at the fire again, and then turned on his heel and strode from the solar.
He knew that his brothers were cleverer than him – he knew that he was not a thinker, merely a fighter. But for the first time in his life he knew something else – that his brothers were making a terrible mistake. And that there was nothing he could do to stop them.
Willas
Highgarden had to be his favourite place in the world at times. So many trees. So many flowers. The view over the landscape….
It wasn’t until you looked harder that you saw the strength of the position. The walls. The towers. The thorn hedge. The river. This was a place that had been chosen for a reason. It was strong. There was a reason why the Andals had looked on this place and recoiled. Highgarden was old and strong.
He needed to be worthy of it. And that was the hard part. He felt as if he was trying to play catch-up. Father’s advisers seemed to be nothing more than idiots who liked to flatter. He’s already told three that their services were no longer required. They’d looked down their noses at him and then asked pointed questions about when Father was returning, only to be told that he was hunting for the foreseeable future and that if they asked that question any more times his patience would start to wear a little thin.
Any who had pushed their luck any more had been told to go away at once. And Maester Lomys was skating on some very thin ice at the moment, with all his protestations of loyalty to the Head of House Tyrell.
Willas sighed and returned to his desk, which was already piled high with things to do. His recent takeover of the Reach had largely stunned his brothers. Margaery was fine with it, but Garlan was still a bit stunned – although he suspected that there were deeper waters to him than there first appeared.
And then there was Loras. He needed to have a word with Loras. No, wait, first he needed to talk to Grandmother about Loras and then he needed to talk to Loras. The boy was… complicated. He was proud, prickly, intelligent about some things, an idiot about other things, a brilliant rider, a superb jouster and above all else someone who needed to be restrained before he did something stupid.
Right now he wanted to return to King’s Landing. That was indeed something stupid. Because Willas knew exactly why. The poor foolish boy was in love for the first real time in his life. With Renly Baratheon.
This would have to be handled delicately. He did not want to hurt his brother’s feelings, but this was not something that could be allowed to run its course. This was something that had to be delicately pinched out, like a bud on the wrong place of the stem of a rose. Now was not the time for this. He had good intelligence from King’s Landing that Jon Arryn was looking for a bride for Renly, as Storm’s End needed an heir for its lord. That part was none of his business, although that bride had better not be Arianne Martell (unlikely – she was the heir to Sunspear) or any of the San Snakes, should they ever be legitimised. No, a girl from the Stormlands would suffice.
Which left Loras. He really needed Grandmother’s advice on this. Loras needed some kind, quiet girl who would bear him children and not make him miserable. Grandmother had to know someone who fitted that. And then… well, they’d have that conversation when it was time to cross that bridge.
Knuckles rapped against the door and he looked up. “Lord Tarly is here to see you, Lord Willas,” a guard said formally. “Him and his son.”
Aha. “Send them in please,” Willas said as he straightened up. The two Tarlys strode in, one lean and the other, well, fat. What was interesting was that there was a bit more steel in the spine of young Sam Tarly. Interesting. “Thank you both for coming,” he greeted them “Please – be seated.”
They sat and he pulled his chair in and was also seated. “Lord Tarly,” he said abruptly, “I have need of your expertise. You and your son both heard the Call. You know that Winterfell calls for aid. It is the nature of that aid that concerns me. The Reach is rich in many things, in food, in wine, in strength of arms. I would use those things wisely.
“Now, word has reached me from the Citadel that the Maesters are currently hotly debating if-” Willas took a deep breath, “If a Long Winter is coming. As in the legends of the Long Winter. That lends much credence to the Call. Lord Tarly, you are a veteran of many a fight. Many a war. You’ve been to the North before. You know what it’s like there.” The older bald man nodded sombrely at him. “I would have you go there again. Go to Winterfell and find out just what is coming – and how it can be fought. If the Others are indeed coming, if they are not a thing out of legend, then we need to know how legends can be killed.”
Randyll Tarly nodded again, a gleam in his eye. “Aye. I can do that. House Tarly has always supported the Night’s Watch.”
Samwell Tarly twitched a bit at that, his eyes rolling a little as he looked sidelong at his father and Willas wondered again if the rumours about Randyll Tarly mulling over sending his son to the Wall were true. Probably. The boy was about as martial as a pat of butter. But that did not mean that he didn’t have his uses.
“I also have need of your son. Samwell, you found Otherbane. I would have you find out more things. Highgarden has a large library. It’s one that our Maester here says contains very little about magic, or legends, or the information that we need. There is another kind of battle here – one for information. I need a warrior of the mind, not of the body, for this. Will you help me?”
“Of course my Lord,” Sam Tarly said intently. “I’ll help in any way I can.”
Willas nodded, noting the odd look that Lord Tarly sent his son. Yes, this was a great warrior who did not understand that not everyone could be a warrior.
“It might also be,” he said reluctantly, “That I need someone to go to the Citadel and search out their archives for what is needed. I do not want to antagonise the Maesters, but their antagonism – there can be no other word – towards magic, and legends such as that of the Others, is not helpful.”
His words caused Sam Tarly’s eyes to widen to an almost comical extent. Yes, he was that excited at the thought of the Citadel’s archives and libraries. That said, he soon got himself under control. “As my Lord commands,” he said with a little bow from his chair. “So I shall obey.”
He looked at them both sombrely. “Both of you have important tasks,” he said softly. “And House Tyrell will not forget our debt to you on this. I hope that you both understand this.”
The two Tarlys looked at him – and then show a glance at each other. When they both looked back at him then it was as if a peculiar truce had been declared. “Aye, my Lord,” they said simultaneously.
Jon Arryn
He watched carefully as Bronn gave his report to the Small Council. He didn’t watch Bronn himself. He watched the others.
Renly Baratheon was listening to Bronn as he told of the discovery of Lysa and the young Baratheon had an odd look on his face, as if he was in two minds about something. He worried about Renly sometimes. He had just been a boy at the time of the Rebellion and so large parts of the danger and peril of the time had passed him by. And he’d gone from being a third son to a Lord Paramount. There were times when he seemed to think that such largesse had fallen into his lap simply because… simply because he was Renly. There was a lack of depth to him at times that Jon found worrying.
And now Renly was staring at Bronn as if he wasn’t quite sure what he was. On the one hand he seemed almost dismissive of the former sellsword, in his worn black leather riding clothes. On the other he seemed to be very well aware that this was the man who had tracked down and captured one of the most dangerous men in the Realm, a man who had been cheating and stealing under their very noses whilst lying to them all.
As for the others, Orton Merryweather was listening to Bronn and nodding sombrely, his eyes assessing the other man carefully. He seemed to be the kind of man who weighed and measured a man by his worth. It was good to see.
Varys… well, there was an interesting thing. Watching him could be frustrating at times. It would be like watching a stone that had had a slight smile carved onto it. The man could be an enigma at times. Jon had been watching him at these meetings for years. For the vast majority of those years Varys had been an enigma. Recently, however, had been slightly different. Slightly agitated, by his standards, based on what he had observed about the man. Now he had returned to his usual enigmatic behaviour.
Something had happened. Something significant enough to rattle Varys. What? And why the sudden return to normalcy? What had the man decided? Was it connected to Pentos and the death of Mopatis? He knew that the two had once been very close.
And then there was Pycelle. He looked almost as conflicted as Renly, divided between what the man looked like and what the man had done. There were times when Pycelle confused him a little. He seemed to be… well, useless at times. But there were those other times, when he could ask a disturbingly pertinent question, when he could show a flash of insight…
He turned his attention back to Bronn, as he finished speaking. The man had, he realised, carefully left out any mention of the letter that Baelish had sent to Lysa. He had however given a full account of how he had arrived in King’s Landing, asked about Lord Arryn, been sent towards the Great Sept and intervened in what might have become a disaster. The way that he said it… well, they all nodded and they all muttered their thanks. But he wasn’t sure if they really understood Bronn Cassley.
The Lord of the Foxhold was someone that he needed to keep close. Why? Because the man was bloody good at anything he turned his hand to.
“Thank you Lord Cassley,” Jon said eventually. “Your efforts have been most valuable.”
“They have indeed,” Pycelle rumbled with what he might possibly have thought might have been an avuncular smile. “Odd name, Cassley. Where is your family from, originally, my Lord?”
Bronn shrugged. “All over the place. Although I am told that there was a lordship in our past once.”
“Ah, family tales,” Pycelle said with a rather strained smile. Then he looked down at the piece of parchment that he had apparently been doodling on. And then he looked confused for a moment, before turning as white as a sheet for an instant, before seeming to rally and dismiss what thought had passed through his mind. “A foolish fancy.” And then he looked at Jon. “Lord Arryn, should your wife survive the loss of her arm then she must be brought to trial.”
“Ah,” Jon sighed tiredly. “Yes, I agree. I like it not, but… there can be no other course of action. Not after what she tried to do.”
“She tried to murder you, Jon,” Renly said bleakly. “Baelish got his hooks into her and… well, she must be tried.”
“I cannot proclaim justice on my own wife,” Jon muttered. “If it does come to a trial then I would prefer it if others dealt with it.”
“That is perfectly understandable my Lord,” Varys simpered. “Such a thing would be a most terrible thing to deal with.”
Jon nodded slowly. He was getting a headache again and he felt tired. “Very well. Lord Cassley – please return to the Foxhold and guard my wife until such time as she can be brought to King’s Landing for trial. When – and if – she can travel, send word to me. I… I will send my men for her. It is the least that I can do. She gave birth to my son.”
And with that the meeting broke up. Renly went off with Merryweather, talking about a hunting trip, whilst Varys clutched his great book to his chest and then scurried off on noiseless slippered feet. Pycelle blew his cheeks out for a moment and then stood and shuffled off, muttering something about looking at some records.
Bronn walked over to Jon and then after, the Grand Maester had passed from sight he lent forwards a little. “That one’s trouble.”
He felt his eyebrows fly upwards. “What? Pycelle?”
“Aye. The old man’s not the dodderer he claims to be. You can see it in his eyes at times. And it’s funny how his hunch is a little less severe when he thinks that no-one’s watching him. His shuffle’s a good one though. Very life-like. You’d almost think that he was in pain at times.”
Jon stared at Bronn – and then pinched the bridge of his nose. “I see,” he sighed. Damn it. He hated this bloody city. “So he’s been playing the doddering old imbecile for years then.”
“Probably served him well in the rule of the Mad King,” Bronn quipped. “Made him less of a threat.”
“I should have realised that he was a survivor for a reason.” He thought hard and fast. “He persuaded Aerys to open the gates of King’s Landing to Tywin Lannister’s army. I’ve always suspected that Pycelle was tied to the Lannisters. I just could never prove it.”
“Don’t trust him, my Lord.”
He smiled a little. “Oh, I won’t, my Lord.” He reached into a scroll case and pulled one out. “I have what you asked for.”
Bronn took a deep breath and then took it. “My thanks.” There was an odd look on his face.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure how she’ll react to this. She might give me a clip around the ear for all I know.”
He placed a hand on the dark-haired man’s shoulder. “Learn to duck.”
Jorah
Home. He was home. Alright, White Harbour wasn’t Bear Island, but it was still in The North. He wasn’t sure if he should be happy to be home or nervous.
There was a fear that was hanging over him. He had always wondered about what he’d do if any of the men that he’d, well, sold into slavery, ever escaped or were freed – and then confronted him. There were times when he had nightmares about it.
So far Leera’s reaction had been all that he had hoped for. She was excited about everything she saw, everything she touched, everything she smelt. White Harbour was not Pentos. It would never be Pentos. But it was the biggest settlement in the North, the only place worthy of the title city, and he showed her as much as he could of it as he waited for… well, he wanted word of his pardon to spread. He didn’t want a guard to appear and tell him grimly that Ned Stark was on his way with Ice in one hand and death in his eyes.
And then the King had come. He’d been there for a few days now, preparing for the trip to Winterfell and the city had apparently watched their preparations with some… bemusement. It had been many years since a King of Westeros had been seen North of the Neck. Aegon V had been the last one, but he had not been a king at the time.
And so he’d kept showing Leera the city. Edric Stark had left for Winterfell many days before with the heads of the main households who had returned to the North, including Lyra Mormont. Along the way he’d met several times with Ser Wylis Manderly. Short meetings, just a nod in the street or a short talk about the ways that the Company of the Rose had picked up in Essos. And once a cup of wine together, as Ser Wylis talked about his daughters fondly, as well as his brother’s recent decision to marry. It was delicate work, mending a friendship.
He’d cursed himself for a fool many times now. Lynesse. Oh, he had been such a fool. It always came down to Lynesse. He wondered what she was doing now, she and her married merchant lover.
Which was why he was here, now, with Leera, in front of the Heart Tree in the Wolf’s Den. It was the first time that the Pentosi girl had ever seen a Heart Tree and she stared at it with wonder. “It’s old,” she whispered eventually with a slight shiver. “I can tell that it’s old. And there’s something about it… something odd.”
“There’s always something odd about a Heart tree,” he murmured as he ran a hand over the white bark. “The faces… well, they say that show the many expressions of the Old Gods. Different people carved the faces. Some of them… not human. Not for the oldest of the trees.”
“The Children of the Forest?”
“Aye.”
“Do you think that they are all gone?”
He frowned a little in thought. “I hope not,” he said quietly. “There are such legends about them… but I really hope that somewhere there’s a quiet green place where some of them still live.”
“You sound almost wistful, my love,” she smiled at him. “For legends?”
“For legends.” He smiled back at her.
“A Heart Tree,” a new voice intruded. A rather familiar voice. “How novel. Odd that it’s in a place like this. How… Northern.”
He got control of himself and then turned. “Kingslayer.” He remembered that coolly arrogant bastard from Pyke. A shame that an Ironborn arrow hadn’t ruined his good looks.
Ser Jaime Lannister smiled cockily at him. “Slaveseller.”
For a moment he saw red, but Leera grabbed his arm with a grip of iron and shook her head slightly at him. He reined in his temper. “What do you want, Ser Jaime?”
The cool smile twisted for a moment. “His Grace the King wants a word with you, Mormont. At once.”
Leera sent a worried look in his direction and he caressed her cheek for a moment in reassurance. “He’s pardoned me,” he told her softly. “I have nothing to fear from him.”
“Of course not,” the Kingslayer said sarcastically. “He’s just His Grace, The King, Robert Baratheon, the First of his Name.”
He pulled his anger back again. “I will see you back at our quarters,” he told her quietly. “Do not worry. I promise you, I will see you there.”
Leera nodded fearfully and then walked away. He watched her go and then, as the Kingslayer opened his mouth to say something he whirled on him. “Lead on, Kingslayer.”
The bloody man smirked at him. “Oh, are we done being polite? Very well. On to the New Castle. Ser Jorah, if you please.”
He found the King of Westeros in a courtyard in the New Castle. He was stripped to the waist, had a log on his shoulders, was sweating like a pig and seemed to be counting as he staggered around the courtyard. And the word he shouted as he finally rolled the log off and onto the ground was “Sixteen!” before rubbing his back and groaning.
Jorah eyed Robert Baratheon. The last word that he had heard from King’s Landing was that the King of Westeros had gone to seed in the most spectacular way, getting fat, drunk and chasing every woman in the area who had both tits and a pulse.
This was not the man that he had heard about. Yes, he looked heavy set, and seemed to have loose skin for some reason, on his stomach, but he looked more muscular than the last time he had seen him, at Pyke.
Baratheon stuck his head in a bucket of water, pulled it out and then dried his face on a cloth. Only then did he notice Jorah. And when he did he straightened up and strode towards him, pulling on a shirt and then a scabbard that contained a huge sword that looked extremely old. Jorah stared in confusion. The Lord of the Warhammer now had a sword?
“Mormont,” the King rumbled, and Jorah bent the knee at once. When he came back up at the wave of the royal hand, Robert Baratheon then loomed over him, glaring at him. After a long moment he finally asked: “Was she worth it?”
“Who?” Jorah asked, confused.
“The Hightower girl. Was she worth what you did?”
Ah. He thought about it and then sighed. “I thought so at the time your Grace. Now?” He looked down at his feet for a moment. “No. And now she’s in Lys. The mistress of a merchant there. What I thought was love was something that couldn’t hold a candle to money.”
The King glared at him still. “I know that I gave you a pardon… Thinking back to Pyke… All the Hells, man, what were you thinking?”
This time he stared at the face of the King. “I thought that I was in love,” he said defiantly. “I needed the coin to keep that love. I was wrong, your Grace. I was an idiot. I did a terrible thing, something I’ll always regret. But I cannot turn back time. All I can do is make amends and move on. As I have done and will keep doing.”
There was a terrible moment of silent strain and then Robert Baratheon stopped looming quite so much and nodded slightly. “Fair enough. Very well, can’t say more than that. You’ll apologise to Ned Stark though. You met the Targaryen girl, didn’t you? What’s she like?”
Confused by the abrupt change in topic he stared at the King. “Erm… quiet. Shy at times. Confused. Badly educated.”
“Badly educated? How so?”
“She knew nothing about how the…” Damn it, he couldn’t say ‘rebellion’, “How the War against her Father started. She knew nothing about how Lord Stark and his eldest son died.”
Rage awoke in the King’s eyes. “She knew nothing, did she? Why? Did no-one tell her when she was growing up?”
“Her brother… her brother told her that the war had all been the work of traitors.”
If anything the rage redoubled. “Traitors. Aye, we were traitors. Because we wouldn’t bend the knee any more to a mad man who burnt innocent people alive whilst he cackled like a lunatic.” He looked back at Jorah. “Did you tell her the truth?”
“We did.”
“We?”
“My Leera and I. She followed me here from Pentos.”
“And how did the Targaryen girl react?”
“She threw up everything she had in her stomach by the side of the road.”
The King shot him a quizzical gaze. “You’d best tell me the full tale then.”
And Jorah did, from meeting the Magister to escorting Daenerys Targaryan back up to his manse. “So you met the ‘Beggar King’ then,” the King said with an odd look on his face. “And he was crooning over a giant dragon egg.”
“He seemed to be singing to it, Your Grace.”
“As mad as his father was,” the King muttered before eyeing the log again. “Well then, the world is best rid of him. You might have been one of the last to see him alive.”
Shock roiled through him. “He’s dead? I did hear rumours at the docks, but…”
“Oh, aye. He’s dead alright. Went raving mad after you lot set sail. Decided that the best way to hatch that egg of his was with blood magic. Sacrificed a servant first, and then when that didn’t happen he went even madder and decided that his sister would make a better sacrifice. Knocked her on the head and dragged her into a storeroom apparently. That Magister you met found them in time. Apparently he was strangling the boy at the same time that the boy was stabbing him with his dagger and then they both fell into a fire started from a broken lamp. A third of the place went up.”
Stunned, he stared at the King. That sounded insane. “So they all three died?”
“Just the two. The boy and the Magister. The girl survived. The boy’s egg was a jape on the part of the Magister as it was made of stone, but she had three real dragon eggs on her. And they bloody well hatched in the fire that followed.” He lifted the log back onto his shoulder with a grunt of effort. “There’s a war coming, Ser Jorah. And I intend to fight it and win. Wherever the threats come from. Come back tomorrow by the way. I’m used to the way that Ser Jaime and Ser Barristan fight after sparring against them with weighted practice swords. I need someone new to fight. We’ll pay you for your time. In two days we ride for Winterfell. You’re coming, you and your girl from Pentos.” And with that he started to walk around the courtyard again, hefting what looked like a lot of weight on his shoulders.
Jorah bowed in farewell and then left somewhat lightheadedly. Well. Dragons in Pentos? Sparring against the King? “Why me?”
“Because you’re new to him,” the Kingslayer grunted as he appeared out of the shadows to one side. “Because he’s trying to learn something knew with the sword every day. Because he’s convinced that there’s something coming that he needs to fight.” He paused, his eyes on something that Jorah couldn’t see. “He’s changed,” he said at last. “He’s changed.” And then, in a whisper that Jorah could barely make out: “Why though?”
Jorah shrugged and marched out of the gate and into the city beyond. He felt as if he had a purpose again.
Robb
It was noon when they finally reached Castle Black. He was more tired than he’d ever felt in his entire life, so tired that he wanted to do nothing more than fall into a bed and sleep for a week. Perhaps two.
Grey Wind had finally woken up from a prolonged nap in the sling by the pommel and was sitting up and watching everything around him with prick-eared fascination. He was also sending the occasional glance back him, almost as if he was worried about Robb.
The Wall loomed above them. It had started off dominating the horizon and then loomed ever larger as they got closer. Stand on any hill in the New Gift and you could see it, a constant reminder. It seemed to have cast a spell especially over Tyrion Lannister, who could sometimes be found just staring at it and then consulting Lord Surestone’s book.
Robb had asked him once about just why he was so fascinated by it.
“Men would not build such a thing unless it was needed. Look at it – it cuts the land in half. How many woods or copses were destroyed so it could be built? How much grazing land? They wouldn’t have built it there unless it was needed. And then they maintained it. The Night’s Watch has been around for thousands of years,” he muttered waving the book about for a moment. “They were given a task. They kept carrying it out for centuries. And the Kings in the North made sure that the Night’s Watch was made independent of Kings and Lords, so that it wouldn’t get involved in the South and get diverted from its task.
“Our ancestors – Stark and Lannister alike – knew something, Robb. They knew something. There was a chance that something would one day wake up to the North of the Wall. They made plans. But a lot of time has passed and we have forgotten much. And I somehow need to persuade my cold-hearted, hard-headed father that there is a threat here.”
That had been a day ago. The Gift and the New Gift were waking up and starting to bloom again. They’d seen the signs for a day or so now. Fields long left fallow were being cleared of saplings and ploughed again, ready for planting. A lot of wood was being stacked in sheds, drying out to be used as firewood. Houses were being refurbished and restored. At one point, in the distance he saw a small group of men working on replacing the sails on a windmill.
“I wonder who she was,” Jon muttered as they rode towards the headquarters of the Night’s Watch. “That girl.”
Robb traded a look with Theon, who smiled slightly and then rolled his eyes. “It might have been a short, red-headed boy.”
“No, it was a girl. Moved like a girl. I’m sure of it. A red-headed girl. Fascinated by that windmill she was.”
Robb and Theon rolled their eyes at Jon again, who noticed them. “What?”
“No, I’m sure you’re right. She was a girl and you’ll meet her.”
A horn sounded up ahead and the gates of Castle Black opened before them. Judging from the banners being borne by some of the men inside who were not wearing black, many of the Lords of the North were already there. He could see the rusty longaxes of House Dustin, the black horse’s head of the Ryswells, the blue eyes and white caps of the Flints, the black battleaxe of the Cerwyns, the green merman of the Manderlys and the silver gauntlet of the Glovers, as well as others.
At the head of the assembled throng inside was a broadshouldered man with thinning white hair and a beard. A raven sat on his shoulder and he bore a sword that had a bears head for a pommel. Robb remembered him vaguely from his childhood, before Lord Jeor Mormont decided to abdicate in favour of his son and take the Black. The Old Bear, people had called him. And he did look a bit like a bear.
As Father dismounted the throng – many of which had been staring in astonishment at Frostfyre – knelt swiftly and then stood again. “Lord Stark,” the whitehaired man said formally, “The Night’s Watch welcomes you to Castle Black.”
“I am honoured to accept your welcome, Lord Commander Mormont,” Father replied formally. “And I thank the Lords of the North for assembling.” And with that he strode forwards and then clasped forehands with the Lord Commander. “Jeor,” he heard Father say quietly. “You look well. Good to see you again.”
“You too Ned,” the Old Bear replied with a smile. “We’ve a lot to talk about. Your direwolf, for a start.”
“Where’s Maege?”
“She sent word that she’d been delayed. Something to do with intelligence about some odd events on the Frozen Shore. She’ll be here in a day or so.”
Father nodded and then turned to the others in the great courtyard. “MY LORDS! We will meet for urgent counsel as soon as we are all assembled – House Mormont has been delayed, and I am sure that there are others still to come. I have called you here for a great council. But I have only just arrived and I must listen to the latest news. Once we are fully assembled we will talk of many things that must be done. A long winter is upon us. The Others have returned.”
“The Call has gone out!” Someone called out. “The Old Gods have spoken!”
“Aye they have. And we have much to do. We-” And then Father fell silent. Robb frowned a little and then looked at Father – who had closed his eyes. And then suddenly Father opened his eyes again and Robb could see the red fire that meant that the Old Gods were once again present. The sight of it made everyone in that courtyard freeze in shock.
And then just before a murmur of wonder could go out Father spoke again, in a deep and terrible voice. “The North remembers. You have always remembered. But there have been times when you have not remembered the right thing. The Wall must hold with the aid of all. As it was when it was built. Old alliances must be remade.” Then Father turned his head to one side. “Aemon Targaryen. Step forwards.”
Maester Aemon, who had been standing near the Old Bear, stumbled forwards a step. He seemed to be in shock. “You… Am I… being addressed by the Old Gods?”
“You are. We believe in the balance. What has been taken from one person can be restored to another. We have taken the sight from a man who thought he saw the truth – but only saw his own personal greed and gain. You have been blind, but you have seen the truth here at the Wall. So we would grant you your sight again.”
The red fire blazed hotter for a moment and just for a sliver of a second something also burnt in the eyes of the old Maester – who then gasped as the white in his eyes seemed to vanish, revealing purple eyes.
There was another stunned silence – and then Maester Aemon held up a trembling age-spotted hand. “I… I can see again.” The old man said the words with a wonderment and joy, mixed in with shock. “I can see again!”
Father closed his eyes again and when he reopened them they were normal. Everyone was staring at him and he blinked and then looked uneasy. “What? Why is everyone looking at me?” Then he saw the beaming, crying, shaking Maester of Castle Black. “What just happened?”
Catelyn
It was interesting to watch the face of Jory Cassel as he stood there in the Godswood and watched his wife to be approach. She was so used to his normal expressions – quiet stoicism, quiet amusement, pugnacious patience and occasionally, when he was particularly angry, a frozen snarl. He even laughed like his uncle at times.
Today he had a new expression. Poleaxed ox, or besotted lover. And to be honest Annah looked very much the same. She could be hard-faced at times, with every reason to be given her life at times – Lysa! When had she gone so mad!?! – but today there was no hardness in that face. Just tenderness, a hint of nerves, and above all love.
He was dressed in a fine doublet that his uncle had had made for him, she in a gown that Cat had personally overseen the sewing of. He had unbraided his hair, she had flowers in hers. His cloak was another gift from his uncle.
As Jory watched Annah approach him before the hearttree Cat heard a misty little sigh, and looked over to where Sansa was watching with a look of teary longing. Bless the girl, she needed to talk to her. To one side of Sansa was Arya, who looked as if she had been forcibly stuffed into her a dress and then told to smile every now and then. Frankly it looked more like a rictus than a smile, but at least the child was trying. On the other side of her was the Terrible Threesome, as Maester Luwin had taken to calling them in a rather long-suffering manner. At least Edric had some manners. She’d had to tell Bran and Robert off twice already for pulling faces.
Rickon was having a nap after running about and playing with Fleetfoot until they had both been too tired to stand. Fleetfoot. It had taken massive hints in front of her son before he had finally settled on that name. He’d started off with Shaggydog, gone on to Smellypoop, BigPaw, Ouchyfinger (after some rather rough playing had resulted in a slight nip to Rickon’s thumb) and finally settled on Fleetfoot.
As Jory and Annah started the wedding ceremony in front of the Hearttree and a smiling Maester Luwin she smiled herself. Those two were lucky, to be allowed to marry the person they loved.
She had been lucky as well. She had grown to love her Quiet Wolf, and he to love her. She had heard of far too many marriages amongst nobles that had started in duty and ended in indifference. That said, there was also those that, like hers, had started in duty and gone to love, but not everyone was that lucky.
She’d often wondered what would have happened if she’d married Brandon Stark. Ned had told her tales about him. Too much wolf’s blood in him. Too many wild oats to sow. He had been a hot-blooded, headstrong man. And that had gotten him killed – which had helped to start a war.
And that in turn brought up other memories. Oh, Petyr. When had that funny, clever, lovely young man gone so wrong? After his challenge to Brandon Stark that had almost gotten him gutted like a fish? After he had been sent away from Riverrun? When had all that brilliance and wit been subverted into bitterness and greed and cynicism? Had it happened the moment that Father had sent him away? Or later?
She had been wrong about him. And in that other world, that other time, the time that haunted her dreams and still sent her nightmares, her trust in Petyr Baelish had cost Ned his life. And one daughter her freedom, whilst another had vanished into thin air.
It had shaken her – and it still shook her. There were times when she found herself over-thinking things, and then worrying if she was indeed over-thinking the trivial things in life. She had been wrong about so many things in that other time. And people had died in that time, because of her.
Yes, it wasn’t that simple, yes, that was a different time and different circumstances. But… it still haunted her. And how she had treated Jon still haunted her too. She could have been a mother to him – but she had not. From jealousy and hatred. She owed him a debt of withheld love that could never be repaid. Because it was blatantly obvious to her now that Jon would never seek to supplant Robb, because they were as close any trueborn brothers could be. Her worst fears, born of tales of bastards seeking ideas above their station, no longer applied here. Jon was not a bastard. He was a Stark. And a Stark who wanted nothing more than to be a part of the family and to fight by the side of his brother.
There were times when she wanted to weep for her mistakes. But that time was not now. Jory Cassel took off his cloak and placed it onto the shoulders of Annah, the last words were said and they were husband and wife. And any bedding ceremony would be a very quiet one, as Ser Rodrik had made it very clear that the two were ‘to be left alone to get on with it, right fast.’ Fair enough.
As the wedding party, with a giggling Annah being carried by a smiling Jory, moved towards the Great Hall she looked to one side. Sansa and Domeric were walking side by side, holding hands, with Septa Mordane following them with a certain look of amusement. Cat smiled slightly. Yes, she needed to assist in their own marriage soon. Right soon, in fact, especially with King Robert approaching. If he had some of the same intentions as in that other terrible future then he might want to betroth his ‘son’ to Sansa. That could never happen. She could never see her daughter married to that… monstrosity, born of incest.
As they entered the Great Hall Jory put Annah back on her feet, and the moment that she saw Cat she curtseyed and then looked solemn. “My Lady, thank you for honouring us in this fashion… to use the Great Hall…”
She smiled. “Think nothing of it. The Cassels have been loyal beyond words to the Starks. Jory’s Father died in the service of my husband. And your actions, as well as Jory’s, have saved my nephew. He is free of the poison that gave him those shaking fits. This is but a small repayment of what we owe you.”
Annah curtseyed formally and then returned to the arms of her husband, who grinned boyishly at her and then waved at the minstrels, who started up a spritely tune, and then the Cassels began to dance as the assembled men and women cheered.
Even Arya smiled a bit at that, and the Terrible Threesome began to… gyrate, perhaps that was the kindest term, to the music.
In the middle of the third dance a guard entered, who waved to Ser Rodrik. The Master at Arms frowned in the direst manner and approached the guard, who whispered in his ear. The frown deepened and then Ser Rodrik slipped outside.
He returned at the start of the fifth song and approached her. “My Lady, a party has arrived. ‘Tis Lord Dondarrion and his ward, Lord Dayne.”
She stared at him. “Lord Dondarrion? From the Stormlands? And Lord Dayne? From Starfall?”
“Aye my Lady.”
She looked helplessly at the festivities at the moment and then shrugged internally. “Very well. Let then enter the Great Hall – but they will approach me quietly. I will have nothing disrupt the wedding.”
There was a pause as she waited, her feet tapping to the music and after a while a small party of men entered and approached her, escorted by Ser Rodrik. Their leader was a slight man with red-gold hair and a surcoat of a field of stars slashed by a purple lightning bold. Behind him was a tall, fat, bald man in loose red robes and then a far younger man with blonde hair and eyes so blue that they were almost purple, with a surcoat that had a white sword and falling star crossed on lilac.
“Lady Stark,” the leader said quietly, “I am Lord Dondarrion. I thank you for your hospitality. I was hoping to meet Lord Stark, but I understand that he is at Castle Black at this moment.”
“Lord Dondarrion, be welcome at Winterfell,” she replied. “Yes, my husband is away at the moment. How may I help you?”
“Not help me, so much as my ward. This is Lord Edric Dayne.”
The young man with the purple eyes bowed deeply, He was as white as a sheet and he seemed to be trembling. “Lord Stark is truly away?”
She frowned a little. “He is. In the meantime my son Brandon is the Stark in Winterfell.”
Lord Dayne, for some reason, swallowed almost in relief. Then he bowed again. “My Lady…” There was a pause as he seemed to search for the right words for a long moment. “My Lady. House Stark sent out the Call. House Dayne has answered it. I am the Sword of the Morning. I am…” his voice wavered for a moment. “I am the last trueborn man of House Dayne. I have come. I will serve House Stark. I will help to throw back the Others and defeat the night.” And with that he drew his sword and, holding it upright by the pommel, knelt in front of her.
The wedding music stopped dead as everyone looked at her and she stared at the boy. What was going on?
And then a gasp went up. Lord Dayne’s sword was glowing.
Ned
As he slumped – there could be no other word for the action – into a chair in the Old Bear’s quarters there was a glugging noise and then a mug of ale was thrust into his hands by Jeor Mormont. “Drink,” the Lord Commander… commanded. “You look like you need it. Especially after riding for so long and then having the Old Gods speak through you.”
The Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch sat down opposite him with a mug of his own and looked at him wryly. “Does this often happen to you, Ned?”
Ned took a deep quaff and then sighed. “It’s a long story Jeor. Let’s just say that the last time it happened – to me at least – an ancestor of mine took control of me, opened a vault in the crypts in Winterfell and then led my sons and others to the Wolfswood to an ancient Godswood there – where we met her.” He pointed at Frostfyre, who was lying in front of the fire. Hearing her name she looked at him for an instant and then looked back at the fire.
The Old Bear stared at him. “I was going to ask about the direwolf. We so seldom see them. And to see one follow you as a pet…”
“Oh, she’s no pet,” Ned corrected him. “She and I protect each other. Just as her direwolf pups will protect and be protected by my children. That was the ancient compact. And so it is again. I don’t know when we lost the link. But it’s been renewed. That must have been the reason for the direwolf head on the banners.”
There was a short silence as they both looked at the sleepy direwolf. “The Old Gods are active again, as the legends tell they once were,” Jeor rumbled. “I don’t know if I should be afraid or reassured. It’s good to know that they are acting to protect us… but the fact that they had to get involved in the affairs of man scares me. There can be no other reason, than that the Others have indeed returned.” He shivered a little, not that Ned could blame him one bit. “How did the Call come to be sent?”
“GreatJon Umber had an artefact that my ancestors gave his ancestors, to keep at the Last Hearth. The Hearthstone, it’s called. Simply holding it gave me a vision of the home of the Others, a place called Hopemourne.”
“Hopemourne…. I’ve heard of that place. The Wildlings speak of it with dread.”
“They’re right do so, based on what I saw there in my vision. A terrible place. And the Night King is awake there. But I digress. We found a hidden door my solar, to a place that my father never told me about. And there were other artefacts there, including a stone box with the same marking as on the Hearthstone. When I placed the one inside the other – the Call was sent out.”
There was a short silence. “Based on what I’ve seen,” the Old Bear muttered, “It was right that it was sent out.”
And then there was a knock at the door. On Jeor’s barked command to enter it opened to reveal Maester Aemon, who bustled in with a book under one arm and a look of intense… actually Ned couldn’t quite put his finger on what that look was. It seemed to be a combination of excitement, curiosity, sheer joy and concern. The moment he saw Ned he stopped and bowed.
“Lord Stark,” he said in acknowledgement. “Words cannot express the debt that I owe you.”
“Maester Aemon,” Ned protested, “It was the work of the Old Gods. Not me.”
“They spoke through you, and therefore I owe you and them my thanks.” He sat down, his book on his lap and then stared at him with eyes that looked far younger than his face. “You have something of the look of your grandfather to you,” he said eventually, before smiling suddenly. “I remember him well.”
“He was a good man,” Ned muttered. “Although I have few enough memories of him.”
Maester Aemon nodded – and he looked at him piercingly. “Lord Stark just over a week ago Mance Rayder sent word to us to parlay North of the Wall. We – the Lord Commander, Ser Alliser Thorne, Quorin Halfhand and myself – rode out to meet with him. He told us a strange take, he and his… interesting-sounding lieutenant Tormund Giantsbane.”
“Aye, he did indeed,” the Old Bear rumbled. “Ned, they said that a group of giants had come in – bearing a dying Child of the Forest.”
The hairs on the back of his neck stood up on end. “One of the Children of the Forest?”
“Aye.”
He drank quite a bit of his ale. He wasn’t quite sure why he felt such shock. Given all the other news, about the Old Gods, giants, the Others and so on, this shouldn’t have surprised him. And yet it did. “A Child of the Forest… they have not been seen in centuries. They were sure?”
“They sounded extremely shaken about the whole thing,” the Maester said grimly. “And then they said something else. They said that it had a message for them – and for us. They said that the Others were preparing something by the sea, South of the Frostfangs. It also said that Rayder and this Tormund had to go to the Nightsfort to help a man through what I presume is the Black Gate there, with two others. A man with a golden mind and a boy who died and fell through time. And that their task was to mend the links between magic North and South of the Wall.”
The old Maester was staring at him intently. And no wonder.
“I hate riddles,” The Old Bear grumped as he got up and poured more ale. “How can a boy die and fall through time? And a golden mind? What does that even mean?”
Ned exchanged a long look with Maester Aemon, who raised an eyebrow at him. “I can take a guess about the man with the golden mind,” he said slowly. “Tyrion Lannister came North from Winterfell with us. If any man could be said to have such a mind, it would be him. He’s clever and a Lannister of Casterly Rock.”
The Lord Commander nodded slowly. “Which just leaves the boy who died and fell through time. What does that even mean?”
Ned stood suddenly, walked to the door and barred it. Then he strode back, to where a surprised Jeor Mormont was looking at him with both eyebrows raised. “Ned, what’s wrong?”
“What I am about to tell you is for your ears and your ears alone, Jeor. Lord Commander, this is important.” He sat down again and then gestured at the Maester. “Maester Aemon here already knows about this. It is time that you knew as well. The first time that the Old Gods intervened was months ago, when they…” He paused. This was still something that hurt. “When they saved my oldest son. Who had died. ‘Tis a strange tale, but he died at a time and a place where the North was suffering, when a war was ranging that should never have happened. Robb died in our future, a future that will now never happen. And the Old Gods sent him back to Winterfell, to a point when the war could be – just, if things go the way I plan them to go – avoided.”
The Old Bear stared at him, stared so intently that he didn’t blink. And then he leant back a little. “If anyone had said that I would have called him a bloody liar. For you to say it, after all the things that I have heard of and seen with my own eyes and ears… well, I’ll not doubt it. So. Your son was sent back. And you mentioned a war?”
“The King, Robert, was dead. A hunting accident in dubious circumstances Robb said. And his son… well, Joffrey must never be king.”
“What’s wrong with the boy?”
“He’s not Robert’s son. That stays within this room as well.”
If Jeor’s eyebrows had been active before they now threatened to fly off his face, so fast did they move upwards. Then then came down into a beetling scowl. “Who’s the real father?”
“Ser Jaime Lannister.”
There was a long silence. Then Jeor drank the last of the ale in his mug with a few gulps and got himself another one. “Bloody hell,” he said faintly, wiping some sweat off his forehead. “So there was a war over the fact that he’s a bastard born of incest?”
“There was.”
“And your son lost his part in it?”
“He trusted the wrong people. And that’s all I’ll say about it – it’s a war that will never happen now. At least I hope not. I… am planning something to reveal the truth to certain people.”
Jeor nodded shortly. “And what was happening at the Wall when all this was happening?”
“From what Robb said that he heard, the Night’s Watch was neglected even more. There was word… there was word that there had been a Great Ranging beyond the Wall. One that you led. The last reports weren’t good.”
There was another short silence. “The Others still came then.”
“I think that they did. And the Realm was divided and distracted.”
Jeor sighed, before scowling again. “Right then,” he grumped. “We know they’re coming. We know that your son and Tyrion Lannister need to go to the Nightfort. Oh – can the Lannister boy be trusted?”
“He can. He knows that the Others are coming. He’s a clever man Jeor. The Gods may have jested when they crafted him in his mother’s womb. He may have the body of a dwarf, but his mind is another matter. He’s brilliant.”
The Old Bear nodded slowly. “Then Maester Aemon and I need to talk to him. We have something that he needs to read. A Lannister once commanded at the Nightfort, before it was abandoned. We have his personal journal. And at the end of it we found a sewn-up leather folder. With a name on it.”
Ned looked at the two older men. They had a very odd look on their faces. “What name?”
“’Tyrion Lannister.’”
Daenerys
Sleeping dragons in their own individual cages in the sun were… adorable. She just wished the she didn’t feel like a dragon in a cage as well. There were Unsullied guards at the doors, guards that followed her everywhere. The Magisters of Pentos were very polite, very ‘reasonable’ – as they were always describing themselves as being – but the truth was that they were keeping her as an effective prisoner.
The manse was being fully repaired now, work crews swarming over the place as they pulled out burnt joists and installed new ones. The gardens were somehow being restored, with large amounts of freshwater being poured everywhere and all in all they were doing amazing work.
She would have a splendid cage, one just for her. The Magisters had had a series of loud shouting matches over who was to have the honour of hosting her and they had finally decided that the best way of preserving internal peace within Pentos was to simply put her up in the manse of the late Illyrio Mopatis.
Along with her dragons. The dragons were very important to them, They’d given her a lot more books about them, but then that was not a particularly good thing, as the books would sometimes contradict each other. The Old Valyrians had kept their dragonlore – their true dragonlore – very close to their chests. Sometimes all that the books really had for her was a load of old wives tales.
She sighed, rubbed at the bridge of her nose and then turned for the table to get a glass of fruit juice. And then she froze. There was a man sitting quietly by the window, a man who had not been there a moment before. He was plump, bald and had eyes that were almost purple.
“Good afternoon,” the strange man said with a bow of the head. “I didn’t startle you too much did I? I apologise if I did.”
She took a step back. The man wasn’t threatening, but he had appeared so unexpectedly that she was taken aback. “Who are you? Where did you come from?” She looked at the door. Should she call for the guards?
The man smiled slightly. “The guards know that I’m here. I have visited this place often enough. The Unsullied by your door know the password I used to gain access. So do not be alarmed. As for who I am – my name is Varys. I was a councillor to your late father in King’s Landing.”
The name rang a bell in her mind. “Varys – you were my father’s spymaster.”
A wince crossed his face. “I prefer the term ‘Master of Whispers’. A more elegant term than ‘spymaster’. The latter sounds positively sordid.” He paused and then looked at her. “I have very little time here in Pentos, but I thought it important that we meet. I sent you a letter a few weeks ago. I hope that you got it?”
Daenerys stared at him. “That was from you?”
“It was. I needed to warn you not to trust anyone. It was… important. It still is important.”
A long moment passed. After a while she turned to look at her dragons and then turned back and stared at him. “What do you want?”
A fleeting smile crossed his face. “You don’t trust me. Nor should you. You do not know me.” He stared hard at her. “But there are things that you need to know. I trust that you know of your predicament? You are a prisoner here.”
“I know,” she said, her voice as hard as she could make it. “The Magisters of Pentos wish to use my dragons.”
“Do you know what they call you, in the streets of Pentos? Daenerys Stormborn, the Mother of Dragons. And they speak of you with an odd mix of hope and fear.”
“Hope?”
“That you can help make the conquest of Braavos a bloodless one. Well, bloodless on the part of Pentos that is.”
“And… fear?”
“Dragons, my dear. Dragons. Creatures that have not been seen for many a long year. Or rather many a long decade.”
She was about to open her mouth and order him never to call her ‘my dear’ again, when all of a sudden he stood and strode over on noiseless feet to the window, where he peered out at the harbour. “Do you play cyvasse? It has yet to make its way over the Narrow Sea, but it is quite popular in Volantis and Pentos.”
Confused, she blinked hard. “I have heard of it,” she said eventually. “Viserys was starting to learn it. before… before…” Before the false dragon egg ate his mind, she just couldn’t bring herself to say the words.
“It is a fascinating game,” Varys said as he sent an enigmatic look her way for a moment. “The different pieces on a board. The tactics. So many ways of playing. Nobility love it. But then such people often like to think that life is like just such a game. When it’s not. The Magisters of Pentos seem to think that they can play cyvasse, but with people and companies of sellswords in the place of pieces.”
The spymaster turned to look at her again. “For the Magisters of Pentos you have now become a very valuable piece on the board. You and your dragons. They think that you and they can gain for Pentos the streets of Braavos. Nothing can stand against three dragons.
“But it goes further than that, so much further. Do you really think that the Magisters will thank you and let you go after that? Lorath? Myr? Tyrosh? What about the First Daughter, Volantis itself? The Magisters will be talking about that. Will they do it? Perhaps. Perhaps not. They will talk for a long time over this. But it’s the other Free Cities that worry me. What would they do if they had access to you and your dragons? Simple – conquer the other Free Cities. So as news of you and your dragons spread, like ripples from a thrown stone into a pond, so will the impact of what people think Pentos will do with you.
She stared at him and then shivered a little. “You really think that?”
“Oh, I know it. They are dreaming themselves into a second Valyrian Freehold, with themselves in charge. Many of the Magisters long to become a player in Game of Cities here in Essos, the equivalent of the Games of Thrones back in Westeros. They have long had peaceful policies forced upon them, especially by Braavos. This is their chance to break free of them.”
Her hands shook a little and she looked over to the cages again. “I… I… don’t…”
“Braavos is already readying a note of protest no doubt, as the blurred line between the Iron Bank and the Sealord blurs even further. The Braavosi will soon prepare for war. A war of pre-emption is better than a war of defence. And the other Free Cities will be watching, waiting – and preparing.” He nodded at the harbour again. “How many of those ships now preparing to set sail will also be bearing news of you? As I said – a new piece has appeared on the cyvasse board. It is a carved one of you – and your three baby dragons.”
Her legs were shaking now and she stiffened them to disguise it. Despite that he noticed, bowing slightly and then fetching her a chair, into which she sank. “Your pardon,” he said gently as he returned to his own seat. “But you need to hear the truth on this. I cannot drip honey onto it. It is what it is.”
She pulled herself together. “You think that my very presence here will start a war,” she told him harshly. “No, you cannot drip honey onto that. Then what do you suggest that I do?”
A long moment passed as he stared about the room and then closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened his eyes again there was a look of almost weariness in his eyes. “It all depends on what you want to do – and what you want to become. I have not addressed you by title this day, because I wonder if you know yourself what you want? I could get you out of the city today – there are at least four passages down to the harbour from here where not a soul would see you – but where would you want to go? Another of the Free Cities? They too would view you as a piece on the cyvasse board, someone to use. One of the deserted settlements that scatter this region perhaps? But how long can you hide three dragons before you are found?
“You have some time to decide. Your dragons are young, it will be years before they can be flown by you, let alone control a flame. The danger is that war of pre-emption on the part of Braavos or one of the others that I mentioned, but I have sufficient assets to give warning enough to get you out of here.”
Her three dragons were still sleeping in their cages as she looked at them. How long before they out-grew those cages? She looked back at Varys. “What other options do I have?”
He shot her an odd look, as if she had surprised him a little. “If you mean Westeros, then the plans that Illyrio Mopatis and I were drafting with a few others are gone. For many reasons, not least being the vanishing of the Dothraki.”
“Plans?” She asked the word in a baffled tone. “What plans?”
“You were to marry the Dothraki horselord Khal Drogo. Your brother was to marry a Martel of Sunspear. Plans for a rising were being laid down. Approaches to the Gold Company had been made. And then, in an instant – well, three instants – they were all ruined. The Dothraki all vanished to the East. The Call was sent out in Westeros. And your brother died in the way that he did.”
The Call? What call? And what was this about Viserys?
Her confusion must have been evident on her face, because Varys sighed and then stood and walked over to the nearby cabinet, where he poured two goblets of wine. “The manner of your brother’s death has… weakened many loyalist sympathies in Westeros. House Targaryen has few friends there at the moment. Oh, there will always be those ready to rise up and tear down those above them, but the true loyalists… they are weaker now.”
Varys looked her in the eye. “Your Father, King Aerys – do you know what they call him?”
She returned the look. “I know. The Mad King.”
“Of course you do, Illyrio said that someone had been in the library. I owed your father a great debt. He brought me over the Narrow Sea, to be his Master of Whispers. I did much for him. That said… I saw him every day. You’re going to ask me if he really was mad, aren’t you?”
Eventually she nodded.
“Yes,” he said as he sipped his wine and then looked at something on one wall that wasn’t actually there as he seemed to shrink a little. “He was mad. Paranoia gripped him hard after the Defiance of Duskendale. By the time of the Great Tourney at Harrenhall he was… well, his hair was long, his nails were long and his paranoia was even longer. By the end, in the Red Keep, he was a… a shrieking maniac. He burnt people alive for no reason. And because he was mad, and your brother went mad and tried to kill you, then the overall impression is that you must be mad too.”
She stared at him and then laughed. “I am not mad!”
“No, I can see that. You have something of your mother about you.” He smiled almost wistfully. “A remarkable woman. She was always dignified no matter what… indignities were thrown at her.” The smile vanished. “Your father could be… cruel. And that remains the point. People remember your father. Your eldest brother was infamous for indirectly starting the Rebellion. And the manner of your other brother’s death is swiftly spreading.
“My point is that the time is not right for a return to Westeros. Perhaps with time, if the ground can be prepared first. And that in turn is problematic. Something is happening there, something that I cannot explain.”
“What is it – is it that ‘call’ you mentioned?”
An odd look crossed his face, a combination of bafflement, exasperation and annoyance, mixed with a well-hidden fear. She’d seen that look once before, on someone talking to Viserys in the hope that he wouldn’t be shouted at. “Ah. The Call. It was heard by all of those with the blood of the First Men. Magic. A very strong magic. It was heard all over the Seven Kingdoms, in the most surprising places. And the words heard were all the same. ‘The Others come. The Stark calls for aid. You are needed.’ In Westeros all eyes are now on Winterfell and the Wall. Crops are being sowed. Homes are being prepared – roofs mended, walls repaired. The smallfolk – those that heard the Call – all say the same thing. Winter is coming. It will apparently be a long one. It will freeze even Essos I fear. Something dark is coming.”
She stared at him intently, trying to riddle out what was in that face. “Magic scares you.”
The merest flicker of the eyes told her that she was right. “Magic should scare everyone,” he replied a trifle hoarsely. “In my case I have reason. When I was a child someone used me for a blood magic rite. I am now a eunuch as a result.”
Her cheeks flamed with embarrassment, but he held up a plump hand. “No matter, I take no offence. You could not have known. Magic… has consequences. Nevertheless, the Call has been sent out. Something stirs at the Wall. And it has thrown the Game of Thrones there into some degree of confusion. Some seem to have stopped playing it completely, which is… bizarre. As a result, even if your dragons were fully grown an attempt at regaining your father’s throne might not be a good idea. With this Call echoing in people’s ears… well I do not think that you might have many friends or allies. Apart from the Velaryons perhaps and of course Mace Tyrell. It’s both a shame and a relief that he’s no longer in charge of the Reach. A butterfly could enter one ear and fly out the other unimpeded.”
She absorbed this with a frown. “Then what is your counsel? What should I do? Where should I go?”
Taking a deep breath he clasped his hands and then looked at her. “That all depends on what you wish to do, as I said earlier. You have some time ahead of you to make a choice. Will you stay in Essos and try and forge your own piece in the game of cyvasse that the cities are playing, outwitting those who would use you? Or do you return to Westeros and try to somehow survive in a Realm that distrusts your family as you try and build its reputation anew? Or should you go somewhere else, like the Summer Isles? It’s all upon you to work out what you want to do. All I can do is advise. One thing I would advise for you to do is to write to your great-great-granduncle – do I have the number of greats right? No matter – Aemon Targaryen. You are not alone. You are not the last Targaryen.”
“My brother said that he was old, blind and useless.”
“If anything the loss of his eyes has but sharpened his mind. He is by no means useless, he is a fount of advice. And he is the Maester of Castle Black. Seek his advice. I can guarantee that any letter you send him will reach him undisturbed. You have my word on it.”
She sat there for what felt like half a year, her thoughts reeling from one thing to another, like a moth caught between several candles. There seemed to be a pressure on her, something that weighed her down.
“I’m sorry,” Varys said softly, “This must all have come as a shock to you. But you are the dragon and the nest has crumbled into nothingness and now you must spread your wings and learn to fly before the ground rises up and kills you. You have some time. People owe me favours and I can warn you if you need to move quickly. But you must try and decide in which direction to move.”
“I will write a letter to my great-granduncle,” she said eventually. “How can I get it to you?”
“I am here in Pentos for a day or so. I can come for it tomorrow.”
She nodded and with that he stood, bowed and walked out on those noiseless feet, leaving her alone with her sleeping dragons and nothing but the sound of the waves far away.
Chapter Text
Tyrion
If you stood at the base of the wall and then looked straight up then… you got the oddest feeling that you were falling up it. It was all a bit disconcerting. He looked down at his boots, gulped for a bit to try and settle his guts (and his nerves) and then stumped off to get a bite to east.
Castle Black seemed to be bustling. What was most interesting was to see all the new stonework or wood or tiles – because they stood out like a sore thumb. He could see at a glance that the castle had been in a mediocre state of repair until a number of months ago. And the number of those months coincided with the Call.
He sighed a little and then looked about. Would Father have sent help to a place like this? No, he would not have. Instead he would have raised an eyebrow at whoever might have had the temerity to suggest it, until that person eventually slunk away, their face crimson with embarrassment.
Which would have been a mistake. The more he looked at the Wall the more he realised that this was real, that this was not something that even Father could dismiss as just a Northern tradition. This was not a tradition. This was something that the First Men had built because there was something on the other side that they had feared.
Had Father ever been to the North? No, he had not. Years of being Hand of the King had rather crimped his travel plans no doubt. What would Father have said if he had ever seen the Wall? Would he merely have sniffed and said that it was a creation born of superstitious minds? Or would he have seen the immediate flaw with such a thought? Why would the old Stark Kings of old have deliberately limited their power? Yes, the North was vast. But if there was a forest to the North, then why give that up? If they had held such a huge area, what was a few leagues more?
It was at this point that his progress towards the mess hall was stopped by a skinny young man with black hair dressed in dark red leather armour. He had a rather battered looking sword at his side and had an air of… an air of…. Tyrion wasn’t quite sure what he had an air of, but whatever it was he seemed to have a lot of it.
“Lord Tyrion Lannister? The Lord Commander, Lord Stark and Maester Aemon would like a word with you in the Lord Commander’s quarters.”
He eyed the youth darkly. “Will there be food and wine there?”
This seemed to throw the young man. “My Lord?”
“I was on my way to the mess hall. I’m hungry. Will the Lord Commander’s study have food?”
A look of deep thought crossed the young man’s face. “I can get some my Lord.”
“Then do so please,” said Tyrion grumpily as he stumped his way towards Mormont’s quarters. “I’ve ridden a long way, I’m very tired, I’ve seen the Old Gods cure someone of blindness, I’m awestruck and I’ll be attending a meeting of the Lord of the North soon which I thought would involve a lot of shouting but now… wait. Do I detect the accent of the Westerlands on your words?”
“You do my Lord.”
There was a pause. Then: “This is your cue to tell me where you are from, lad. And your name.”
“Sorry my Lord. Poderick Payne.”
He eyed the boy. “Payne? Any relation to Ser Ilyn Payne, the tongueless Executioner at King’s Landing?”
Poderick Payne turned pink. “A distant cousin my Lord.”
“So what are you doing here?”
“I’m a volunteer my Lord.” Another silence. Then, in a rush: “IheardtheCallandIcametohelp,eventhoughmyfamilythoughtIwasmad.” And then he seemed to retreat within himself.
Tyrion ran the words through his head, added the necessary spaces between them and then blinked. “You came here from the Westerlands?”
“Yes my Lord.”
“Against your family’s wishes?”
“Sort of my Lord. I’ve heard that a cousin of mine is at the Shadow Tower.”
Tyrion eyed the boy again. “I hate to point out the obvious, but you’re a bit young.”
“I still heard the Call my Lord.”
“Were you a squire?”
“For my cousin Ser Cedric Payne my Lord. Another cousin.”
“How many cousins have you got?”
“A few my Lord.”
“And is Ser Cedric here?”
“No my Lord. He thought I was a bloody fool.”
“So whose squire are you now?”
The lad looked shifty. “Night’s Watch don’t have squires my Lord. I’m making myself useful.”
He nodded as he approached the door to Mormont’s quarters. “So I see. Get me some bread and ham and a mug of wine or ale and bring it to me here. I have need of a squire and I am a Lannister of Casterly Rock.”
The lad gave him another oddly unreadable look. “Will you be here in the Wall for long my Lord? I want to help here. I heard-”
“The Call, yes, I know. Know this… erm. Poderick? Such an odd name. I shall call you Pod. Know this Pod – I have no plans to leave the North anytime soon. I may stay here for a while, or I might go back to Winterfell, but I shall stay here for the immediate future. There’s a lot to do. Now – shoo and get me something to eat and drink.”
Pod gave him another of those odd looks and then he nodded and trotted off. Tyrion watched him go quizzically, noting that he seemed to know exactly where to get said food and drink. Then he looked back at the door and knocked politely. A muffled “Come!” greeted his knock and he went in, closing the door firmly behind him. This place was cold.
He found Stark and Mormont sitting at a table with the Maester, whose bright eyes seem to be jumping all over the place with a not very well hidden delight. As Tyrion approached the empty chair by the table the old man stared at him fixedly – and then he smiled.
“Lord Tyrion Lannister,” Maester Aemon smiled. “Be welcome to Castle Black. I trust you are well?”
Tyrion stepped on the footrest that someone had placed before the chair and then got onto the chair itself. “Well, yes, if a little saddlesore and hungry. I encountered a lad from the Westerlands outside and asked him to bring food and drink as otherwise my stomach will meet my spine.”
Jeor Mormont flushed slightly. “Apologies,” he muttered, “I didn’t think of that.” And with that he stood and poured him a mug of ale. Which vanished down his throat in the blink of an eye.
“My thanks Lord Commander,” he sighed, suppressing a belch. “Now – how can I help you?”
The three men exchanged a long glance. And then Ned Stark rubbed his nose and then looked at him. “Tyrek Lannister.”
“Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch at the time of the abandonment of the Nightfort, I believe. Yes, I have read of him. What of him?”
Another pause as the other three looked at each other. “We found a bricked-up doorway here,” Jeor Mormont said reluctantly. “In it were many chests. Many things from the Nightfort – many things we did not know we ever had. One of those things was the journal of Tyrek Lannister.”
Excitement flared deep within him. “Really? His journal. Fascinating. What did it say?”
“Much about the working of the Wall back then,” Maester Aemon replied. “And then there was something else.” And with that he pulled out a black leather folder, the edges of which had been stitched together. He placed it on the table and then nudged it towards him. “This is for you.”
The hairs on the back of his neck stood up on end. “I’m sorry, what?”
The Maester reached out and then turned the leather object over. And then he saw it. Someone had stitched a name on the outside with faded yellow thread. His name.
He reached out with a hand that trembled more than a bit and traced his name on that thread. “This is for me?”
“Apparently so,” Ned Stark said sombrely. “You’d best read it.”
Tyrion swallowed as he picked it up and looked at the worn leather. “How could a man who died before the Dance of the Dragons know my name?”
“Perhaps,” Maester Aemon said softly, “You should open it and see.”
He nodded, pulled out a knife and then carefully sliced through the thread that had held the folder closed for more than two centuries. His heart was thudding in his chest as he pulled the leaves apart. Within were some pages of excellent parchment. He pulled them out carefully and then started to read.
“My dear Tyrion – I hope that you will not mind the informality of my addressing you as such. You are family after all and as I am dying I realise that I not give a damn about formalities. You are a Lannister, as am I.
“Your first thought will be to ask how I knew your name. There is a simple answer, I have the Greensight. I have had it since I was a boy. That is a thread that connects us. I know that you are short in stature but great in mind. How do I know that? I dreamt it.
“You sit in a room. In that room sit a Lion, a Direwolf – literally! – a Bear and a Dragon. As I said – I have dreamt it.
“I know that your father scorns you for your short stature. My own father scorned me for my dreams. My mother understood – she was a Blackwood – but my father never did. Not until towards the end of his life.
“The Greensight is both a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing because three times in my life I have seen disaster approach and been able to steer around it. A curse because I know what lies ahead of me for the Night’s Watch. The abandonment of the Nightfort was just the start. The Night’s Watch will fall further, fall to its lowest ebb ever. If you are reading this now then one of two futures has been fulfilled. I will not mention the other as you would wince a lot.
“I know what lies ahead for you. It will be a difficult path. You must trust your heart and your head if you are to negotiate what lies ahead. A second Long Night comes, as is feared.
“You must go to the Nightfort. I know that this is macabre, but seek out the crypt where I have ordered that I will be buried, You will find something of ours there, some things that the Lannisters – or should I say Casterlys? – of old had forgotten about. I found them deep in an old storeroom when I was a lad, driven there by the Greensight. Use them well.
“There is another crypt there. The source of dark legends. Take a Stark with you. The half-Tully perhaps.
“Don’t start too much when you meet various guests there. The first will be unwelcome. The second set will be most welcome to you indeed. There’s a man on the other side of the Black Gate. See him for what he truly is. Watch out for late wolves.
“After that… follow your heart. Be sensible though the moments of pain and realise when you need to grasp that moment of happiness.
“Be well, distant nephew. Fight the Long Night that is to come.
“Tyrek Lannister.”
As he placed the letter down in a slight daze and then pushed it across the table towards the others, there was a knock on the door that heralded the entry of his new squire with a plate of bread and ham and a goblet of actual wine.
It vanished in the blink of an eye.
Jon
The Wall was… interesting. It certainly was impressive. It was hard to look at it and not feel your mind whirl at the very size of it. This was something that men built for one reason: fear. They had been afraid of something. Something terrible.
Robb and the others were watching some of the new recruits to the Night’s Watch spar, watched over by a thin, grim-looking man with black hair that was flecked with grey. He looked… vaguely disgruntled, as if he wanted to complain but couldn’t.
The men in the courtyard held their swords well and seemed to know what to do with them. But it was the way that they seemed to be swinging them against the targets in front of them, the sacks stuffed with straw with sticks for arms and legs that was interesting. They weren’t trying to kill them. They were trying to dismember.
“They’re training to fight wights,” Robb muttered next to him and he nodded as he too made the connection. Then his brother – he had to keep thinking of Robb like that, he just had to – nodded at the man overseeing the men from the Night’s Watch. “That’s Ser Alliser Thorne. Master at Arms at Castle Black.”
He’d heard about Ser Alliser. The man had been a Targaryen loyalist, taking the Black when offered a choice between that and the headsman’s axe.
“Swing at the joints!” Ser Allider roared, making them all jump a little. “When the Others come they’ll send wights against the wall. Dead men. Dead women. Dead children. You can’t fucking flinch, you dare not, flinch and you’ll be dead and raised as one of them. Dismember the twats! Cut their arms off, cut their legs off, smash their heads in! They’re already dead. Make them deader.”
“That just leave the Others themselves,” Robb muttered. “And steel can’t kill them.”
“Archers can,” Theon replied from the other side of Robb. “Arrows with dragonglass. Send enough of them in the air.”
“This won’t be a war with room for strategy,” Robb said with a grimace. “We hold the Wall. That’s it. We hold the Wall or we all die.”
He looked back down again at the men in the courtyard as they swung at the targets. And then he saw the look of what seemed to be conflicted anger that Ser Alliser Thorne was sending at Robb and himself. He seemed to know who they were. He also seemed to be both angry at them and grateful. It was a very odd expression.
“Why is that man looking as if he’s happy that something curdled in front of him?” Theon asked.
“That’s Ser Alliser Thorne,” Robb muttered. “He was a loyalist in the Rebellion. It was the Night’s Watch or death.”
Theon frowned a little. “So why the funny frown?”
“Father and Robert won the war, so he hates Father for him being here and by extension us. But at the same time Father’s brought a lot of help to the Wall. Do you see all the repairs and the new storehouses?”
Ah. Robb had a good point. He looked about the place. It was old, but some parts looked newly repaired. And judging by the fact that some man were busy replacing a section of walkway with new boards, the repairs really needed to be done quite urgently, to stop people from falling through broken sections.
Hearing the sound of boots to one side he turned his head. Tyrion Lannister was standing there, looking at the courtyard. He too had an odd expression on his face, but this one was more the look of a man who had just been walloped over the back of the head with a branch. After a moment he seemed to shake himself a little and then wandered off, obviously deep in thought.
And then Maester Aemon stepped out and stood there, his fingers dancing on the guardrail. The moment he saw Jon and Robb his eyes lit up and he walked over to them. “Ah. You must be young Robb and Jon Stark – and Theon Greyjoy I presume? Yes, you all bear the look of your forebears. Being able to see you is a blessing that I can never thank Lord Stark for.”
“I am heartily glad that you can see us, Maester Aemon,” Robb said with a smile. “Is my father still talking with the Lord Commander?”
“He is. You must go and talk to him. In the meantime I must return to my library. I have a lot of books to read.” He turned away for a moment and then turned back. “Young Jon, you have strong arms. May have borrow you for a short time? There might be books that I cannot reach and my assistant is being drilled in fighting wights by Ser Alliser.”
“Of course, Maester Aemon,” Jon smiled as he walked up to the old man. “Lead the way.”
The Maester of Castle Black did in lead the way, his gait combining both age and the fact that he could see what must have been a memorised route for the first time in years. As they entered the library the Maester looked about as if greeting old friends again for the first time in many years. Which was probably quite true. The Maester was also looking about the place and as he sat down in a chair he gestured at the door. “If you wouldn’t mind locking the door. I don’t see anyone else in here, but please check the back areas as well.”
He locked the door and then walked quickly around the large room. No-one was there and he returned to the fire and sat down as Maester Aemon gestured at the chair opposite. And then the old man just sat and stared at him, as he was trying to memorise every part of his face.
“You have to excuse the imagination of an old man, whose fondest relatives have long since passed from this world,” he said eventually in a low and rather emotional voice. “But I do see a little of my own family in you. It’s the set of the shoulders, the set of the jaw and the look in your eyes. Subtle touches, overwhelmed by the look of the Starks. And I thank the Gods for the latter. My brother Aegon hid his looks by shaving his head. You do not need to.” He tilted his head to one side a little and looked at him again. “You do remind me of him. I think that he would have liked you. He was an… unusual man. For the best of reasons. He saw things differently from the rest of us. He knew the Smallfolk and they loved him for it.”
Feeling more than a little lost Jon nodded slowly. “It’s good to see you again Maester Aemon.”
A bright smile crossed the face of his great-great-granduncle. “And it is with very great pleasure that I can see you now, Jon Snow. Ah. Wait – I hear that King Robert has legitimised you?”
“He has. I am Jon Stark now.”
A look that combined sadness with satisfaction crossed the Maester’s face. “It is good that you are embraced by your family now. You will always have a difficult path before you. You must live in a world where there are those who would kill you merely because of your blood. Has Lord Stark discussed a plan with you yet?”
He nodded slightly. “We have talked briefly on it. I would found a cadet branch to House Stark. Be a bannerman to… to Father and then to Robb. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. A hold, a wife, a family.”
The Maester of Castle Black looked at him for a long moment and then nodded as if satisfied. “A good plan. A safe plan.”
“You’re not… disappointed?”
“Disappointed?” Maester Aemon’s eyebrows flew upwards for a moment. “Nay. Nay. I have lived through three Blackfyre Rebellions and the War of the Ninepenny Kings, when the last legitimate member of that unhappy house was finally killed. I have seen the consequences of great ambition – death and ruin. All you wish is to live and not be a threat. That is laudable. What you teach your yet unborn children – well, that is up to you. But you must think on it most carefully. No false pride. You have the example of both Greystark and Blackfyre to show you the consequences of such pride.”
He shivered a little. “I had thought of that,” he said in a low voice. “I just want to be a Stark. And be a threat to no-one. Just to be loyal to House Stark. To Robb. We are brothers.”
Maester Aemon looked at him again, that same intent look. “Good,” he said eventually. “Let go of the boy that was Jon Snow - kill the boy, forget him. Become the man that will be Jon Stark. Work towards your goal. Live, Jon Stark. And think of a name for your cadet branch that has meaning. Because there is a Long Winter ahead of us and those with the blood of dragons will play their part in what is to come.” He seemed to shiver for a moment. “I do not have dreaming of our ancestors, but a foretelling is on me, young Jon. You have a key part to play, you and your cousins. Your aunt too, I think. You must all be ready for what is to come.”
A silence fell as Jon eyed the old man with both wonder and fear. After a long moment the Maester shook himself a little. “Your pardon. Such a feeling has not been on me for many a year. You must become used to it – Lord Stark himself was possessed by the Old Gods and has restored my sight, after all. Now – I need you to unbolt that door and fetch me some books. I spoke truthfully when I said that I needed your help in that. We all shrink as we age.”
Jon stood and took a step towards the door – but then stopped dead. “Nay Maester Aemon. You have not shrunk. You are greater than you think. And I will heed every word of your advice.”
And then he strode off to unlock the door.
Arya
She stared Nymeria in the eyes. Sadly Nymeria had eyes only for the remains of the lamb chop on her plate and would not look back at her.
“You,” said with a combination of disgust and affection, “Are nothing more than a walking belly.” The direwolf sent her a brief look that seemed to be amused – and then went back to staring fixedly at the chop.
She placed the chop in front of her face and then tried to look into Nymeria’s eyes. It didn’t work. Instead her direwolf merely stared even harder at the chop even harder. After a moment she started to drool.
Eventually she admitted defeat and, once she was sure that Mother wasn’t looking in her direction, she placed the chop under her chair. There was a dart and a schonk noise, followed by the sound of the chop surrendering to young jaws.
Arya sighed a little. ‘Young warg’ the Old Gods that had possessed Jon has called her. But she still didn’t know how to be a warg. How could she start to learn to be a warg if she had no idea where to even start?
She yawned. Her dreams had been a bit odd lately. She kept dreaming about walking down the halls of Winterfell. The odd thing was that she seemed to be the same height as the Imp. Perhaps she was dreaming about being as old as Rickon again? That was odd.
Something that was also odd was the thought of having a new brother or sister again. She’d barely gotten used to Rickon being able to no speak in baby babble and now she was going to have to go through it all again. A sigh emerged as she looked about the Great Hall. Life could be so unfair at times.
At least they had some interesting company. Lord Dondarrion had the most interesting personal sigil that Bran had ever heard of. She had to admit that it was quite interesting. All those lightning bolts. He was also very popular. Jayne Poole was ‘smitten’ by him, whatever that meant, and Domeric and the Terrible Threesome certainly liked to talk to him. Sansa would sit to one side, not far from Domeric and listen with a slight smile on her face. “He’s a knightly man,” she had explained to Arya the previous day. “Domeric says that he’s a good man who know what a good lord must to be kind to his people.”
And then there was Thoros of Myr, the large, tall man who wore the red robes of a priest of some kind of red god. She wasn’t sure exactly what kind of a god had to be on fire all the time, but Thoros was a priest of his. He was very fond of wine, liked the kind of stories that would make Ser Rodrik Cassel roar and Mother glare, and was kind in a head-patting way that made her want to bite his hand.
Oh and there was Lord Dayne. Now, he fascinated her. He was small, had blonde hair and very blue eyes and there was something about him that annoyed her. He seemed vaguely familiar, but she didn’t know why. He was Robb’s age apparently, which surprised her given how he was smaller than Robb.
She’d asked him about that. “My mother was not well after I was born,” was all that he’d pretty much say, with an odd look on his face. “I’ll grow, I’ve been told. I’ll grow.” And that odd look would cross his face again.
Arya looked at Lord Dayne again. He seemed to be eating yet again and he also seemed to have taken on that look that Robb had gotten just before his growth spurt recently. He also had that peculiar hunted look whenever Mother was around.
Well, at least he wasn’t wearing that sword again. There was something about it that set her teeth on edge. The thought that Lord Dayne’s uncle had tried to kill Father with it… and that Lord Dayne had been named Ned in honour of Father because he had returned Dawn and also Ser Arthur Dayne’s bones to Starfall afterwards… well, something felt a bit off there. A bit strange.
Jory and Annah weren’t there again today. She didn’t really want to know what they were up to. Old Nan had said a lot of things about there being a baby expected there quite soon.
She shuddered. Why did grown-ups have to be so disgusting?
Dinner wended its way to a close, Thoros and Ser Rodrik went off somewhere to find some more ale, Lord Dayne retired to the Godswood to pray, Lord Dondarrion went off to talk horses with Domeric and the various others all broke apart. Mother had a quiet word with her about not feeding Nymeria at the table (how had she known??) and then she was off back to her room, Nymeria padding after her.
She was quite tired. It had been a long day. But as she snuggled in to bed, with Nymeria sprawled out on the bed next to her, she still felt that annoyed irritation that she hadn’t been able to break through and warg into Nymeria.
The dream started oddly. She was walking in the Godswood, walking up to the Heart Tree in the moonlight and that was odd because there was no moon that night. The place was lit by a silvery half-light and by it she could see other figures around it. Sansa was there, asleep by the trunk, with Rickon a restless little bundle next to her. To one side she could see two vague shadows that looked familiar, but they looked odd, as if they were there but also very far away. And then there was Bran. He was sitting bolt upright and staring at the face carved into the Heart Tree. After a moment he looked at her and smiled slightly, before going back to staring at the tree.
This was a very dull and boring way to behave, but for some reason she felt herself sitting down and also staring at the face. It was a melancholy one, it had always been that way and always would be that way.
Until now, because all of a sudden its eyes seemed to open and it smiled at her. She stared at it, not in terror but in fascination. A wind picked up and for a moment the leaves rustled together like hands clasping at each other, whilst far, far away she seemed to hear a voice shouting her name for a moment. And then she heard it.
Little warg.
“Who are you?” She wanted to shout the words but instead all she seemed to be able to do was whisper.
You know who we are, little warg. You have heard our voice before. It is it time for you to hear it again.
“But I’m not a warg! I keep trying and failing!” She could see Bran next to her, also whispering something that she couldn’t make out.
You have tried. Who is to say that you have failed?
She frowned. “You’re speaking in riddles. I hate riddles.”
The voice seemed to both sigh and laugh. Starks. Always to the stark truth. Open your third eye little warg. You and the others must open your third eye.
“But I’ve only got two eyes!”
Your third eye is in your mind. You dream with it. You use it now. So let us see what you can see.
And suddenly she was back in her bed. Or was she? She didn’t have a pillow under her head – and there were no blankets over her! Where was she? She stood up – and then stopped. Things felt odd, very odd. She was in her room, but her balance was off, strange, wrong. And then she stopped dead. There was someone in her bed. She stepped forwards, somehow lost count of how many legs she had and sprawled on the bed, on the figure under the covers.
The figure didn’t move – but looked familiar, by the light of the guttering candle that she’d forgotten to put out. She peered at it.
She noticed that she had a muzzle at about the same time that she saw that the figure was her, motionless and with eyes that were the colour of milk.
At which point she suddenly woke all the way up with a shriek that was part excitement and part terror.
Chapter Text
Edd
They left the Overlook at dawn, leaving the place well stocked. They might get a bit hungry on the ride back to the Wall, but they would be travelling light. They needed to. As they started off that lingering feeling of being watched was still there. It nagged at him.
It nagged at others. Ser Jaremy felt the same way, given his barked commands to hurry. They rode at a canter down the valley that led to the Overlook, riding in a line. All in black, all with grim faces. They were being watched, they could all tell.
They made good time that first day. South, headed towards the Milkwater. They’d follow that South to the Shadow Tower and the safety of the Wall there. And with every mile South that feeling of being watched ebbed away, until it was just a slight itch between his shoulderblades.
“A fast trip to the Wall,” Ser Jaremy told them as they made camp at the end of the day in a grove of trees that would hide the light of their fire from any prying eyes. “We get to the Shadow Tower and then we head to Castle Black on the South side of the Wall.”
The night was quiet. Edd stood his two-hour watch as the others slept in their furs by the crackling fire, walking carefully through the trees and keeping his eyes away from the light. Twice he saw movement and froze. The first time was a snowy owl, drifting through the air on silent wings. The second time was a snow fox, a limp hare in its jaws as it loped along. There was nothing else.
The next day started well, but then tragedy struck. Old Fron, the veteran of the group, was riding along with a hare broke from cover right under the hooves of his horse, which reared up suddenly. Fron was sent flying off his saddle – and hit his head on a rock. By the time that Edd got to him he was dead. It was senseless. He stood over the body of his old Brother helplessly and shook his head at Ser Jaremy, whose jaw tightened with anger.
“And now his Watch is ended,” Ser Jaremy muttered, as the others joined in raggedly. “We don’t have time to burn him. Brothers – keep riding. I will make sure that he doesn’t rise as a wight by some passing Other.”
Edd nodded and led the others away from Ser Jaremy, who was standing over Fron’s body with his sword drawn. Some minutes later he rejoined them, riding hard, his face grim. “Such a stupid death,” Ser Jaremy muttered. “A seasoned Brother killed by a fall from a horse.”
Fron’s death cast a pall over them as they kept riding South. As they made camp in another copse at the end of the second day the pall had lifted a little, but it was still there in the subdued gestures and quiet mutters of the men. They would be alright in the morning, he knew it.
But dawn came early that night. He was shaken awake not long past midnight judging by the moon – and then he joined the others in staring straight South at the great glow on the horizon.
“Fires in the night,” Rollen muttered. “Fires set by wildlings. The Halfhand said that he’d seen them. But that’s a greater fire than any I’ve ever seen before. It’s huge.”
“Why would they set such fires?” Jerl rumbled.
“Wights,” Edd replied, his throat tightening with fear. “Wights and Others. Fire is said to deter them. A fire that big…”
“Aye, Tollett, there must be a powerful number of them there. And they’re between us and the Wall. Damn it.” He chewed at his lip for a moment. “We’ll not risk it. We dare not. Right – straight East tomorrow Brothers. East to Craster’s Keep and then South.”
Edd looked at him worriedly. “Beg pardon Ser Jaremy, but didn’t the First Ranger say that Craster wasn’t to be trusted anymore?”
“Aye, he did,” Ser Jaremy sighed. “We’ll not visit his ‘keep’, even though I’d like to reprovision there. Riding East will add days to our journey. But we cannot take the choice.”
He had a point and then men grunted in agreement and nodded, some of them a little reluctantly, but they nodded. Edd stood the next watch and as he patrolled he kept looking at the glow to the South. Wildlings on the run. Fighting off Others and wights. It made him shudder – and watch the shadows even more carefully. But nothing disturbed them that night.
If Ser Jaremy had pushed them briskly heading South their Eastward ride was harder. He urged them along with many a hard stare to the South. And again he was right to do so. The feeling they were being watched came back again that day. It was strongest at noon but then fell away again. He didn’t know who was watching them, or perhaps what was the better word for it, but they were out there.
Once again the others felt it as well, or picked up on the fact that some were sensing something. And so it was with no small amount of relief that he saw the shape of Warmsprings up ahead, the crag that held a cave with a pool of warm water, fed by a hot spring. It had the most unoriginal name ever but it was a welcome sight as the sun set.
“We make camp at Warmsprings,” Ser Jaremy told them. “’Tis a good place to rest and also defend. Wash too, Brothers. I don’t know about you lot, but I smell.”
They laughed a bit at the weak joke, but once they were all in the cave, with the horses by the entrance and a fire being lit on the flat stone above and to one side of the pool, the tension ebbed again. The water was warm and once he had scrubbed himself with the shard of soap he carried for such things he felt a new man. He felt even better when Othor cooked the brace of coneys that he’d killed at noon the previous day and which had been hanging from his saddle ever since. It wasn’t much, but every Ranger had a pot of dried vegetables somewhere in his saddlebags for just such an eventuality and the small pot that Jerl carried was enough to hold coney stew for them all.
As they ate they talked and after a while Craster came up as a topic of conversation.
“Never trusted that bloody man,” Rollen muttered as he gnawed on a leg bone. “Shifty-eyed bastard.”
There was some general mutters of agreement, although Loren Hill rolled his eyes a bit, probably having heard something different from Rollen some time before. “You didn’t mind him before.”
“That was before I heard he worshipped the Others,” Rollen grunted as he threw the leg bone into a corner, before looking at a dragonglass spearhead and then starting to bind it onto a spare spearshaft. They’d all been doing it in the past few days – a spearhead here, an arrow there. Edd now had a dragonglass dagger in a sheath at his right side. “How a man could do that it beyond me. Why would he do that?”
Edd stared at him. “The man has umpteen wives, many of whom are his own bloody daughters, who he makes more daughters with! The man’s a monster!”
Various faces were pulled at that. All kinds of men were in the Night’s Watch, for all kinds of reasons, many of them unsavoury, but all could agree on that one point.
“I wonder why he’s not going South with the rest of the Wildlings?” Dywen asked.
“Rayder said that he worshipped the Others,” Ser Jaremy muttered. “He wouldn’t be welcome South of the Wall. I’m not sure that we’d want him South of the Wall anyway.”
Which was a good point. But something else had occurred to Edd. “Wait a moment. He has daughters with his wives. He marries his daughters and has more daughters. Where are the sons?”
Everyone looked at each other. And then various shrugs were shrugged, not least by Rollen, whose face screwed up as if he had only just thought about that. And then Othor laughed and led them all in a jolly song.
Edd went to sleep that night with a warm meal in his belly and for once the roster meant that he didn’t have to get up and stand a watch in the middle of the night. So when they left the next morning he was well-rested.
He needed to be, because he and Ser Jaremy took point and the knight was in a hurry again. Edd soon knew why. That feeling was back again and it grew worse by the hour, until Noon, when Ser Jaremy adjusted their path a little more Southwards, after which it eased again. What was out there? He didn’t want to know that. Instead he and Ser Jaremy led them on through the trees and the snow, along the low rocky hills and the tree-covered other hills.
And all through their journey they kept seeing signs of one thing. Abandoned Wildling settlements were all over the place. Some had faint tracks going South from them. Some didn’t. Some had been stripped off everything. Some hadn’t. They avoided those.
Edd wondered about what had happened in those places. For a while at least. Then he stopped thinking about it. He had to. One village had a small doll, one as for a child in it, by the door to a hut. The doorframe and the doll were covered in dried and frozen blood.
They rode away from that village in a hurry.
They finally caught sight of Craster’s ‘Keep’ the day after the encounter with the village. It was a large wooden building on a hill with a dike around it and they saw it from the cover of some trees to the Westward.
“We avoid that bloody place,” Ser Jaremy said through gritted teeth. “And that bloody man.”
But that bloody man came to them. As they rode through the trees Edd could see movement in a clearing ahead of them and raised a fist in the air, bringing them all to a halt. He peered through the trees. There was a man walking in the snow in the distance. He passed parallel to their position as they stood there at least 200 yards away. It was Craster, a big bulky man with grey hair. He seemed to be holding something in his arms as he trudged through the snow.
“What’s he doing?” Edd muttered at Ser Jaremy, who gestured at them all to be quiet.
The former Crownlander knight peered through the trees and then waved at them all to dismount and then their horses to the strongest branches. “Something’s not right here,” he muttered to them as they all joined him. “What’s that bloody man doing out here? What’s he holding? We follow him, deep in the cover of the trees, brothers.”
They did so, as quiet as they could, leaving Jerl to wait with the horses. They stayed well away from the treeline, watching as the man walked through the snow. He seemed to be heading towards a place with… an altar? A stone slab at least.
Craster leant down, placed a small bundle on the slab and then stood there for a moment. And then he looked North, seemed to shiver a little and then walked quickly away, back South towards his keep, as fast as he could.
They waited until Craster had long since passed from sight before then approaching the bundle. When Edd was about 20 yards away he paused, shocked. A thin high wail suddenly split the air – and then he rushed over and peered at the bundle. A small scrunched up face peered back at him – and then it wailed in protest.
“It’s a bairn,” he said as he picked up the little bundle and then faced the others. “A baby.”
Ser Jaremy had turned as white as milk. “Is it a boy or a girl?”
He paused and then gingerly pulled the small clothes apart until he could see what was inside, before hastily covering it again. “A boy Ser Jaremy,” he muttered, shocked, as his words produced white vapour almost in shock as well. “A boy.”
“Now we know what he does with them,” Ser Jaremy said with his mouth twisted in revulsion. “Leaves them out for the elements to kill them. Can’t have a child with a son.”
Edd nodded. And then he paused. A cold mist was rising around them and with every breath he took the white vapour seemed to thicken. “It’s getting colder,” he said out loud. And then he looked about wildly as his sixth sense suddenly screamed at him. “Ser Jaremy! It’s getting colder!”
Ser Jaremy also looked about, a curse on his lips. “Brothers! Beware!”
The others rushed towards them, spears out and swords drawn, all then facing outwards. And then, as the mist seemed to almost thicken in the air, they saw it. It was white and blue, in the shape of a man, but with eyes that burned like blue stars in the night sky and clad in nothing but a loincloth. Whispy white hair fell to its shoulders and its skin looked stretched and almost leathery, pulled taut in places like its ribs. It did not seem to breathe as it stood there, but it lived. Its hands opened and closed for a moment in a gesture that made Edd shiver.
It was staring at Edd. Or rather at the baby boy in his arms. Everything seemed frozen in time at that point, everyone was staring at it. And then the moment broke as the Other stepped forwards, straight at Edd.
Jorik was the nearest to the thing, a young ranger from the Iron Islands originally, with a sword that he had forged himself. It did him no good. He let out a wild cry and then slashed at the creature as it passed him. The blade never met its target – instead the Other, moving with almost inhuman speed, grabbed the sword and slowed it – and then it clenched its fingers and the sword shattered into a thousand pieces, like dust on the wind. Jorik gaped at the remains of the hilt – and then the creature backhanded him about the head, twisting his neck with a sickening crack that left him tumbling lifelessly backwards.
And then it looked at Edd and started to walk towards him.
“Dragonglass!” Someone shouted the word and after a heartbeat he realised that it had been him. “Use the dragonglass!””
Othor was the nest closest and he hefted a spear and then jabbed it at the Other. The creature, still moving at that inhuman speed, dodged it and then grabbed the spear below its head and broke it, before pulling it from Othor’s grasp and plunging the broken shaft into the man’s heart. Othor choked and then collapsed.
It was still coming towards him. The baby, he thought, it wants the baby. So he turned, threw the child towards the oncoming shape of Dywen, who dropped his spear and caught it with a curse, and then turned back.
He had just enough time to see the arm of the Other approaching his throat and then his brain overrode his legs and he threw himself backwards into the snow. He hit with a thud that knocked the breath from his lungs and he saw stars for an instant. Someone was screaming that they all had to pull back and he looked upwards.
Inhuman eyes passed over him, dismissed him and then looked at Dywen, who was trying to hold the baby and also draw his sword.
Dagger, his brain thought, dagger. The word rambled through his head for a long moment – and then his hand went to his belt and scrabbled for a long, endless moment for the dragonglass dagger that was there. He grabbed it, watched the leg of the Other at is stalked past him and then thrust the dagger into it.
It was like stabbing a frozen hunk of meat, but he used all his strength and then rolled away, looking desperately for another weapon.
But the Other had frozen in shock – and then it turned on him and let out a noise that sounded like the scream of a blizzard, as if frozen wind and broken ice were all screaming at the same time. The flesh of the leg where the dragonglass dagger was impaled had turned a strange off-white colour, like ice that had been hit with a sledgehammer – and then fissures appeared in it, fissures that jagged their way upwards, spreading like nothing he had ever seen. The Other flailed desperately at the dagger, clumsily – and then suddenly it collapsed and broke apart into nothing more than shards of ice and snow.
The mist dissipated in the blink of an eye as a West wind suddenly blew, sending the shards flying. They all stared at the pieces as they fell to the ground – and then they melted in an instant.
Edd reached out and with shaking hands picked up the dragonglass dagger, looking at it with wonder. “I killed it,” he said shakily. “I… killed it.”
There was a long moment and then Ser Jaremy collected himself and then strode over and reached out a hand. “Well Tollett,” he said with a shaky smile, “Congratulations. You’re the first man in thousands of years to kill an Other.” Then the smile ebbed. “Let’s find Craster and have a word with the bastard about what he’s doing to his own sons, shall we?”
Mya
The Neck stank. All that swamp, all that rotted vegetation. And then there were the eyes. There were crannogmen out there. She could sense them. Feel them. They were out there, not many, but they were there.
She looked back at the long line of men and waggons and then pulled a slight face. This was just the vanguard of what was eventually to come, unless she missed her guess. The Realm would rally to the North. But in the meantime… well, she was in the tip of the vanguard, the thousand men and women heading North.
North. Her dreams had been of the North. Dreams of a great wall of ice, of a forest and of a woman and a man who looked like the descriptions she’d heard of her Father. And of something that wasn’t human.
She’d talked to Lord Royce about those dreams. He’d frowned, stared down at his runed armour as he mulled things over and then looked back at her. “Old things are waking,” he’d told her enigmatically. “The old blood sings. The blood of the First Men. Your father’s blood amongst them.”
Talk of her father still unnerved her. She had vague memories of him – a big man with the black hair and blue eyes that she had inherited from him. But to think that he was the King… it still gave her goosebumps.
Surepath whickered a little at the stench of something particularly noxious and she leant forwards and patted his neck to quiet him. He’d had a rough enough time on the voyage. Runestone could not call upojn a large fleet, but there had been just enough ships to get them through the Bite and to the Kingsroad at the Neck.
Where they had found such a combination of foul smells! For someone used to the Vale and the rocky paths that led to the Eyrie, the Neck had been an… experience. Well, the trip itself had been an experience. Lord Royce’s summons had been unexpected. Seeing Runstone again… well she still shivered a little at that. The runes on the walls… and the glowing runes elsewhere.
So much was being prepared there… she hoped that her mules were alright. She also wondered just what would result from all of this. Lord Royce was supposed to be sworn to the Eyrie and Lord Arryn. Lord Redfort too. She tried not to think of Mychel, failed, cursed inwardly and then pulled a face. Well now. Things would work themselves out there. Hopefully.
The men ahead of her slowed and she peered ahead. They were crowding together as they started down the proper causeway, as opposed to the approaches to it. It was a natural choke point and a fell and dangerous one to a hostile force.
Along they road, evil-smelling swamp to the right and the left. Occasionally she felt her scalp prickle and she shivered a little. Yes, the tales were true, Crannogmen were watching them in larger numbers now. They were not alone.
It was almost a relief when she finally caught sight of Moat Cailin. That meant that they were coming close to the end of the Neck. And then she blinked. The old fortress was supposed to consist of three old towers, a lot of ruins and little else. Not any longer. There were five towers now, two that looked as if old stones had been reused to build them with new mortar. The curtain wall had been repaired in places, joining some of the towers, and there was the skeleton of a wooden keep growing in the centre of it all. This was not a ruin any more. There was life there.
There was also a Direwolf banner at the top of the towers, and another banner, one unfamiliar to her, a black lizard-lion on a grey-green background. And there were riders coming South down the causeway, with both banners flying from pennants.
She heard hooves thundering behind her and she looked over her shoulder as Lord Royce and Redfort galloped past her, their cloth-covered armour hiding those runes. The same runes that were on her bracers now.
“Who rides with such force towards Moat Cailin and the North?” The oncoming rider from the North had a loud voice indeed.
Lord Royce had one that matched it: “Lord Royce and Redfort of the Vale.” Then he paused and his jaw seemed to work a little under that beard. “Lord Stark sent out the Call. We remember. We have come, those with the blood of the First Men. Those who… remember.”
The riders came to a halt in front of the two lords from the Vale and their leader peered at them both - before nodding with all seriousness. “Very well my Lords. A raven will be sent to Lord Stark in Winterfell, to tell him of your arrival in the North.” And then he seemed to hesitate for a moment, before nodding again. “My Lords, the North remembers as well. And we will not forget this. I am cousin to Lord Reed of Greywater Watch. My thanks.”
Lord Royce and Redfort nodded back and then they all started to trot down the causeway again, towards the ancient fortress.
Hopefully the stink of the Neck would leave them soon. But she still drummed her fingers on the pommel of her saddle. Her father was supposed to be in the North too. What if she met him? She sighed a little. Well, perhaps those damn dreams would stop.
Asha
The harbour was bustling as she walked up the hill. The variety of ships was wide indeed, from the smallest of rowing boats to the great longships that had formerly been a part of Father’s Iron Fleet. All were swarming with men and even women, as they were worked on with frantic haste.
Ropes were being stared at for fungus, sails pored over, masts tapped for any rot, swords stacked and shields propped next to each other. Oars were being inspected, tillers scrutinised.
The people of Harlaw were getting ready to fight. Some would no doubt die. She knew that. So did they. She also knew that they knew that there could be no other way. Even the few loyalists knew that something was in the air, that Lord Harlaw had to be followed if they were not all going to die.
She had an odd feeling about that. There was indeed something in the air. Something dark and terrible and heading their way. Father’s wrath could be terrible, his vengeance unpleasant to behold.
Her nuncle – her sane one – was on the hill that looked over the harbour, talking to a number of men, many of whom were scowling with thought. She peered at that. They seemed to be thinking so hard that many of them were muttering under their breath.
When Lord Harlaw finished speaking there was a moment of silence. Then he looked around at the assembled men. “I don’t like it either,” he said grimly. “But we know what’s going to happen if Damphair gets his clammy paws on us.”
There was another pause and then the men all chorused “Aye.” And then they nodded and broke up, walking away.
“A council of war Nuncle?” Asha asked as she watched her uncle look out to see.
“Morelike orders to complete something that need to be finished in the next day or so. They’re coming straight for us, Asha. Straight for us.”
A shiver stole its way up her spine. “How do you know that?”
“A friend or two at Pyke. My message had its correct effect. Damphair and your Father have sent Victarion against Harlaw with what remains of the Iron Fleet. They have orders to take this island, to kill or enslave everyone on it, to burn down every building and to sow the fields with salt.”
The shiver came back. Yes, she could imagine Father giving those orders, with Damphair, that fucking wild-eyed maniac, standing over his shoulder and shuddering with religious lunacy.
“When?” She asked the word in as level a voice as possible.
Rodrik Harlaw stared up at the sky for a long moment as he studied the clouds and then he turned his face to the wind. Only then did he turn back and speak. “Victarion’s not an idiot, but he’s caught between a rock and a kraken. He’ll want time to prepare for an attack – it’s time that your father and Damphair will not allow him. No, they’ll send him straight at us. My letter to them did the job. I want them to target me first. Great Wyk will need time to gather their forces.
“Wind’s changed. Day that our ships came in from the Iron Fleet anchorage it was from the South-East. Now it’s from the North-East, and it’s a slack wind at that. Victarion’s ships will have to row at least part the way. Hard work rowing. You know it, I know it. Victarion will want to have his men rested enough to fight. They won’t come tomorrow. Or the day after. No – three days from now at dawn. We’ll have to be ready.”
She looked at the sky herself and then nodded. “Aye. Three days from now.”
Robb
There was a great muttering in the hall of Castle Black as he walked in with his group of fellow lordlings around him. Jon was on his right and Theon on his left, with the Karstarks and the SmallJon on his heels. It gave him an odd feeling at times to see the Karstark brothers again. Jaime Lannister had cut them down in an attempt to get at him at the Battle of the Whispering Wood. As he reached his chair the others broke apart, with Theon striding off outside via the other door to where Father was waiting.
It was an effort at times to not react to that memory, that last sight of them as lifeless bloodied shapes on the ground, with the Kingslayer wheeling his horse about as he looked for him. The GreatJon had clattered him out of his saddle. Memories of that other time could cloud his mind at times. He had to keep his thoughts clear. And at times he had to jest with men whom he had seen dead, or maimed. To talk to Lord Karstark with the right level of politeness, at the same time remembering the moment that he had beheaded him and watched the severed head rolling on the ground. And to converse with Roose Bolton. The man who had finished the job that the Frey crossbowmen had started.
Yes, life could be hard. But he had to put all of that behind him. Had to. There was too much at stake. Off to one side Tyrion Lannister was sitting, his eyes flickering over the assembled nobility of the North.
The Lord Commander took his seat next to the Maester and the Master at Arms and then nodded at Robb, who turned his face to the doors. Maege Mormont had come to Castle Black barely an hour before and she had already send word to Father that she had to talk to him as soon as this meeting was concluded. It was unlike her to be so insistent and he felt uneasy.
Looking through the doors he saw Theon peering through – and then he nodded. He got a nod in response – and then Father swept in through the doors, the GreatJon at one shoulder, Roose Bolton at the other and Lord Karstark bringing up the rear.
“My Lords,” the GreatJon roared as they strode to the dais, “The Warden of the North, Lord Eddard Stark!”
Thank the Old Gods that he hadn’t referred to Father as the King in the North, that had been something that had preyed at his mind for the past few days.
The Lords – yes, and Ladies – of the North stood almost as one as Father walked up the steps of the dais carrying the Fist of Winter, which he hefted for a moment and then placed heavily on the table in front of him.
“My Lords – pray be seated,” Father rumbled. There was a further rumble as they did, with a lot of muttering. Robb led his group to some vacant seats at the front, where they were joined by Theon and Jon.
Father didn’t sit down though. He stood and looked out over them all. Robb glanced over his shoulder. Yes, the full muster of lords was there. Some of whom were not exactly friendly to House Stark. Barbery Dustin was sitting there to the right, her face like stone, her father, Lord Ryswell, next to her. He had an odd expression on his face, as if he was worried about something.
“My Lords,” Father said eventually. “Winter is coming. Yes, I know that is the motto of my house – but it is also the reality that is facing us. The days are growing shorter. The Citadel might not have declared it yet, but winter is indeed coming. And we face a long winter. The second Long Night perhaps. Given how long this summer has been, can anyone here deny that this coming winter will be as long?”
There was a rumble of agreement, leavened by the thump of fists on the tables.
“And then there is the Call. Can anyone here deny that they heard it? Can anyone deny the warning?” More rumblings and then shaking of heads. “There will be those who ask how it was sent out. I was there when it happened. Long ago my ancestors gave the Hearthstone to the Umbers, telling them to guard it and to bring it to Winterfell if it ever changed colour. It did indeed change colour. My Lords, when it was given to me I saw the enemy. The Others come, commanded by their master the Night King.” Father’s voice was hoarse suddenly. “I have seen him, my Lords. A creature of the night. All blue and white – and evil. Hopemourne is his citadel, a place so far North that neither man nor horse could get there and live. He comes. They come. And so do their army of wights.”
A silence fell, a dark and terrible one, as everyone stared at Father, who set his chin a little. “My Lords, we know that they are coming now. The Call was sent when I reunited the Hearthstone with another artefact found at Winterfell.” And then he took a deep breath. “Much has been found at Winterfell. Things that my father knew about. Things that he was never able to tell me, because he was murdered.”
Another silence – and then shocked exclamations as the Lords of the North realised how closely they had come to no warning at all. Hugo Wull, the leader of the largest and most powerful of the Hill Clans seemed to be particularly affected, given his sudden pallor.
“My Lords!” Father bellowed, over the uproar. And then again: “MY LORDS!” Silence finally fell. “We know they are coming. We know that we have to act now, to strengthen the Night’s Watch, to support it, to call for help from the South. The Call has helped with that. As I said, many things have been found. Including this.” He placed a hand on the Fist. “This is the Fist of Winter. The ancestral weapon of the Starks, that we bore before we had Ice. It was hidden in a secret room in my solar, which had been my father’s solar before me. Our ancestors were wise. They secured many things against this day.”
Hugo Wull had turned white as a sheet and was having a frantic whispered conversation with Torghen Flint and Brandon Norrey, both of whom looked equally shaken.
“Working out what those things do will take time in some cases. But we have another problem. As the Night Kings and the Others sweep South, they drive those people beyond the Wall South. The Wildlings, who call themselves the Free Folk, are fleeing South.” Father placed both hands on the Fist. “I have spoken to Mance Rayder, the so-called King beyond the Wall. He told me he could call upon a force of a hundred thousand to march against the Wall.”
More mutterings, some angry and some shocked. “What do you mean, could call, Lord Stark?” someone shouted.
“Rayder does not want his people to die. They have seen the Others. Fought them. Lost to them. The legends of their powers are true, he says. But he will not send his warriors against the Wall. He wants to save as many as possible. He has asked to pass his people through the Wall and into the Gift. He would have knelt to me to get permission to do so.”
Yet more muttering. The SmallJon appeared to be quite angry, right up until the moment that his father strode up to him, spoke intently and then glowered at his son until the younger man looked shamefaced.
“MY LORDS!” Father bellowed again. “I know that the thought of allowing Wildlings into the Gift sounds like madness. But think of the facts. What the alternative to letting them though is. What happens if we don’t let them in? Think of it - a hundred thousand of them, trapped North of the Wall. My Lords that would mean a hundred thousand wights coming at us. Think on that for a moment.”
The muttering died in an instant. The silence that fell now was a long one and more than a few men were as white as Hugo Wull had been earlier. He was now merely pasty.
Father looked at the Lord Commander, who stood and glowered at everyone. “You all know me, my Lords. I have no liking for Wildlings. But we cannot leave them to be massacred and then reanimated by the Others. I do not like it, but it must be done. We must allow them into the Gift. We will deny the Night King a source of wights and we will be able to repopulate the Gift and get crops growing in there again. We need them.”
The Lord Commander sat again and Father nodded at him. “We need the South too. I know now that the Call has been heard in many places. The blood of the First Men sings. The Mountain Clans of the Vale have sent forces to our aid.”
And this time the silence was a stunned one. Lord Ryswell broke it. “The Mountain Clans of the Vale have come to our aid?”
“They have. They came to Winterfell and have sworn to aid us. They march on the Gift now. But we need more. We need the gold of the Westerlands and the knights of the Vale, the grain of the Reach, the Iron of the Iron Islands and the valour of the Stormlands and the Riverlands, as well as the spears of Dorne. We need the South, as did our ancestors. And the King is coming to Winterfell. King Robert has heard the Call. The blood of the Durrandons rings true in him.”
There was a scraping noise as Hugo Wull stood. “Your pardon. Has The Ned – I beg your pardon, Lord Stark – heard anything from the Thenn, North of the Wall, since you found the Fist of Winter?”
Father looked at the Lord Commander for a moment and then nodded. “According to the Lord Commander the Thenn have heard that I now wield the Fist and are coming South. Why do you ask Lord Wull?”
Lord Wull looked around at the other lords of the Hill Clans. Then he swallowed. “There is a legend amongst our people. A tale. It’s said that when the Stark in Winterfell holds the Fist of Winter and that the Thenns march to obey him – that a second Long Night will follow, because death marches on the Wall.”
And then the longest silence of all fell.
Chapter Text
Edmure
They made camp about a day’s ride from Riverrun, in an inn owned by a man who was frankly perpetually astonished that he was hosting Lord Hoster Tully’s son. And the Blackfish. And the other man, the man with the horns on his hood. The Green Man.
Uncle Brynden had been very enigmatic about the man. “He’s from the Isle of Faces,” he’d said, before going off and having a long talk with the old man, as well as that odd woman.
Now, she was an odd one. Blonde, plain to the point of almost ugliness, almost as terse as Uncle, very good with a sword based on her sparring abilities, and… well, there was something about her that puzzled him. She had a link with Uncle Brynden that really confused Edmure. And possibly the other two as well.
Tarth, he knew, was an island off the coast of the Stormlands. And he knew all about Lord Tarth and his tragic tale of losing son after son. Well, Brienne of Tarth seem to be very keen on making up for her lost brothers. She certainly knew a lot about armour. And weapons. And fighting styles.
And now he’d had a plate of excellent ham, a mug of quite good ale and he was standing outside the inn and was staring at the stars. His failure at High Heart still gnawed at him. Yes, they’d won there, but that victory had only been down to the arrival of the others. If it had been just his men against those of Blackfoot, then… he would have lost. He would have killed quite a few of them, but he would have lost. And his men would all be dead.
He stared bleakly at the stars. He was an idiot. Too much time drinking, eating and making girls with large bosoms squeak with pleasure. Not enough time learning about land and marching distances and tactics.
If it hadn’t been for Uncle Brynden and the Green Men… well that mad Septon would have won. He looked back at the inn for a moment. At least that mad Septon was being quiet. He spent the first day shouting a lot about tricks and the evil of pagans. And then what had remained of his mind had cracked like an egg and he’d wailed and screamed and voided himself all over the place. If his feet had been black before, they were now disgusting. Or had been disgusting. He’d ordered the guards to dunk the wretched man in the nearest river.
“You seem quiet, Nephew,” said the voice of Uncle Brynden to one side. “You’re still thinking about High Heart.”
“Yes, Uncle Brynden. I was foolish.”
“No, you were a bloody idiot. The moment you saw that hill you should have sent a few of your men up it to secure it and then had the rest of your horse hidden nearby. You could have taken them in their flank then, especially as it was darkening quickly. They’d never have seen you coming.”
Edmure thought back on what had happened on the hill. “That’s what you did, didn’t you?”
His uncle directed a wintry little smile at him. “Aye. We were coming around the hill, after seeing the light of their torches. Then we saw you up there.”
He winced. “I didn’t think. We could never hand charged down that slope.”
Uncle Brynden shrugged. “Everyone started off like you. You just need to not pull your head in and brood over it. Brooding kills, lad. You start thinking about you should or should not have done and the next thing you know you’ve got a head full of indecisive gibberish the next time you fight. That kills people. Might even kill you. You’re still young. You’ll learn. You just need to learn faster.”
He stared at the older Tully. “Why? Uncle Brynden, what’s going on? The Smallfolf are all abuzz over this Call that Cat’s Ned somehow sent out. And who is the Green Man? Why are the Green Men travelling outside the Isle of Faces again? Have they ever done that before?”
Now it was Uncle Brynden’s turn to stare up at the stars. “Winter is coming, Edmure. I know that’s what the Starks always say, but they’re always right. There’s a winter coming that will be worse than anything we’ve ever seen. You see those stars up there?”
Utterly confused Edmure stared at where his uncle was pointing. “The Crook, is it not?”
“Aye, the Crook. You can see its base can you not?”
Still confused he looked at it. Some small stars could be seen at the bottom of it. “Ah. Yes, I see them. How odd. Never seen those before.”
Uncle Brynden sent a withering look at him. “This world has shifted a little. Enough to mean that we have had a long summer. I can’t remember one as long as this one, ever, in my lifetime. So now we face a long winter. I need to talk to your father about it, but you need to be ready for what’s to come. The Starks will need help on the Wall, because what’s on the other side is something that we need to fight with everything we have.”
And then he turned and strode off. Edmure stared after him baffled, before shrugging and heading off to get some more ale. And then after a quiet mug or two he made for his bed.
Sleep did not come easily to him. Uncle Brynden’s words kept running through his mind. A long winter. It was true that this present summer had been a long one indeed. Did that really mean an equally long winter? He’d never really thought about it. He finally dropped off and had some very odd dreams indeed.
They left for Riverrun early the next day, after tipping the landlord a handful of silver. As they rode off he noticed that two of the Green Men split off from the main body and rode off, one heading West and the other East. He thought about asking where they were off to, but didn’t. The Green Man did not seem to be someone who suffered fools gladly, still less idle questions.
By the time they reached Riverrun the mad Septon had been dunked twice more in the nearest river due to… well, being a literal shit, and the Green Man was in the middle of another intense conversation with Uncle Brynden and Brienne of Tarth. When he caught sight of Riverrun the old man paused and seemed to sigh deeply, before shaking his head a little. Seeing Edmure staring he smiled slightly. “Old memories.”
People cheered him as he led them all through the gates and into the main courtyard. All his men, cavalry and foot, had returned and that had been noticed by many. He liked that, even if he still felt like an idiot.
The sight of the Green Men got a few odd looks, not that many seemed to know who or rather what, they were. However as he dismounted and looked around he heard one man gasp with shock. Father was standing in a doorway. He still did not look well at all, but he was now as white as a sheet and was staring at the Green Man.
“You’re dead,” Father said in a shocked voice. “You’re dead… surely? You died at Summerhall. I remember seeing you in King’s Landing when my father took me there to see King Aegon. But you died at Summerhall.”
“Hoster Tully is it not? Yes. I remember you. You gaped at me a great deal. And now you are Lord of the Riverlands.” The old man seemed to straighten up. “I am now the Green Man, from the Isle of Faces. And as such I claim the right to speak with you at once. The Green Men are no longer bound to the Isle. You need to know why.”
Father gaped – there could be no other word for it – and then nodded. “My solar,” he muttered. “At once.”
Edd
Before they moved out from the altar and the place where he had killed the Other they had one more thing to do. The bodies of Jorik and Othor were carefully gathered and laid next to each other. Ser Jaremy stood over them, his expression sombre. “They were good men,” he said eventually. “They fell in a fight against our oldest enemy. Remember them. And now their watch is over.”
“And now their watch is over,” Edd muttered in chorus with the rest of them. Then he stared at the two bodies. “Were Othor’s eyes always that colour? They look blue.”
“He always had blue eyes,” Dywen muttered. “Didn’t he?”
“A fine lot of Rangers you lot are, eagle eyed and watching every leaf flutter on the wind,” Ser Jaremy muttered. Then he sighed. “Ride on brothers. Blue-eyed or not, we cannot take a chance with the bodies of our late brothers. I will take care of them.”
Edd looked at him sorrowfully. “No, Ser Jaremy. We will help you. It should not be your burden alone.”
“I am in charge, Tollett. It’s my responsibility.” He drew his sword. “Ride on, as I said.”
They did, with Dywen holding the baby in a small nest of a fur cloak that once been Othor’s. No sense in wasting what had belonged to a now-dead man. And after some minutes Ser Jaremy joined them, riding hard and with a grim look on his face.
“Should I die North of the Wall I want you to do the same to me,” he told them as they rode South. “I want to die clean and not come back as a wight.”
Craster had had a lead on them, but then he was on foot and they were mounted, so that lead was soon eaten up. Even them they caught up to him as he approached the gates to his keep, that low ring fort in the forest.
The wretched man heard them approach and wheeled to face them, his hand on the hilt of his sword and a look of surprise on his face. When he saw Ser Jaremy and the others an odd look crossed his face, like a combination of annoyance and a sudden need to stop showing any emotion at all.
“Ser Jaremy!” Craster called out as a farther look crossed his face, one of greasy unctuousness. “Are the Rangers abroad again? You and your men have been quiet of late.”
“Aye, we have been abroad again,” Ser Jaremy grated through gritted teeth as he dismounted. “We have been seeing much here, North of the Wall. Much indeed. The Wildlings, those you call the Free Folk, are moving South, through the Wall. They claim that they have seen the Others.”
A new expression crossed the face of Craster, this time one of false bafflement. “The Others, Ser Jaremy?” He looked over his shoulder for a moment at the gates to his keep. “But they are but a legend!”
Edd set his jaw a little. The man could have had ‘I am a liar’ branded on his forehead. And then the babe in the arms of Dwyen decided that he needed to make a contribution, because he raised his voice in a thin wail that probably meant that he was hungry.
The impact the babe had on Craster was immediate. The big man turned as white as milk and stared at Dywen. “That noise – a babe? Where did you get him?”
“You know full well – the altar where you left him,” Ser Jaremy snarled. “Your own son, you heartless cunt! Your own son!”
The Wildling took a horrified and tottering step forwards. “No! You must take him back! You fools, you don’t know what you’ve done!”
“What, stopped you from sacrificing your own son to the Others?” Edd spat. “Your own son, you bastard!”
“I had no choice!” Craster roared. “No choice! I give them the boys and they leave me alone! Me and my wives! Now – give him back! Take him back!”
“Too late, Craster,” Ser Jaremy said grimly. “Too late. The Other who came for your son is dead.”
Craster looked at him as if he was mad. “Dead? Impossible! You can’t kill an Other, they are invincible! Immortal! They are creatures of ice and shadow! Take him back!”
“No,” Ser Jaremy said in a voice like stone. “We will not. An Other came. We killed it. Tollett there slew it. They can die. We all saw it.”
But Craster was not in the mood to hear such things. He let out a wail of terror and darted towards Dywen, only to be met and pushed back by Ser Jaremy. “You will not have that babe,” Ser Jaremy roared. “You will not!”
That bought him a snarl of defiance. The Wilding reached for his sword – but met Ser Jaremy’s knife, which slammed into his guts. There was a long pause as Craster gasped for air for a long moment as various liquids splattered on the ground underneath him – and then Ser Jaremy twisted the knife inside him and Craster shuddered for a long moment and then finally collapsed, the life in his eyes vanishing.
Ser Jaremy stood over the prone body of the Wildling, panting, for a long moment – and then he wiped his knife on the body and looked at the holdfast above them, where Edd could see that a group of woman were now staring down at them all in what appeared to be a combination of horror and relief.
“Dywen, walk forwards. Find out who that babe belonged to,” Ser Jaremy muttered as he checked the still body of Craster, peering into those lifeless eyes. “Eyes seem normal.”
Dywen dismounted and then strode forwards, holding the babe up so that the huddle of women could see him. “We found him North of here, in the forest. He was to be a sacrifice. We’ve come to return him.”
There was a shocked pause and then one of the women rather timidly came forwards. With every step she seemed to grow bolder and bolder, until she eventually darted forwards and peered at the babe – before bursting into tears.
“He’s mine,” she sobbed as she took him from a rather relieved Dywen. “My baby boy. I’m finally holding him. He took him away. You brought him back. I finally have my little boy back.” And then she cried on Dywen’s shoulder, making him look extremely uncomfortable again.
In the meantime the other women had also come forwards. They varied in age, with one of the younger showing every sign of being pregnant. The oldest of them looked down at Craster’s body and then she hawked and spat at it.
“About damn time someone put him out of our misery,” she grunted, before looking at them all warily. “You know why he was talking the baby boys then?”
“A sacrifice for the Others,” Edd muttered, still feeling the horror that such words meant. “The man was mad.”
“He thought that the babes would keep them away,” the older woman replied, her face working slightly with some indefinable emotion. “Everyone else was moving South, following Rayder. Heading to the Wall. He said no. Said that we were safe here. As long as we… placated… them.”
“By sacrificing your sons,” Ser Jaremy said quietly.
She looked at him and then a look of utter anguish crossed her face. “Yes,” she said, her voice shaking. “Yes. Craster gave my sons away. All of our sons.”
Ser Jaremy nodded slowly. But it was Edd who said what the older man was obviously thinking: “You can’t stay here.”
“No,” she muttered. Then she straightened. “My name is Jenn. I have cousins out there in the world, with the Free Folk. We’ll leave here at once to join them. If you need supplies take whatever you need from here at once. We’re leaving this place as soon as we can, and when we leave I’m throwing a burning brand into the hall so that it burns to the ground behind us.” And then she spat bitterly on Craster’s body again, before bustling into the hold, shouting orders to her sister-wives.
Edd watched her go and then shrugged. “Permission to make sure that this bastard never walks after us Ser Jaremy?”
“Aye,” came the reply. “Hack his head off.”
Edd dismounted and then drew his sword. This was something that he was going to get quite a bit of pleasure out of.
Jorah
The King kept surprising him. He was not the single-minded buffoon that so many people thought that he was. Or perhaps he had made people think that. He still wasn’t sure. There were times when the King could be very astute and other times when he seemed to be clueless.
“There’s more to him than meets the eye,” Leera had told him the other night, her head on his chest after making love and then chatting drowsily about the events of the day. “He’s like… lightning in the clouds. Hidden until you see it, feel it, hear it.”
It was an apt description he thought as he watched the crowd of people bustling around in the New Castle. They would be leaving the next morning for Winterfell. The King had wanted to leave two days before, but there had been too much to do. The Realm was being run by raven to King’s Landing.
Oh and the Queen had tried to get a wheelhouse made for the royal family. It had been ludicrously impractical and had been ruthlessly squashed by the King. Actually he’d just stared at it, looked pointedly at the wheels and then laughed so hard that tears had run down his face, before turning and walking away, shaking his head. “Won’t last a mile on that road without losing a wheel,” he’d rumbled. “Too thin.”
Which is why Jorah treated bouts of swordplay like the one he was about to undergo with not a little trepidation. He was in a shirt and breeches, with an old pair of boots on his feet and his usual sword in his hand. Opposite him stood the King, with Ser Barristan Selmy to one side, his eyes intent. Robert Baratheon was stripped to the waist and was holding Stormbreaker.
That was something else. The King seemed to be getting fitter by the way, or at least he was driving himself to be so. He seemed to be everywhere, walking, talking, lifting logs onto his shoulders, riding out for hunts in the nearby forest and above else he was sparring.
Jorah took a step to one side, matching the King. And then the bigger man swung. No warning, no flicker of the eye, no twitch of the sword, just a lunge. Jorah parried it with a grunt and then returned the favour with a slash of his own, which Stormbreaker met.
He took a step back and then launched his own attack, something he’d picked up off Loros, a Dothraki move that required him to feint not once but twice in an effort to get the King off-balance. He almost succeeded, but the King wasn’t fooled, although he did smile hugely at him as they went back to that slow circling. “Not bad, Mormont. An Essosi move?”
“Dothraki, your Grace.”
“Here’s something from the Stormlands.” And with that he unleashed another attack, a series of hard luging slashes that got Jorah darting backwards and repressing more than a few swearwords. Damn, but the man was strong, especially when he delivered an overhead blow that Jorah barely held at bay with his own sword.
And he was getting faster. An overhead blow like that could make him vulnerable to a quicker man with a blade, but he managed to pull it off with an impressive swiftness.
Another Dothraki move came to mid again and he feinted not once, not twice but three times, followed by swapping his sword from his right hand to his left and then lunging. This almost worked, the King actually swore for a second – but then he got his sword down in time and parried the blow.
And then the King counter-attacked, with a string of hard and heavy slashes that Jorah could barely parry. Forced onto the back foot he transferred his sword back to his right hand and then parried blow after blow – and then the King unleashed a really heavy blow that jarred Jorah’s sword out of his hand.
“End!” Ser Barristan roared. “Bout to his Grace!”
There was a moment of silence and then the King lowered Stormbreaker and roared with laughter. “Well fought Mormont! Well fought indeed! You almost had me at that last trick of yours! Dothraki again?”
“Aye, your Grace,” Jorah panted as he retrieved his sword and then sheathed it. “Didn’t work though.”
“Something to remember though. Another lesson. Need to learn as much as I can if I’m to use this sword of mine as well as I can.” The King sighed for a long moment. “Warhammer’s one thing, a sword like this is something else.”
“Your Grace is getting better with every day,” Ser Barristan said, and Jorah knew that he was not being an arse-kisser. It wasn’t in him to be like that. “But there is still much to learn.”
“There’s always much to learn,” King Robert rumbled as he pulled a shirt on. “Day you stop learning is the day you face the wall and die.”
Now that did not sound like the Robert Baratheon he’d heard about. Odd. He swapped a slightly surprised look with Ser Barristan, who looked thoughtful, and then shrugged internally.
Boots rang to one side and Ser Preston Greenfield emerged from a gateway, bowing as he saw the king. “Your pardon your Grace, but you asked to be informed when the ship bearing your brother, Lord Stannis, was in sight. It has been seen at the headland, beating up towards the city.”
“Good. He made a fast passage then,” the King boomed. “Should be interesting to hear how a Godswood came to be found at Dragonstone.”
“Aye your Grace,” Ser Barristan nodded. “I am keen to hear that too. I spent a lot of time on that island and I never heard of a Godswood.”
The King nodded at him, an odd look on his face. “You were there with Rhaegar Targaryen were you not?”
“I was, your Grace. He once read in an ancient parchment some mention of there having once been a Godswood on Dragonstone, but no matter where we looked we never found it. He concluded that it must have been destroyed when the Valyrians conquered the island and built the castle there.”
“A fair assumption,” Jorah muttered. The thought of no Weirwoods South of the Neck had always disturbed him. He’d gotten used to it in Essos, because it was abroad. “The First Men were everywhere. Even Dragonstone.”
Another odd look crossed the King’s face. “It’s starting to occur to me that they left behind warnings that should have been heeded.” Then he looked at Jorah. “We’ll be on the road to Winterfell tomorrow. My pardon for you holds all over the Realm, but I know that the North contains a lot of stubborn buggers. You’ll need to talk to Lord Stark, will you not?”
A cold hard knot materialised in the pit of his stomach for a moment. “Aye, I was planning to. Bear Island… well, my old home is closed to me. I doubt that my aunt would welcome me.”
“Travel with us then. Bring your wife with you.”
He sighed. “She’s not my wife, your Grace.”
“Not yet,” the King rumbled as he strode off. “Not yet.”
He watched him go, trailed by the two Kingsguards. He’d never thought about that. Perhaps he should?
Gendry
He might just be getting used to sea travel. At least he’d stopped turning green whenever the ship swooped into a trough. It helped that the seas had quietened a bit and that Devan Seaworth was steering the ship again, but he might just be getting used to sea travel.
Just in time for the trip to end. He stared up at the headlands ahead and shivered a bit. The North. He’d made it to the North. Apparently he’d need thicker clothes, and it wasn’t even winter yet.
Life had been… well, there were times when he felt as if he’d been left for too long in the forge and then hammered flat one way, before being twisted the other way.
And speaking of hammers… he looked at the head of the Warhammer that projected slightly over one shoulder. He’d made a harness for it. Probably needed to find a name for it as well. At least he was getting used to it now. Lord Stannis – strictly speaking he was his uncle, which was so strange, he’d never had an uncle before – had been training him with it every day, making every muscle in his arms twang with tiredness at times.
He’d spent so long making things out of metal that he still had trouble thinking that his life might now consist of hitting people with a different kind of hammer. And that was quite likely now.
Lord Stannis emerged from his cabin to one side and then strode over to him. “White Harbour,” he said tersely. “The only real city in the North. Remember what I told you.”
“Aye my Lord,” Gendry muttered. “Avoid the notice of the Queen and her brother. Stay away from any man in Lannister livery. And avoid Prince Joffrey.”
“Yes,” Lord Stannis muttered, before placing a hesitant hand on his shoulder. “The boy would not welcome you. You resemble your father too much. And Joffrey… well, there is something wrong with that boy. Shireen hates him.”
He peered at his uncle. “She’s a very good judge of character, my Lord.”
A small smile crossed the older man’s face, like a cloud flashing across the face of the moon. “She’s a wise girl,” he said eventually. “Reads a lot.”
“Smiles more too these days,” said the Lady Selyse from behind them. “I’ve seen her smile more on this voyage than over the past few months. The greyscale scars made people stare at her and now that they are gone… my daughter smiles again.”
Gendry nodded respectfully at the wife of Lord Stannis. She was one of the most severe women he had ever met, all hard planes and severe lines. He wasn’t sure that she approved of his existence, although she did seem to be very slowly thawing ever so slightly. But the words she had just spoken were a step forwards and hinted at a slight approval of his existence.
And then Shireen darted out of her own cabin and ran towards them. “White Harbour? Oh, it’s so pretty! The light on the walls!” She was excited and, yes, she was smiling a lot. When he had first met the girl she had worn her hair long, like curtains that hid her greyscale. The curtains were now gone. Instead she had pulled her hair back into double braids that were tied together at the back, showing off the area where the greyscale had once been, but was no longer.
As they approached the quay the crew thundered around them to the sound of Devan Seaworth’s commands. There were times when he sounded like a younger version of his father. But it was the hulking figure standing on the quayside that caught his eye. His father, the King. He seemed… well, he looked as if he was thinner than before, whilst being a little larger about the shoulders.
“Robert’s not fat anymore,” Lord Stannis half-muttered to himself. “What in the name of the Gods is going on? What’s happened to the man?”
As the ship was moored and the gangplank set in place Lord Stannis led his family down to it, with a wary Gendry lagging behind. The King strode up to his brother first and then clasped arms with him. He almost loomed over him, and Lord Stannis was not a small man. The King then stepped to one side and greeted Lady Selyse, speaking softly and kissing her hand, something that seemed to startle her slightly. And then he stepped up to Shireen. As he did he went down onto one knee and peered at her – before smiling broadly.
“Welcome to White Harbour, niece,” the King rumbled, still smiling. “There’s so much to show you here! And you are just the person to read about and tell me what I should have seen from the start here. Will you help me?”
It was exactly the right thing to say, because she flushed a little and then nodded, curtseyed. And then he kissed her on the cheek and she flung her arms around his neck. She could just about hear her when she muttered: “Uncle Robert, my greyscale is all gone!”
“Aye, and you are now the prettiest thing here in White Harbour!” They broke apart, him still beaming at her and then he looked at Gendry. “And here’s the lad who found the Godswood!”
He flushed and scuffed his boots on the wooden boards beneath his feet. “Didn’t mean to, your Grace. T’was an accident. But a happy accident.”
The King smiled at him and then pointed at the Warhammer. “Stannis training you in that?”
“Aye, your Grace.” He had to be formal. There were two KIngsguards behind his Father, men wearing helms that almost seemed reptilian.
“Good, you’ll need it. Come, all of you, I want to hear the tale!” And with that the King swept them all up the hill towards the castle that stood there. But as he rode he could feel the eyes on him. This place might be dangerous.
Perestan
He was in the middle of a rather intriguing little tome about the history of navigation in the Smoking Sea that had emerged from the Summer Isles of all places, when someone very loudly cleared their throat to one side.
“Go away,” he said crossly as he turned the page and made a note. “I’m busy.”
“No,” said a familiar voice. “I can’t.”
He looked up. “Marwyn,” he said, surprised. “What do you want?”
“You are needed-”
“Pah! Not another meeting! Young whatisface is right. His calculations are exact. A Long Winter is coming. Send out the white ravens and have done with it.”
“You are needed at the Hightower. Lord Hightower himself has requested you.”
He put his pen down and then stared at his old friend. “I beg your pardon?”
“Lord Hightower has requested your presence at the Hightower.”
“Why?”
“The message did not say. Just that you are needed there.”
“Again, why?”
Marwyn glared at him. “I am not a reader of minds, so I do not know!”
He looked at the book again and sighed, before putting it down. “When does he need to see me?”
“At once.”
“Of course. Naturally. It isn’t as if I have my own work to do. Bah, very well. Is there at least a boat waiting?”
“There is.”
“Then it seems that I must take a trip.” He stood and placed the book carefully away in his desk. “Damn it, I had more books to read.”
There was indeed a boat, a barge with the personal sigil of Lord Leyton Hightower on it and commanded by an impatient young fellow with the walk of a man built for boats and not land. He certainly knew his oars, because he commanded the crew to push off and then start rowing with a crisp snap and pull of the oars that sent the boat downstream towards the harbour and the great tower that sat within it.
Some signal must have been sent, or perhaps someone with a Myrish eyeglass had been watching for him, but when he reached the jetty by the main entrance Lord Leyton Hightower himself was waiting there.
“My Lord Hightower,” Perestan said with a bow. “You sent for me. How may I serve you?”
The Lord of Oldtown looked him up and down and sniffed. He had not left the Hightower for years, but he seemed much the same, if a little whiter of hair and beard. “Archmaester,” he said. “I am told that you are an expert on history and specifically the history of the Reach?”
“I have some small knowledge of it,” he said cautiously. Something was happening here, there was an odd tension in the air. The guards looked… tense. “Do you have a particular question about it that required my presence?”
Lord Hightower smiled a very brief smile. “It has long been my opinion that if you ever tell a Maester that something extraordinary exists, he will either deny it or ask you a series of questions, or sometimes even just stand there and go off into a brown study. So I will merely tell you to follow me.”
And off he strode, at a surprisingly fast pace for a man of his years. Along through the main gates into the Hightower itself, along corridors that bore the subtle signs of the work of the First Men. And then down a set of stairs. As they walked down them the windows were replaced by torches. Down they went into another corridor and then along it and into another stairwell, one that wound down in a tight spiral. When that ended in another corridor there was a young man there with a set of lanterns of the Citadel’s own making, lanterns that shed a lot of light.
And then they walked to another staircase. When that one ended Perestan blinked. The walls had changed. They were now black. This must be the original black stone foundation of the Hightower. He looked at the stone and shuddered slightly. It seemed to almost glisten in the lamplight, as if it was somehow greasy. There was no decoration on it, not carving. Just black stone.
And no-one knew who had built it.
“Down again,” Lord Hightower said. “We are not yet there.” And off he went again, striding off down the corridor and then down yet another bloody staircase. This one was different. The steps were a little smaller and he had to concentrate on where he placed his feet. Down they went, deeper and deeper and after a while he realised something.
“We are below the harbour now, surely?”
“We are,” came the grim reply. “Far below now.”
“I did not know that the Hightower went so deep.”
“Few do.”
“Surely the Citadel knows?”
“One Archmaester once did.”
“Who?”
“Berwyn.”
“I am not familiar with that name.”
“You should not be. He died half a thousand years ago, and his name was stricken from the rolls of the Maesters.”
“Why?”
“He went mad.”
And then they went on, deeper into the far depths of the Hightower, until eventually the black staircase came to an end. They paused there, which was a blessing on his knees – and then he felt something start to steal over him, a vague uneasiness.
Lord Hightower looked at him. “You feel it then?”
“Feel what?”
“That sensation that something is wrong somewhere.”
He paused. “Yes, but then I live in the Citadel. Normally some experiment or other is going wrong somewhere in the place. But yes, I do feel something. What is it?”
Lord Hightower smiled slightly again and then crooked a finger. “Come.”
They passed along a long corridor that curved slightly, and then he saw light ahead of them. It was a doorway, with torches and lanterns burning there. There were two guards there and as they approached he could see that they were very nervous, with sweat rolling down their faces.
“You are relieved,” Lord Hightower told them. “Go back to the barracks. My thanks.”
The two guards bowed and then all but ran down the corridor, replaced by the pale-faced guards that had followed Perestan and Hightower.
“We limit guards to shifts of two hours every other day,” said Hightower sadly as he unlocked the door with a great iron key. “Any more and… well, they run.” He opened the gate and stepped through, beckoning for Perestan to follow. After he stepped through he locked it behind them and then walked on.
“Lord Hightower,” Prestan muttered as they walked, “This is all most intriguing, but-” And then he paused. They were in what seemed to be a great room. And at the far end of that room was an even greater gate. It was twice, no, thrice as high as he was tall and at least twice that wide. And it… glowed. It was a sickly green colour and it made him uneasy beyond words just looking at it.
“What,” he said eventually, “What is that… thing?”
“The reason why the Hightowers have always stayed here. It is our burden. We were told to guard it. Whatever it took, we had to guard it. The arrival of the Andals? We coped. The Targaryens? We bent the knee. We stayed here and we guarded it. It was my task to look upon it once a year.”
He peered at it, as that feeling that something somewhere was very wrong intensified. “The Citadel does not know that this even exists, does it?”
“No. They would ask too many questions. Silly questions at that.”
“Then why are you showing it to me?”
“Because it has changed. Because there are runes on it that can now been seen that I did not know even existed. Because it now glows, when once it did not. And because that damn thing is bolted against something. I would like to know what.”
He took a step forwards, hesitant, and frowned. The feeling of wrongness had deepened.
“There is another reason.”
“And what is that?”
“Take a step closer, if you can. And listen.”
He did so, his stomach roiling yet again. The hairs on the back of his neck seemed to be trying to rip their way off his skin. And then he heard it. Something seemed to be pounding something far beyond the other side of the gate. And there was a noise, like a slow groan, as if a wind was blowing.
“What is that noise?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is… is there someone behind this gate?”
“If there is then I don’t know who they are. Don’t try and get closer to the gate.”
“Why?”
“Fear.”
He looked back at the other man and then took a tentative step forwards. The feeling of fear strengthened a bit. Another step. The fear became terror. Another step. Bladder control was now a problem. And then he strode quickly back to the other man and swallowed.
“It would seem that I have some research to do, Lord Hightower.”
Chapter Text
Ned
He looked out at the mass of people in the hall and smiled slightly. A lot of quiet business was being done at Castle Black. Getting so many Lords and even Ladies together meant that negotiations and arrangements and yes even disputes that would normally take a lot of time and effort and ravens were being sorted out relatively quickly. And he’d only had to arbitrate loudly once.
“Ned, I need a word,” Jeor Mormont muttered to one side and he slipped away from his chair and walked into the other room with the big man. “Maege is on her way now. Needs to talk with us.”
He nodded and then paused. The Lord Commander had an odd expression on his face. “Everything alright?”
Jeor pulled a slight face. “First time I’ve seen her since I volunteered to take the Black. After Jorah disgraced himself and sent me a string of ravens asking what kind of an upbringing I’d given the bloody fool.”
Ah. Speaking of Jorah… “You know of his pardon?”
The Old Bear scowled a little. “I heard. He was working for Crown, or spying for it in Essos. Did enough of that to earn a pardon.” He then sniffed in a manner that gave Ned little doubt that he did not approve of that.
“Aye,” Ned nodded, before pulling a slight face himself. “The pardon came from Robert himself. He’s free to return to Essos. And he was last seen with the Company of the Rose. There’s word that they have sought passage back to the North.”
The Old Bear’s eyebrows went up like a pair of startled crows. “The Company of the Rose? The descendants of those who would not bend the knee to the Targaryens?”
“Aye. The Call was heard in Essos.”
Jeor Mormont ran his hand over his beard thoughtfully. “Ned, our ancestors must have been powerfully scared of the Others.”
“Aye.” He walked to the window and peered up at the Wall. “Just a bit.” He looked back at the Lord Commander. “Anyway, if Jorah does return I’ll want a word with him. What if he comes to the Wall to fight?”
“I’ll have a word with him myself,” Jeor rumbled, before holding up his sheathed sword. “I’m glad that Maege is here for another reason. I’ll give her this, for Dacey.”
Now it was Neds’ turn to send his eyebrows flying upwards. “You’re giving Longclaw to Dacey?”
“Aye.” The older man looked down at the sword with a combination of pride and loss. “Jorah had enough honour in him to send this to me when you stripped him of his titles for his crimes and he fled into exile.”
“That was the hardest thing I’ve had to do for some time,” Ned said softly. “I knew that you’d take it hard.”
“You did the right thing. A crime like that… well, no matter how many pardons Robert Baratheon sends him, this sword will never be his again. He shamed the family. Shamed me. Longclaw belongs with Dacey. She’ll be Lady of Bear Island one day. She’ll need a good sword.”
A fist thumped at the door. “Come!” Ned called.
The door opened to reveal Maege Mormont, a short, stout woman with grey hair and a look of intent wilfulness. She was dressed in chainmail, with a bearskin cloak, and a mace was slung from her belt. Behind her strode two of her daughters. Dacey was dark-haired, lanky, tall, and also had a mace, whilst Alysane was more like their mother, short and stocky, although she bore a sword. As they came to a halt they all went down to one knee before Ned.
“Lord Stark, the Stark in Winterfell, House Mormont stands ready against the Long Night. Command us,” Maege barked, and Ned could hear her brother grunt to signal his approval of her words.
“Thank you Lady Mormont,” he replied, before smiling. “Oh, get up you old she-bear, stop dusting your brother’s floor.”
Maege cackled with laughter and then stood with a grunt, before embracing Ned in a bear-hug that almost broke a rib or three. “Ned. Good to see you again! And you too, you Old Bear!” And with that she repeated the process with her brother, those eyes bulged slightly from the force of her embrace.
“The Long Night comes,” Maege said eventually as she stepped back. “I never, in my darkest nightmares, think that I’d see the day.”
“Aye,” Ned muttered. “You had news for us though?”
“I do,” she muttered as she unrolled a map and then placed it on the table. “Odd things have been happening on the Frozen Shore.” She placed a finger on the map, which showed the area North of Bear Island. “Fishermen in the area have noted odd fogs and freezing mists there, on the shoreline, for some time now – at least the past two months. There’s a river that comes down from the Western side of the Frostfangs, in the Land of Always Winter, but what many don’t know is that there’s another river, one made of ice, or a wall of it, a glacier, that comes south to the North-West of that.
“That spot, where the glacier meets the sea, is where the mists have been worst. And they freeze. I’ve talked to men and women who have seen sails start to stiffen with frost and ropes begin to freeze as they approached that mist, so much so that they turned around and sailed away from them.” She looked at Ned and Jeor. “It must be the Others. There can be no other explanation.”
Ned looked at the map and nodded slowly. “Apparently Mance Rayder was given a warning about something happening to the West. Perhaps this is it. Do you think that Bear Island is in danger?”
“I do,” Maege said with a nod. “Which is why we were late. The defences of Bear Island have been strengthened. I don’t know what might come, but we are ready. Given what we have heard though, we will need dragonglass.”
Ned nodded slowly. “Aye. You’ll have it. Supplies have been coming in from the Last Hearth and also from Dragonstone of all places.” He looked back at the map. Something was nagging at him. “Send word to Winterfell if you lack for anything at all.”
Maege nodded slightly. “Thank you Ned.”
The door sounded from another knock and he peered at it. “Come?” It opened to reveal Maester Aemon, who was holding messages.
“A message from your lady wife, Lord Stark,” the Maester of Castle Black muttered as he handed it over.
Ned unravelled it and read. Then he read it again. “It seems,” he said in as level a voice as he could manage, “That some relatives of ours have arrived in White Harbour. The Company of the Rose has arrived there. They are led by a cousin of mine that I didn’t know even existed.” He looked at the assembled Mormonts. “There are also Mormonts amongst them. More than a few. Oh, and Jorah Mormont has travelled with them.”
Well, now. He finally knew what it was like to see flabbergasted members of the Mormont family.
Tyrion
Well, the view was certainly spectacular from up here. The top of the Wall gave him the most amazing vista of, well, what appeared to be a good chunk of the North in one direction and an equally good chunk of the land beyond the Wall in the opposite direction.
He’d joked to Uncle Kevan that he’d be able to take a piss off the top of the Wall and be the tallest Lannister ever. Now that he was here... Well, the jape was no longer funny. Part of the reason for that was that the wind was so cold up here that any prospective piss would freeze – along with an appendage that he was very fond of. The other reason was that the people below might not like it.
He could see the campfires from there, all over the landscape. There were thousands of people out there. Men. Women. Children. Oh and Giants. He was still rather stunned by their very existence. He could see one now, at a distance. It was on a mammoth and was passing along a path through the forest, dragging some logs behind it.
They were all running for their lives. Running to the Wall. To safety. He looked at the horizon and his skin crawled. They were out there, somewhere. Pressing South all the times. Killing those who were too slow. Reanimating the dead. It was the most monstrous form of desecration that there was.
The lift ground to a halt behind him and he heard slow footsteps, along with a shivering sigh at the view. “They said you were up here,” said Robb Stark. “Quite a view.”
“The lands beyond the Wall,” Tyrion said musingly. “In all its chilly beauty. I wanted to be able to tell my uncle that I’d been up here. I once joked to him that I would take a piss off the top.”
“Have you?”
“No. The joke lost its point after I saw the reality beyond the Wall. All those poor bloody people, running for their lives. When will the gate open for them?”
“In a few hours. The Lords of the North will have finished their deliberations by then. The gates to the West are already open, as is the one at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea.”
“You mean that your father and the Old Bear will have stopped shouting at them by then.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. I’m not that much shouting will be required. Father just has to wave the Fist of Winter under some noses.” There was a pause. “Seen enough up here?”
“I am a little chilly. Why?”
“Time to plan our trip to the Nightfort.”
He looked to the East, along the Wall. “I wonder why we have to go there?”
There was a silence for a long moment. “Our ancestors left warnings for us to heed. We failed them. Time for us to repair some of the damage. Whatever they left at the Nightfort – whatever we need to do there – we’ll find it and do what we need to do.”
The boy was such an optimist. “And if we cannot? What if we cannot put it right?”
For some reason this bought him a dry laugh. “Tyrion Lannister, you know nothing about what cannot be put right.” It was an odd comment, but one that Robb Stark said with a deep sigh. “The Old Gods have done… well, quite a lot.” And those last words were said with an intensity that made Tyrion look at the lad carefully.
“Of course things can be put right,” he said jovially. “We must be cheerful, young Robb Stark! Why, we have to – we are going into a place of legend!”
But he had a funny feeling that Rob was referring to something else. What though?
Horas
If the North was nothing like The Reach, then the Lands beyond the Wall were nothing like the North. The cold was worse, the wind like a knife that cut you down to the very bone if you were not wearing the right garments.
He leant on the stanchion and looked ahead at the mist in front of them. The slow wind that was driving them into the shore was starting to shred the mist a little and he peered at it carefully. Hardhome. A place of ill omen, but the place where they had to go to. He’d arrived at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea with a small fleet of five ships sent by his father. Father had, admittedly, been in two minds over the whole thing. On the one hand he’d known that Lord Tyrell would not approve. On the other he knew that Lord Willas would approve. And Lord Willas was more important these days.
The mist tore and ripped and he found himself staring at… well, he wasn’t sure quite what he was staring at. The remains of a settlement certainly. It was larger than anything that the lands beyond the Wall was supposed to have. It was also… well, a blasted ruin.
“No’one’s ever known what happened here,” Cotter Pyke said grimly as he stepped up next to him. “’Tis a place of ill omen.”
“When was it destroyed?” It felt odd not adding a ‘My lord’, or ‘Ser’, but the fierce older man scorned anything like that. Although to be fair Pyke did not really know what to call the volunteers that had arrived at the harbour of the castle he commanded. ‘You lot’ was one phrase, with ‘bloody southerners being helpful’ being another.
“600 years ago,” Pyke muttered. “Gone in a night. Someone or something burnt the place. No survivors. No-one lived in it since.”
Horas looked ahead at the rough shacks that had been built in the ruins, and with the hasty repairs to some of the largest buildings. And then at the crowds of Wildlings that were watching the approach of the ships. From the way that some of them were running in clutching spears they would not get a warm welcome.
“Should I negotiate with them?” he asked Pyke. “They might not welcome a man of the Night’s Watch.”
The old man spat something overboard. “Oh, they’ll not welcome me. But they won’t have a fuckin’ clue what that bunch of grapes on yer surcoat means, boy.” He paused and then hoisted a spear with a pine tree branch on the end. “But they’ll know what this means. Truce sign.” And with that he started to wave it over his head.
Horas couldn’t exactly see any difference, but after a long moment Pyke seemed to relax a little. “Well, we’ll not get stuck full of arrows.”
That was not reassuring. What was also not reassuring was the large hulking figures on the southern edge of the bay, on even larger creatures.
“Giants,” Pyke grunted. “More of ‘em than I’ve ever seen of them in one place before. Interesting.”
They transferred into a large skiff that was sculled in with sure crisp strokes that Pyke muttered weren’t too bad – for soft southerners – as they made for the remains of a jetty. Horas eyed it uncertainly as they approached it, but it seemed to be just about sturdy enough to take them. Like everything else there it had been repaired at various times over the years, or that at least was what it looked like.
“Night’s Watch comes here sometimes, trying to puzzle out what happened,” Pyke said out of the corner of his mouth as he heaved himself up onto the jetty. “Makes sense to repair this thing.”
Horas followed the older man up and then looked at the patchworked surface. It looked as if random bits of wood had been hammered into it. And then he followed Pyke, who was still carrying the spear with the pine branch attached to it, along it. Much to his surprise neither of them fell through it.
As they reached the end they were approached by a group of wildlings, ranging in age from his age to… well, bloody ancient. Two wildlings led them, one dressed in what appeared to be a lot of mismatched furs and the other… well she was dressed in slightly better furs. And she was definitely a woman.
“Spearwife,” Pyke muttered. “Don’t stare.”
“What do you want, Crow?” The Wildling man called the words roughly. “If you are a Crow that is. Our people still tell tales of the last slavers we caught near here. From Essos they were from, but they never saw their homes again. We killed them all and burnt their ship.”
“I’m Cotter Pyke, from Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. Word came from Castle Black that you would be here. Mance Rayder has negotiated a truce with the Lord Commander. We know what chases you. What hunts you.”
The Wildlings paused and muttered amongst themselves. Some of the older Wildlings looked a bit shifty and unconvinced, but the spearwife set her head a little, pulled her hood down and then stepped forwards. “Who else spoke with Castle Black?”
“One Rattleshirt, or the Lord of Bones,” Pyke replied.
The Wildling stared at them – and then she nodded. “Karsi,” she said eventually.
“Beg pardon?” Horas asked.
The Wildling transferred the stare to him. “Name,” she said eventually. “Karsi. And who or what might you be?”
“Horas Redwyne, from the Arbour,” he said with a touch of defiance. “In the Reach.”
“The Reach of what?”
He looked at Pyke, who seemed to be trying not to smirk. “It’s one of the Seven Kingdoms. In the South.”
She raised both eyebrows at him and then turned back to Pyke. “So if there is a truce then why are you here?”
“To take you South. We can ferry your people South of the Wall.” Pyke seemed to almost spit the words out.
The Wildling women peered at him. “You sound unhappy about that, Crow.”
“I was brought up not trusting Wildlings.” Pyke sighed. “But I have orders from Castle Black. Your ‘King’ has asked that you be taken to the Gift and the Lord Commander has agreed to it. So has Lord Stark.”
There was a susurration amidst some of the Wildlings at that, but why that was so, Horas did not know. “South, to the Gift?” Karsi asked. “All of us?”
“Aye. The gates at the castles are opening, but it’s been pointed out that there are a lot of you. So that’s why we’re here.”
“You can ship the lot of us South on those… things?” The older Wildling pointed at the ships in the bay. “How will you get us out there?”
“Boats in the case of the larger ones. For the smaller ones we can use this jetty – but it will need to be extended. We need tree trunks hammered into the sea at the end, and then more logs laid out to them. I have men who can do the work, we just need the wood.”
The Wildlings glared at the jetty and then at them. “I’ll ask the giants,” Karsi said eventually, almost in disgust at the reticence of the others. “They’re only here for a day or so more. They can’t take their mammoths onto those ships.”
“Mammoths?” Horas asked, his skin crawling a bit. “Truly?”
Karsi just looked at him and then stalked off muttering. When she was amongst the crowd her voice could be heard shouting in what sounded like several languages.
The other Wildling leaders at the jetty also watched her go and then muttered to themselves. After a while the older one stepped forwards again. “I am Lanken,” he said gruffly. “We will go with you. There is nothing for us here but death.” And then he scowled at them. “But should you betray us, or we even hear a sniff of Essos – we’ll kill you all.”
Pyke stared back at him. “I am no slaver,” he spat. “We take you South for one reason and one reason only – the Others come, and we have no wish you see your corpses join the ranks of their army of wights. The Wall is our only defence. We would not see it fall to a tidal wave of Wildling wights.”
There was a bristling moment of tension and then the Wildlings nodded very slightly and with evident reluctance, before turning and adding their voices to the hubbub. Pyke watched them go with a sigh and then looked back at Horas. “Well, that went better than it might have.” Then he looked about. “We need to find one of them that knows something about these caves and the wight cages, or remains of them, that they might hold.”
Horas looked at the caves that were set into the cliffs to one side and shivered more than a bit. They looked… almost ghostly. Black and empty holes in the rock, some of which had paths carved into the rock leading to them. He nodded and then joined Pyke in stamping carefully on the solid parts of the jetty.
By the time that the first of the boats had started to come ashore a line of Wildlings had formed up at the shoreline. It was the first time that he had seen what Wildlings were like, truly like, and he watched with no small amount of… well, sympathy. They carried in age, from babes to old men and women. All had the marks of hunger and no small amount of desperation on their faces. And their weapons… some had spears with stone tips. Some had scraps of metal at the end of their spears. Others had swords of rust or axes of what might have been bronze.
Then he heard a noise like nothing he could imagine – and then watched as four huge figures dressed in furs strode past him. They were carrying tree trunks over their shoulders, Giants. He was really looking at giants. Hobber would never believe him.
The giants walked over to the jetty and after a moment of shock Pyke started shouting orders to them. They listened to him, looked at each other, shrugged and then placed the tree trunks as he directed, driving them into the sand and mud beneath the sea with smacks from their huge fists.
Other giants brought yet more trees and then Wildlings were there with planks stripped from buildings and after a while the jetty started to get a lot longer and sturdier. Pyke waved to some of the larger ships, which started to nose cautiously into the bay.
As he watched all this Horas noticed that Karsi had reappeared and was watching it all with a combination of a scowl and a smile. After a moment she seemed to notice him. “We’re running,” she said shortly. “I wish that we weren’t.”
He nodded sombrely. He could see why. Then he pointed at the caves. “I need to get into the caves.”
“Why?” She said the word with total horror in her voice. “They are haunted! Cursed!”
Horas held up a placatory hand. “Word came from Mance Rayder – through this ‘Rattleshirt’ – that cages, or the remains of them, had been found there. We need to find them.”
“Cages?”
“Erm, square things, about yay tall, with bars,” he told her, gesturing the size with his hands. “They are used to store the hands of wights, to preserve them, so that those to the South, where the weather is a lot hotter, can see that they exist.”
She eyed him as if he was raving mad. Then she jerked her head at the caves. “Go and search then, Red-wyne. We will not stop you. We are not the mad ones, to enter such caves.”
And so off he went, with a sigh and a wince. Five of his men went with him and he sent three of them off to the cave next to the one that he entered first, kindling torches from bits of wood and the tar in the jars that they had brought with them.
The first cave made him sick to his stomach – and deeply thoughtful. It was blackened as if some great fire had seared it from inside out. Blackened bones were strewn everywhere. People had sought refuge there. And had died there. There were no cages, or the remains of cages, but there were odd gouges in the mouth of the cave, as if some gigantic hand had clawed at it.
The second cave was the same, and the third and fourth. Horas left the last one on that level with a sigh and then looked at the next level up, which held the largest cave. “The way is shut,” he muttered, quoting part of a ghost tale that Father had once told Hobber and himself when they were children. “It was made by those who were dead. And the dead keep it. The way is shut.”
Up the path he went and as he reached the mouth of the cave he looked back at the bay. The ships were filling fast now and he could see the second squadron already, the slower ones that had already been at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea when his own ships had arrived there.
There had to be another entrance to this place somewhere because he could hear an eerie wind keening somewhere deep inside it. He winced, suppressed the memories of Father’s bloody tales, and walked in.
More blackness, more odd gouges and more shattered bones. And then he looked to one side. There was an unburnt section of the cave and the sight of alcoves carved into the rock caught his eye. Striding over to it with one of his men he peered at the alcoves. Yes. Yes! He reached forwards and pulled out a battered metal cage. It seemed to be half-melted, but he finally grinned and called for the bag. Into it went the cage – and then the three more that followed it, all in a similar shape.
“They can’t all be melted,” he muttered as he passed the torch around the deeper part of the unburnt section. And then he saw it. A whole one. Two of them in fact and he grinned at his men, who smiled back.
Well – two of them did. Where was the third? “Where’s Edwyn?” he asked.
“He went further back in the cave, Ser Horas,” came the reply. “Looking to see what caused the moaning noise.”
Then he’s a braver man than I am, Horas thought. “Find him,” he sighed. “I’ll not leave anyone behind in this place.”
On they went, deeper into the cave. It narrowed a bit – more odd gouges there – and then widened. And then they saw the light of a torch ahead. It came closer as they approached – and then all of a sudden Edwyn appeared. He appeared to be gibbering with terror. “Ser Horas! There’s something in there! Something terrible!”
“What did you see?” He stopped the older man with a hand on his shoulder. “What did you see?”
“A… a… dragon!”
He froze. Then he cursed. Of course. What else could have burnt this place in such a way, with so many killed before they could escape? And then he paused again. If there was a dragon in there, then why had it mot attacked the Wildlings?
“Describe it! Edwyn! Describe what you saw!”
Edwyn seemed to shake himself as he seemed to pull himself together. “A… a giant head… horns… great white claws everywhere. Claws all over the place!”
He frowned. “White claws? Lots of white claws?” That did not sound at all right. Was there one dragon or several? Then he steeled his nerves, his guts and where ever the hell his balls had shrivelled up into and turned to face the depths of the cave, before creeping down it.
Down he went, his terrified men lagging a bit behind him. Deeper and deeper into the cave. And then he froze. There was a flash of white in the darkness. He stood there for a long moment, his heart hammering at his ribs – and then he moved forwards a step. It was a huge white bone. And there was another to one side. He stepped up to it – and then he froze again. There was a head to his left. A giant head. With teeth. And… a white skull?
Relief flooded through him and very nearly made him piss himself. He stepped up to the skull and peered at it. Leathery scraps of skin remained in places here and there, but it was definitely a skull.
“Fetch Cotter Pyke,” he called back to the others. “It’s a dead dragon. Dead for centuries.”
By the time that the commander of Eastwatch-by-the-Sea arrived Horas had been able to walk around the entire corpse. It puzzled him. It was not a huge creature, it had been no Balerion the Black Dread, not based on the skull that he had seen in the Red Keep. No, it was a bit smaller, quite a bit smaller. But what dragon had ever escaped to North of the Wall? Why had it come here to die?
When he saw the light of the torches from the small group that arrived – thank the Gods that his men had been discreet – he turned to them. Cotter Pyke and the others had stopped dead in their tracks and were gaping at the remains of the dragon.
“Well – now we know what happened here, all those years ago,” Horas quipped weakly. It wasn’t much but nervous laughter rippled from the group. Then he looked back it. “Tendons are mostly gone. I don’t think that the Others could turn this thing into a wight.”
Pyke shuddered at the thought of it. “Aye, well, pull it apart and sever any tendons you find. The Maesters will be in a right taking at the thought of not laying eyes on this.”
“Aye,” Horas replied as he peered at the jumble of wing bones and more leathery scraps that hung down over the middle of the dragon.
And then he saw the sparkle and shine of the clutch of eggs underneath.
Jon Stark
He was worrying a bit about taking Ghost and the other direwolves with them to the Nightfort. It wouldn’t be dangerous, not exactly, but Father and Frostfyre would not be coming with them – he had too much to do at Castle Black.
So far the people going to the Nightfort were as eclectic a group as he could imagine. Himself, Robb, Theon, Tyrion Lannister, Alliser Thorne (a man who seemed to dislike him for no particular reason), a small group of men of the Night’s Watch and the King Beyond The Wall, Mance Rayder. Oh and apparently someone called Thormund Giantsbane. The last two were due later that day, once the last of the Lords of the North were gone. Apparently some of the last of them were lingering a little, to speak to Father.
Father. He would always think of Eddard Stark as his father. He’d always been there for him, even if Lady Stark had not. Well, not until recently. She’d been tentatively kind, fumblingly supportive. In private she had apologised and then gone off to the Sept to pray.
He sighed and then knocked on the door to Maester Aemon’s quarters. Hearing a barked ‘Come!’ he pushed the door open and then entered, closing the door behind him. “You asked to see me Maester Aemon?”
The Maester looked up from his books and smiled cheerfully at him. “I did indeed young Jon. I hear that you are preparing for your trip to the Nightfort?”
“We leave tomorrow, at dawn.”
“You should be there by noon or just after then, if this weather continues fair.” He paused. “I remember the last time I saw that place. It was a great castle once, a true fortress for the Night’s Watch.”
He smiled slightly. “Tyrion Lannister seems both excited and afraid of the place.”
“He has every reason to be. One of his ancestors commanded there once and seems to have left something for him there.” Jon frowned at him and the old man waved a hand in dismissal. “You’ll find out once you are there. Do not let your guard down there. Renegades have been known to make rest there on occasion.”
“So there is danger there, then?”
The oldest living Targaryen smiled thinly. “Why, there is danger everywhere, if you look hard enough. And you… you have more reasons than most to look over your shoulder.” He sighed. “I wish that this…. burden… had not fallen to you, my boy. This burden of your real heritage. It does my heart good to see you – but I know that you will have to hide that heritage if you want to live.
“A great irony struck me this morning. There was a time when two members of our family would come together and talk of great and terrible things. The breeding of dragons, the politics of King’s Landing, the future crushing of cities in Essos, war and war and yet more war. And yet here we are, the last two men in our family, divided by many leagues from your aunt, talking of nothing more than survival. And yet it is right that we do so. You must live, my boy. Live and have no grandiose plans. You cannot afford it.”
His mind reeled. “I don’t think I’d ever even consider anything grandiose,” he replied faintly. “A quiet life is all I’ve ever wanted.”
Something flickered over Aemon’s face, a combination of relief and sadness, leavened with shame. “I wish that I had more to give you than mere words. I wish that I could give you something more meaningful than advice, a legacy of land or men or gold. I have none of those things. As it is I have but two gifts for you. One will help protect you in the wars that are to come. The other is… well, it is something that you or your descendants might one day be able to use. So to speak.”
The old man stood and then walked over to a great chest, next to which was a far smaller and far dustier chest. He pulled out a key and worked on the lock to the larger chest. “Tell, me, young Jon, have you ever heard of a man called Brynden Rivers, also known at Bloodraven?”
Jon thought back through the list of Targaryen kings and family members that Maester Luwin had once made him memorise. “Erm…. He was the bastard half-brother of Daeron II?”
“Quite so,” Aemon said as he threw the chest open with a surprising amount of vigour, before carefully searching through the contents. “He was a rather remarkable man. He fought in the first Blackfyre rebellion, was Hand of the King to first his nephew Aerys I and then to Maekar I.” He paused and a small and wintery smile fluttered on his lips. “Maekar was my father. A stern man, but a good one. Anyway, when I became Maester here at Castle Black Bloodraven also joined, or rather was forced to join, the Nights Watch. He was… a strange man. An albino for a start. He lost an eye fighting against Bittersteel in the First Blackfyre Rebellion, but he was still a terror with a bow. Damn it, where did I leave it? Aha!”
The old Maester turned around, holding a long object covered in cloth, before walking back to where Jon was waiting. “Bloodraven was a great leader of men and it was not long before he became Lord Commander. Some said that he was a sorcerer, but I just knew him as a friend and a great man, a man who knew the value of duty and commitment. He vanished one day in a solo ranging beyond the Wall, something that he was increasingly prone to do. But before he left he entrusted me with this.” And with that he pulled the cloth back a little to reveal the hilt of a sword.
He stared at it. The wavy crossguard… the flames on the pommel… “This is Dark Sister,” he whispered. “This is a…” He looked over his shoulder at the door. “This is a Targaryen heirloom!”
“It’s just a sword,” Aemon replied dryly. “A sword made from Valyrian steel, but still just a sword. And a foreboding is upon me that you will need it. You leave tomorrow. I know Donal Noye, the smith here, well. By tomorrow it will have a new hilt and a new pommel. And it will be yours.”
“Maester Aemon, I cannot, it’s not mine, it can’t be mine…”
“It is yours. Listen to me, Jon Stark! I told you before to let the boy Jon Snow die and become the man Jon Stark. This sword was made for one purpose – to kill. I am an old man who will die soon. I am a hundred years old, my boy. This sword has lain in this chest for almost half my life. ‘Take care of it,’ Bloodraven said. ‘It’s for whoever of our family that comes here next.’ You have come here. It’s yours.”
Jon reached out with trembling hands and pulled it from the cloth, hefting it for a moment as he felt its weight. Then he pulled it slightly out of the black scabbard. Yes. It was Valyrian steel. “Thank you,” he whispered. “This is… this is… beyond anything I imagined.”
“Pass it on to your sons,” Aemon said with a slight smile, before taking it back. “It will be ready for you at dawn. Now – here’s the other thing. Something I have not laid eyes on since a very black day in our family’s history.”
And with that he strode over to the small chest, which he picked up with an odd look on his face, almost a wince of distaste. “Here.”
Jon took the chest with a frown. “What is it?”
Another key appeared in Aemon’s hands, this one far smaller than the last. He fiddled with the lock again and then opened it. Jon peered inside. And then he felt the blood flee his face.
“Every Targaryen, well male Targaryen, sometimes the females too, has a dragon’s egg placed in their cradle,” Maester Aemon said in that strange flat tone. “That was placed in mine. It’s real.”
Jon traced a finger over the iridescent swirls on the surface of the first real dragon’s egg that he’d ever seen. “Why give it to me?”
“Why?” There was a combination of smile and snarl on the face of the older man’s face. “Because of that terrible thing called tradition. Because it is your birth right. Because perhaps you can succeed where I failed and hatch it. Because I hate the very sight of the damn thing after the news came to me of the death of my beloved brother at Summerhall and I want to be rid of it! Because… it is time for me to let go of such things. It’s better off with you than me. Better with a young man than an old one.”
Jon stared at the sword and then the egg. “Maester Aemon – great-great-granduncle Aemon – these are not small bequests. They are great ones.”
But Aemon shook his head at that. “They are both gifts and curses. Never forget that. But we are family and I do not think that you will let me down in this. Now – I have some books over here about the Nightfort that you might find interesting.” And with that he led Jon over to the table nearby.
Chapter 26: Chapter 26
Chapter Text
Tywin
He leafed through the long list of reports and other documents, made a few small notes in a ledger to one side and then carefully put away the quill and the little bottle of ink. Only then did he stand and walk over to the window.
From here he could see the roses that she had planted, so many years before. The old gardener tended to them most carefully. He’d known Joanna when she had been but a child and the old man had been fond of her. And now, decades on, he took care of the roses that she had loved so much. He nodded a little. That was good.
He wondered sometimes, with a slight sense of despair, what Joanna would have made of things these days. Well for a start she would have frowned at the general state of things. Jaime was still in that damn white cloak, Cersei was still a spoilt imbecile and Tyrion... Tyrion was still the dwarf who had killed his mother.
He knew that Joanna would have loved Tyrion even if he had been a dwarf, he knew that Tyrion was not at fault for the death of Joanna... he just couldn’t help it. Every time he looked at the lad he saw the reason why Joanna was not here, alive and well, fussing over those roses and grinning at him impishly.
It was foolish of him and petty. But by all the gods he missed her every day. A part of him had died with her. He shook his head slightly and grimaced a tad, before returning to his books.
It was a knock on the door that disturbed him from a particularly messy little squabble that was being waged on paper between two minor houses who were fighting over a small scrap of land. “Yes?” He looked up to see Dacre standing at the doorway. He looked... somewhat baffled. “What’s the matter Dacre?”
“My Lord, there’s a man here. He says that he needs to seek your permission to tend the Stone Garden.”
Tywin raised an eyebrow. “Does this man have a name?”
“Rickon, my Lord. He... he claims to be from the Isle of Faces.”
For a moment the other eyebrow came up, before both went down into a scowl. “The Isle of Faces,” he said flatly. “Impossible.”
“That’s what I said my Lord. But he claimed that it was the truth and that there was an ancient agreement that one day the Stone Garden would be tended again.”
He leant back in his chair and did his best not to stare. Now, that was indeed an old agreement, an ancient promise. One that very few knew about and which had had always thought was nothing more than a family tale. “Very well. Let him in.”
“Yes my Lord.” Dacre strode off and Tywin rubbed his upper lip with a finger for a moment.
When Dacre returned he was escorting a short and rather nondescript man dressed in dark green clothes and with a dark green cloak with a hood of some kind. He wore a cloak pin that looked like a silver antler and he was carrying a small saddlebag. As soon as he laid eyes on Tywin he bowed, although not as deeply as Dacre obviously thought was proper, given his scowl.
“Lord Lannister, I presume.”
“I am. And you would be the man who claims to be from the Isle of Faces. I find that hard to believe. The Green Men do not leave their island.”
“Until now. The Green Men are abroad again.”
“Why?”
The man tilted his head slightly and looked at him. “The Call was sent. It was heard all across the Realm. On the Isle of Faces... well, all I will say is that it was a day that I will never forget. The trees themselves spoke.”
He looked at Rickon carefully. He detected a touch of the Riverlands in his accent. But he was still unconvinced. “Many of spoken of the Call. The Green Men have been secluded on their island for centuries. And yet you say that you have broken your seclusion?”
A small smile crossed the other man’s face. “The Green Man said that you might be a bit hard to convince. Very well – perhaps this will convince you.” He reached into the saddlebag and pulled out a something small and silver, which he then placed on the desk in front of Tywin.
The moment he laid eyes on it he froze. It was half a medallion. There was exactly half a tree on it.
“I understand that when you were Hand of the King, many years ago, you were once sent a message from the Isle of Faces. That it still existed, that it spoke for those who worship the Old Gods South of the Neck. And that one day it would send the other half of the medallion that was sent that day. Here is the other half.”
He remembered that day. Aerys and he had laughed over the message at the time. But he’d kept the medallion – it was in a chest somewhere. “Dacre said that you were asking permission to enter the Stone Garden? Why?”
“To tend to the Heart tree there.”
“There is no Heart tree, just a weirwood tree.”
Rickon just smiled in reply. “May I have your permission to enter the Stone Garden then? It has been many centuries since a Green Man was here.”
“You may enter it.” He paused as unease ran through him yet again. “Wait. You said that the Green Man had left the Isle of Faces?”
“I did.”
“Does this man have a name?”
“He did once. He said that he will meet you again one day.”
“Again? I have met him before?”
“You have. You were a cupbearer at the time, at the Court of Aegon V. Your pardon, Lord Lannister. I have much to do.” And he bowed and left.
Tywin stared at the space where the Green Man had been for a long time, his mind whirling like a leaf in the wind. He’d been young when he had been cupbearer. Very young. The Green Man apparently remembered him from that far off and happy time, the time before Summerhall. The Green Man therefore had to be quite old. Who on earth could he be?
And then he shivered as something else occurred to him. There was a Green Man in the Stone Garden, tending to the weirwood tree there. It was like something out of legend. Something was happening, something was in the air. For a long moment he felt almost... afraid. He was not in control of this matter.
Ned
A fist thumped at the door and he sighed a little and then faced the door. He was not looking forwards to this. “Come!”
The door opened to reveal Lord Ryswell and Lady Dustin. They both looked... well, uncomfortable. Barbrey Dustin was not a young woman any more but she was still a fine-looking one. She was, as always, dressed in black to show that she still mourned Willam Dustin. If there was one thing that he regretted from his time in the South it was that he had been unable to bring back the bones of those who had fought with him at the Tower of Joy. Barbrey Dustin was someone who would never be able to let go of that fact.
“Lord Ryswell. Lady Dustin. How may I help you?”
Rodrik Ryswell looked at him and then glanced at his daughter. “Barbrey,” he said meaningfully. “Tell him.”
Barbrey Dustin glared at her father a little and then stepped forwards slightly. Her cheeks were a little red, a sign of some emotion. “Lord Stark, there... there has been fog on the barrows for some weeks now. Fog on the Long Barrow especially. And on Great Barrow. The smallfolk says that the dead are restless. They talk of... of there needing to be a Lord Dustin again.” And with that she shot a look of pure anger at him. “I do not know what to do.” The last words came as if they had been forced from her.
Ned just looked at her as if she was raving mad. “Fog?”
“Fog,” Lord Ryswell said in a low voice. “It stays to the barrows of the old Barrow Kings. It will not move. And it’s been there since the Call went out.”
Ned stared at the two of them. “And this is the first time that you have now told me? No word went to Winterfell. No word of this came to me. Why?”
Barbrey Dustin had gone red in the face, whilst her father was as white as a sheet. But Ned knew why. Her hatred for him was still deep and raw, even after all these years. He had taken her husband South and never bothered to return his bones after his death. Worse, he was not Brandon. She had loved her brother fiercely. The fact that the Lord Paramount of the North was Eddard Stark and not Brandon Stark rankled. The fact that she was not married to the Lord Paramount of the North also rankled.
He wanted to sigh and then pinch the bridge of his nose. He couldn’t however. Those two would view it as weakness. And according to Robb when he had marched South there had been a very small number of men from House Dustin. Barbrey had been a thorn in his side for some time, much to his grief.
This was something that he had been hoping to avoid. There was still no news about who Barbrey had designated as her heir, as Willam and she had not had the time to have any children before his death.
He eyed her carefully. He knew better than to ask what her Maester thought of it. She did not like Maesters, or ‘grey rats’ as she called them. “Are there any records of this ever happening before?”
Her eyes darted around his face. “No, Lord Stark.”
“But there is fog on the barrows and no-one knows why?”
“Yes, Lord Stark.”
“I will ask Maester Aemon here to search the records of Castle Black for any references to this. And send a raven to Winterfell. Certain records are there, left by my ancestors. Word of this should have come to me before though. Especially if this is tied to the Call.”
“I... I didn’t think that... I mean....” Barbrey Dustin did not sound as if she was enjoying the words she was speaking.
“Lady Dustin,” Ned said gently. “The Call went out for a reason. The Others are coming for all of us. Not just for Winterfell, for all of us. If anything unusual happens then you need to tell me. To send word.”
“It’s just fog,” she hissed, before seeming to collect herself. “But it won’t move. And the smallfolk... whisper. About House Dustin being gone.”
He looked at her and then sighed. “Not entirely,” he muttered. “You have heard of the return of the Company of the Rose?”
Father and daughter looked at each other and then at him. “Aye.” The word came from them both.
“There are Dustins amongst them.”
Barbrey Dustin’s eyes went wide – and then they narrowed. “Dustins? Truly?”
“Aye. Or so it seems. I will be meeting all of them. I will assess the truth of who they claim to be. Let me be clear about this – you are the Lady of Barrowtown, Lady Dustin. You are in charge of Barrowtown and you are sworn to House Stark. If these new Dustins can assist you and help you in this matter then that is enough for me. But it must be resolved. We must know why there is fog on the barrowdowns.”
A still red-faced Barbrey Dustin nodded and then she and her father strode out. Ned watched them leave and then shook his head. Those two had long been a problem. Perhaps recent events might solve that problem.
The hour that followed saw the last of the Lords of the North leave Castle Black, including the GreatJon, Roose Bolton and Howland Reed.
“The Last Hearth will be sending more dragonglass to the Wall,” the GreatJon boomed at him as he heaved himself into the saddle. “And I’ll shout at my idiot son a bit. He’s a good lad, but he’s got cheese in his ears at times.” And then he was gone, riding South with the others.
And after another hour the main gate of Castle Black groaned open North of the Wall. The first people through the gate were led by Mance Rayder. The King beyond the Wall – or whatever he was these days – was wearing a cloak that might once have been black, but which was now a dark grey colour, along with boots and a jerkin that spoke more of the North than beyond the Wall. He led a horse on which was a brown haired women, younger than Rayder, dressed in a hooded cloak. Another woman followed, bundled up in a cloak and hood as well, this one with honey-coloured hair, and after that in strode a large man with red hair, a red beard that you could lose a small dagger in and a look of slightly hesitant confidence.
Rayder and the group walked up to Ned, who now had Jeor Mormont on his right and Robb, Jon and Theon to his left and nodded carefully. “Lord Stark.”
“Rayder.”
The former man of the Night’s Watch was about to open his mouth again when all of a sudden he caught sight of Frostfyre and fell silent. “Ah,” he said, before seeing the smaller direwolves. “You Starks don’t do things by halves, do you?”
Ned couldn’t help the laugh that erupted from his mouth. “No,” he said eventually. “We don’t. We think that the Old Gods sent them. Just as they spoke through me earlier.”
“What?” The red-headed man asked in loud bemusement. “Through you?”
Rayder glared at his lieutenant for a moment. “You’ll have to pardon Tormund, his mouth operates without his brain giving permission at times.”
“Oh, you should meet the GreatJon. But you should also see Maester Aemon.”
A throat was cleared to one side and the old Maester paced forwards. “It’s good to see you again, Mance Rayder. As you can see – well, so can I.”
Rayder and this Tormund both stared, looking astonished. “Your eyes... you can see?”
“Evidently,” Maester Aemon said. “Thanks to the Old Gods and Lord Stark. And may I ask who your other companions are?”
“My... ah.” Rayder visibly composed himself, before helping the brown-haired woman down. “This is Dalla. My wife.”
“Lord Stark.” She was calm, cool, not at all discomposed and all in all impressive. Mance Rayder had chosen wisely.
“And this is Dalla’s sister, Val.” The hood came down and Ned blinked. If Dalla had been impressive, Val was even more so. Young, blue-eyed, utterly composed and with a gaze that seemed to take everything in. Oh, and very beautiful. He looked at his eldest son, nephew and ward. They were all staring at Val like a direwolf puppy would stare at a bone with some raw meat attached to it. Yearning was the word.
Rayder nodded slightly and then turned to the gate, where the first of his people were coming through. And what a collection they were. Old and young, men and women, some dressed in furs, some dressed in thick tunics, some dressed in what looked like pieces of armour. Some had horses, others shaggy little grey donkeys, some dragged litters others small hand carts. Dogs trotted next to some families, lanky little things that looked more like wolves at times. Goats were herded through, along with white-coated sheep and even the occasional shaggy cow.
Mance Rayder stood by Ned and watched them pass South, that long line of humanity that represented the Wildlings, the Free Folk, call them what you will – fellow men and women who were fleeing for their lives from something unimaginably terrible. After a while Ned realised that Rayder’s eyes were shining from unshed tears.
“Perhaps some food for your family?” Ned suggested gently. “I think that we need to talk.”
Rayder smiled a strained smile. “Yes,” he said thickly, before clearing his throat and trying again. “Yes. That might be a good idea. Your pardon, Lord Stark, Lord Commander. I promised those people that I’d get them somewhere safe. Away from the White Walkers. Somewhere where they’d not see their children turned into wights. I’ve kept my promise.”
Jeor Mormont turned and looked at his former brother with an odd, almost sympathetic, look. “It’s good to be reminded of that,” he said and then helped to escort Rayder to his office, where he poured out mugs of ale for all three of them. “Luck,” he toasted.
“Aye,” they all chorused and then drank, before Rayder turned to Ned. “Well now, Lord Stark. Yes, we do need to talk. I imagine that you’ll need my word again on keeping that lot under control. I’ll not lie to you, I’ve got a lot of influence with them, but my word is hardly law.”
“Oh, I know that. But some influence is better than none. Besides, there’s a few things you should know about. There’s some people already in the Gift. The Mountain Tribes from the Vale for a start.”
Rayder paused for a moment and then drank some more ale with a gulp. “The Old Blood sings, does it not?”
“Oh, it sings. The King is coming to Winterfell too. He has found a Durrandon artefact, a something called Stormbreaker. Old things are waking up.”
“Aye,” Rayder said quietly, “Aye.” Then he looked at Ned. “So – your boys are here, then? You still plan to go to the Nightfort tomorrow?”
“Will you be ready?”
“I will. Tormund too.” He stared at the fire for a moment and the skin drew tight at his temples as he seemed to take a deep breath. “Lord Stark, Lord Commander, if we survive this winter, if we live through this war of the living against the dead, then we must have a new beginning beyond the Wall. I have dome much thinking on this and we must try and repair the breach between men North and South of the Wall. The Free Folk were once scouts for the Night’s Watch. I would have them return to that old alliance. It will not be easy. But it must be done. I would have...” He took a deep breath. “I would have my child born into a world of hope and not a world of death and hate.”
Ned blinked and then exchanged a considering glance with Jeor Mormont. “Your wife is with child then?”
“She is.”
He smiled slightly. “So is mine. And your thoughts echo mine. I would have peace on the Wall. Peace beyond the Wall.”
Rayder shifted uneasily in his chair. “We need peace. I am just... unsure about how to go about this. I have influence, but I am no king. If Dalla gives birth to a son then he will not be King Beyond the Wall after me. I have given some thought to it however. I would offer alliance between your family and mine.” He was very pale now, like a man walking willingly on thin ice. “Val is a great beauty. I would offer her as a marriage alliance to one of your sons, if I may.”
Ned felt his eyebrows fly up for an instant, before he got them under control. Then he leant back in his chair and thought deeply. It was an interesting offer. It would start to mend the gaping wounds between North of the Wall and South of it. It would bind Rayder closer to Winterfell. And it would cause his wife to gape at him and half the great houses of the North to wonder if he had concussion. Once people moved beyond that, however...
“I think that this is something we must carefully discuss, Rayder,” he said eventually. Then he smiled slightly. “Perhaps it would be easier if you had a title? Lord Rayder of House Rayder, perhaps?”
The other man looked at him questioningly, before throwing back his head and laughing. When he recovered he seemed to realise that Ned was not laughing and that the Lord Commander had an eyebrow raised at Ned – which then came down as he seemed to come to the right conclusion.
“You’re not serious?” Rayder barked.
“I am,” Ned replied. “You need us and we need you. Alliance.”
The King Beyond the Wall stared at him – and then he put his hand out. Ned took it. “Alliance.”
Jeor Mormont nodded, before standing up. “And now comes the dickering, so I shall get more ale.”
Arya
It was strange, having to think so hard. And she felt that in the last few weeks she’d thought more about life than she ever had before. Winterfell felt almost quiet these days, with Father and Jon and Robb and Theon away. She missed the booming laugh of the GreatJon, the quiet jokes of Lord Reed and above all she missed Jon’s quiet wisdom.
Because she needed wisdom right now. She was a warg. She knew that now, beyond any shadow of a doubt. So – what now? She’d been so busy trying to be a warg that she hadn’t really ever thought about the implications of it all. What would she do as a warg? Yes, she could bite Septa Mordane’s toes and then run away, but what if the Septa hurt Nymeria afterwards, by throwing something at her? She’d never thought of that. Why hadn’t she thought of that?
Too busy trying to be warg.
She sat on her bed and looked at her direwolf, who looked back at her with her head tilted to one side. And then she concentrated, concentrated hard. It was still difficult to do, easier than it had been at first, but still hard.
After a moment she closed her eyes, opened them again – and then found herself looking at her own face. The white eyes were always a bit of a shock. She wondered how Mother would react if she ever came upon her body when she was warging. It wouldn’t be easy to explain.
She gathered herself and then jumped off the bed. Having four feet was still interesting, but she’d long since mastered walking, had progressed to scampering and she might even be up to running soon. The tail was still a bit of an odd thing to control, but she was getting used to it.
Having trotted twice around the room to get her bearings (and her balance), she then walked over to the door, nosed it carefully open, stepped through, pulled it closed and then looked up and down the corridor. Perfect. No-one around. She darted down it, turned left at the end and then came to a halt. She had a decision to make. Keep exploring or-
Something whiffled in her ear and she almost yelped with surprise. When she turned around she saw that Summer was there, right next to her. The other direwolf was staring at her, tilting his head from side to side as if baffled about something. She glared back at him – and then Summer seemed to blink rapidly and then sit back on his haunches and resumed staring.
She stared back at him – and then he huffed quietly and trotted up the corridor. Halfway to the next corner he turned and looked at her, as if trying to tell her to follow him. Somewhat baffled she followed him.
Much to her interest Summer led her straight to Bran’s room. The other direwolf nosed the door open and then led her to the bed. There she could see a motionless figure lying there, face turned to one side. Bran. It was Bran. And his eyes were white.
She stared at her brother, astonished. And then she looked back at Summer, who was staring at Bran as well. At which point the colour returned to Bran’s eyes. He blinked everal times and then sat up. “What a strange dream,” he muttered – before spotting her. “Nymeria? What are you doing here?”
She huffed and then yipped at him. And then she reached deep inside herself and returned to her own body. Bran was a warg too. She felt a vague sense of frustration that she was not unique, along with a joy that Bran was a warg as well.
Excited she got to her feet and then pelted down the corridor. Nymeria was just leaving Bran’s room as she arrived and her puzzled direwolf looked happy to see her. She knocked very briefly and then darted into the room.
“Arya?” Bran asked sleepily. “What’s wrong?”
“You were warging!”
“What?”
“You were warging! You were in Summer?”
“What? How do you know?”
“Because I was warging too! I was in Nymeria. I was in the corridor and then Summer came up to me and blew in my ear and then he led me up the corridor and into your room and I could see that you had white eyes, totally white eyes, which is what happens when you warg, and then you woke up – and you asked me what I was doing here! But you thought I was just Nymeria! You’re a warg too Bran!”
Her brother stared at her as if she had gone raving mad. “What?”
She scowled at him and then walked over to the door and closed it. The two direwolves were next to the fire and were curling up and getting ready to go to sleep. “We need to talk,” she told Bran seriously. “There’s a lot you need to know.”
Tyrion
He didn’t sleep that well that night. Although the room he had been assigned was warm and indeed snug – after so many hundreds of years by the Wall the Night’s Watch had obviously learnt how to build buildings that were damn warm – he kept coming awake, convinced that he could hear the wind howling in his ear.
By the time that morning came he’d finally been able to fall asleep, albeit a sleep that was punctuated by some damn odd dreams. He was running through a dark tunnel in one, a tunnel that echoed oddly, with something in his hand, and he needed to run faster, run harder, he was needed and there was something ahead that he needed to fight. In another dream he was looking up at a huge heart tree as the branches reached down and beat back something just outside his line of sight.
So when he emerged from his room and walked down the corridor with his bag he was bleary eyed and rubbing a hand over his chin. Should he shave or not? Perhaps not. A beard might be a good idea up here. Something to keep the wind away.
Not too large a beard though. Some of the men up here had ones that you could lose a spoon or three in.
As he reached the courtyard he saw that his horse had been saddled by young Pod. The lad had been a good find. Dutiful, if a bit naive. He was taking him with him to the Nightfort.
The others were starting to assemble as he arrived. Rob Stark and his brother were busy yawning, but not as much as their direwolves. So was the Greyjoy boy. The latter still puzzled him more than a bit. Balon Greyjoy was an idiot obsessed by his wet god and who could always be relied upon to do the wrong thing. His last surviving son was... well, sometimes he was impulsive, only to pause and then visibly think things through, before acting more thoughtfully. His direwolf was yawning a lot as well.
As for the men of the Night’s Watch, Alliser Thorne always looked as if he had bitten on a lemon. A harsh and bitter man, that one. A former Targaryen loyalist who had been given the choice of the Night’s Watch or the executioner’s axe. He had two men with him, both of who looked as if they had fallen off the Wall a few times. Well, perhaps not from the very top.
And they were all glowering at the last five members of the party. Mance Rayder was a very interesting fellow indeed. He’d talked to the fellow briefly the previous night. The man was intelligent, surprisingly well-read and very charismatic. It was no wonder that he had become King-Beyond-the-Wall.
As for his companions… he blinked. One was a very intimidating fellow, very red of hair and beard, with a glower that the GreatJon would envy. He was dressed in furs and had a knife strapped to his belt, a sword at his side and an axe at his back. The next was a younger man with black hair and tired eyes.
But it was the other two who caught his eye. They were both women. One was slim, had bright red hair, a round face, small hands, a pug nose, crooked white teeth, and blue-grey eyes. There was… something intense about her, as if her spirit was as fiery as her hair. She had a bow and a quiver and she seemed to know how to use them. The other was hooded, with honey-coloured hair peeking out. She had a sword, a dagger and a look of not suffering fools gladly.
Mance Rayder caught his appraising glance and smiled slightly. “Ygritte and Val. One can loose an arrow into your eye from a surprisingly large distance. The other can carve your balls off so fast that you’ll not notice until they’re rolling on the ground in front of you. Don’t think that they’re weak just because they’re women. Others have made that mistake. They didn’t like the results.”
There was a cough behind them and he turned to see Lord Stark watching them. He seemed to be sending a look of carefully hidden amusement at Rayder. “Well now, Lord Tyrion,” he said almost formally. “Ready to visit the Nightfort?”
He thought about it for a long moment. “No,” he said with a smile. “But I have to go, don’t I? After all my greenseer ancestor said I had to go.”
The Wildlings stirred a little at this, with the red-headed girl mouthing ‘greenseer?’ almost under her breath.
“Aye,” Lord Stark said. “You do have to go. Good fortune go with you. I have to talk to the Lord Commander here a lot more. There’s things that must be arranged.” And then he strode over to his sons and his ward, talking to them in a low voice and placing a hand on each other shoulders in turn. They all smiled and nodded at his words and Tyrion once again felt that pang of envy that his own father would never do such a thing.
Lord Stark talked to Jon Stark last of all. Tyrion heard just three words of it. ‘Aemon told me’, followed by a glance at his sword. Which was interesting, because Jon Stark bore a sword with a new pommel, in the shape of a wolf. It seemed to be of a slightly different length as well – was it new?
But after that it was all business. Horses were mounted, in the case of some of the Wildlings slightly awkwardly. Pod appeared out of nowhere with his own horse and a set of clothes that showed that he knew what the weather could be like up here. And then they rode out, heading West.
The road had been repaired recently and looked as if it had seen quite a bit of traffic. Trees had been felled from the vicinity of the road and here and there he could see the odd place where rock outcrops had been mined for stone.
They met parties as well, groups of volunteers in places, leavened with a few members of the Night’s Watch. They had waggons of supplies, wood, stone, hay, all the things needed to repair walls and other buildings, to make them warm and snug.
Some hard riding saw them at Queensgate within a few hours. The castle there seemed to be one giant building site, with the roof of the main hall there being retiled carefully. The gate through the Wall was open there as well, and Tyrion watched in awe as a party of giants led their mammoths through it, all with great bundles of furs and other possessions on their backs.
One trio passed right in front of their party and he gaped up at the huge creatures as they strode South, hair blowing in the wind as they laughed and shouted at each other.
“They’re speaking something?” Alliser Thorne asked as he stared at the passing giants.
“The language of the First Men, Ser Alliser,” Tyrion replied in awed tones. “They’re saying how good the foraging will be here for their mammoths, about how lush the grass will be to the South.”
“You speak the language of the First Men?”
“I do. One of many I speak.”
Thorne grunted in response, before looking at the Wildlings that followed the giants. There was a conflicted look to his eyes, that eventually faded into a weary look of acceptance. “You didn’t approve of this originally, did you?” Tyrion asked quietly as they trotted onwards.
“No,” Thorne replied. “But it has to be done. I know that. I don’t like it, but it has to be done.”
They paused for luncheon – or what might be described as luncheon – just about within sight of Deep Lake. Again the castle was under repair, if a little less obviously than Queensgate.
“We’re repairing the ones East of Castle Black faster than the others West of it,” Thorne explains quietly as they eat some of the stew that the men of the Night’s Watch seem to know how to make so expertly. “The Shadow Tower’s been sending its men East and Eastwatch-by-the-Sea’s been sending its men West. Eventually we’ll all meet up.”
Tyrion looked at Deep Lake and at the lake nearby. “A beautiful place.”
“Aye,” said Rayder. “I use to tickle trout in the river there once. A long time ago.”
Thorne looked at his former brother and Tyrion could see the anger that the man was hiding so poorly. “A very long time ago,” Thorne spat bitterly and then walked away.
Rayder sighed and shook his head. “That one bears grudges. He always has. And he always will.”
“How far from here to the Nightfort?” Tyrion asked the question in a bid to change the subject.
“Seven miles. We can be there in a few hours. Unless you’re in a rush?”
He shuddered slightly. “No. Are you?”
A shrug. “I should be. A Child of the Forest told me to go there.”
It was fortunate that Tyrion had not been drinking anything when he heard those words, as otherwise he would spat it all out. As it was he paused and then stared at Rayder. “I’m sorry, what was that?”
“Did the Old Bear not tell you? A dying Child of the Forest was brought to us by a group of giants. Said that he – or she, buggered if I know which it was – had seen me and Tormund in a vision at the Nightfort. Said we had to go there with a man with a golden mind and a boy who died and fell through time. All very mysterious.” He peered at him. “You’re a Lannister. I should have thought that the golden part fitted you well.”
Tyrion tilted his head slightly in thought. “I would hope so. I’m not a boy and I haven’t died, let alone fallen through time. How very…. Interesting. Not to mention painful. I wonder what it all means?”
“I don’t know,” said Rayder as he finished off what remained of his stew. “And that bloody well worries me.” Then he looked at him again. “What was that about a greenseer ancestor?”
“A former Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. Tyrek Lannister. He left me a letter. Do you know what it feels like to have the hairs on the back of your neck lift up so much that you think that they’re going to tear off?”
“I’ve talked to a Child of the Forest, so you’re asking that question to the wrong man,” Rayder grinned and then he wandered off.
Asha
It was the waiting she hated. There was nothing she could do really, now that all the orders had been given and the men assigned to their places. At least her crew had stayed loyal to her. “You’ve led us this far,” her bosun had said, speaking for the rest of them. “Lead us on.”
So now she was pacing about in a small depression on a hill overlooking the harbour.
“Stop it,” said a voice to one side. “You need to calm down.”
She stopped pacing and looked at her uncle. “How can you be so calm?”
He opened an eye and squinted at her from his position on the boulder to one side. He’d been sitting there for more than ten minutes now, despite the fact that he was wearing plate armour. She’d thought at first that he’d been asleep.
“I’m not calm,” Nuncle Rodrik told her quietly. “But I need to look calm. You know how important that is. But you’re used to looking calm at sea, preparing for a crisis there. This is… land. Our land. My island. These men, aye and these women, need me to give orders. Calmly, quietly – like The Reader always does. I want to pace. I can’t. Hear that noise? It’s young Raynard. A good lad, but he always throws up before a battle. If I show that I’m nervous then I’ll make he and others nervous. So – I rest my eyes.”
Asha looked at him for a long moment and then chuckled softly and sat on a nearby rock and thought about the plan carefully. “We’re taking a risk,” she said eventually in a soft voice. “What if we’re wrong?”
“Your father has sent Victarion. You know what your uncle is like. He’s a fighter, not a thinker. He can see a certain distance but no further. And he’s going to be looking to get what he views as ‘his’ ships back, before trying to kill everyone on this island. So he’ll come here. Not the harbour, the cove. The harbour’s too well defended, too many towers, there’s the great chain boom. Too much risk of damaging both sets of ‘his’ ships. He’ll come here.”
There was a long pause as she thought it through, considering it from all angles. “You’re likely right. But it’s the word ‘likely’ that gnaws at my mind like a seagull at a stranded oyster. What is he strikes at the other end of the island in a feint?”
“He won’t. He’ll come at us here. He knows of this place.”
She nodded slowly and then just sat there. The Sun was occasionally hidden by scudding clouds and every now and then she sniffed at the wind. “Wind’s set fair from the West now.”
“Yes.” A pause. “He’ll come soon. High tide soon.”
“As you planned for. Hoped for.”
“Counted on. Low tide means farther to run. High tide means they can get close inshore with the big ships of the Iron Fleet.”
She nodded. And then she stopped and looked out to sea, trying to do what her nuncle Rodrik was doing, trying to look calm.
But then she heard the sound of a galloping horse and after a moment a man came into sight on a blowing little horse. “My Lord? Word from the lookout. The enemy has been sighted.”
Lord Harlaw nodded curtly and then stood up, before reaching out and picking up his helm. It seemed different and she squinted at it. Ah. It had an eagle on the faceplate. Her uncle saw her look and smiled slightly. “It seemed fitting,” he muttered, before loosening his sword a little in its sheath and picking up his shield. “Always liked watching sea eagles.”
She smiled, hefted her own shield, picked up her plainer helmet and then joined him in walking down the track that led to the cove. As they went they both exchanged words with the men waiting at the sides of the track, all dressed in armour and carrying spears and shields. The blacksmiths and armourers had been working at all hours the past days.
But the real weapons were the other ones and she winced a little at the thought.
By the time that they arrived at the cove they could see the line of longboats on the horizon. They had their sails furled – the wind was set wrong to use them – and the oars were being used, long sweeps driving the boats into the bay.
“What’s the count?” Asha called up to one of the men who were climbing up the cliffs to one side with bows slung at their backs.
The man squinted at the horizon. “About forty of them, Captain. Aye, and it’s the Iron Fleet. Seen them before.”
She sighed. Well, she’d known that it was coming. That said, the knowledge didn’t make it any better.
Her uncle paced from side to side, issuing orders, settling any disputes between men who disagreed with each other and generally setting an example. And then he led her to one side, to a small rise that overlooked the cove.
“They’re coming straight for us. Not the harbour then.”
“As I said – Victarion can see a certain distance but no further. And he’ll have his best men with him.” He sighed. “Of all your father’s brothers I always liked him the best. Not a clever man, but not a cruel one, by his standards at least. A direct man. Not an idiot like Balon, or insane like Damphair, or… or whatever twisted thing Euron is.”
Asha found herself nodding. Aye, that covered her father and his brothers quite well. She looked up at the headland above them. “Fires are lit.”
“Good. Everyone has their orders. The timing is important. We have to make sure that they’re committed.” He paused. “Normally I’d pray to the Drowned God for success. Heh. Who should I pray to today?”
She paused – and then she shook her head. What to say? Pray to the Seven? Surely not. Pray to some trees? Too strange. “Pray to live, Nuncle. Pray to live.”
“Aye.”
And all they could then do was wait. Wait as the incoming ships came closer and closer, wait as the drumming on the ships to keep the rowers in unison on the ships grew into a boom-boom-boom that echoed off the cliffs.
“I see Victarion,” Nuncle Rodrik muttered quietly. “Kraken helm and all.” He placed his own helm on his head, but kept the faceplate raised as he dealt with the buckle.
In the ships came, spreading out a little. Boom-boom-boom went the drums, louder and louder and then her uncle drew his sword. “Spears and shields! Spears and shields!”
There was a rumble and a clatter as the men ran down the track and then formed a shield wall, spears upright. Just enough men. Just enough to look like a panicked detachment from the harbour. The reserves were hidden further up.
The drums kept booming, kept coming. And then Asha hissed as first one and then two and then three ships seemed to shudder and all but stop, the oars flailing in chaos. The masts waved with the shock and in one case a man fell out of the crow’s nest. Four ships, no, five, six and seven. Screams could be heard and the first of the longships to stop had a list already.
She parted her lips in a snarl. Days before, at low tide, they’d hammered wooden A-frames into the sand and mud, supporting long pointed spars with iron tips specially wrought for them, all pointing out to sea.
And ship after ship were impaled on them. Not every ship though. For every one that stopped and shuddered two more slipped through, with men at the prows and screaming directions for the helmsmen.
“One in the three, just one in three,” she lamented. “I wanted half of them.”
“We take what we can get,” he uncle chided her. “Get that helm on. Victarion’s coming.”
She looked and swore slightly. Yes, her other uncle was pacing about on the prow of his ship, waving his arms and shouting. “Now?”
“Not yet. A little longer.”
The first ships of the Iron Fleet reached the shingle as their oars drove them onshore – and then the first men started leaping off the ships and into the surf, running up the beach as they drew their swords and hefted shields. Some hefted their short spears. The usual Ironborn spears.
“Ready!” Uncle Rodrik bellowed. The long spears came down. Longer than usual. “Reserves up!”
More men thundered into the shield wall, more spears came down. There was a long, singing moment of tension and then, as the first of her Father’s men started to approach them, Lord Harlaw raised his sword. “NOW!”
There was a pause as the men on the cliffs passed on the word – and then the bows started to sing, before the other noise happened. The ‘thump’ of the catapults. There were five of them, all that they’d been able to build in the time. Five catapults and seven scorpions. Stones were hurled through the air, stone and great red-hot iron-tipped bolts, all at the other ships as they approached the shore. Most missed. Some hit. More screams. More ships slewing about or starting to list.
Spears met spears and came back red. The longer spears tended to win, but it was not a one-sided process. She looked at the men and then at the others forming up on the beach. Archers, being shouted at by Victarion. She pointed at them, but before she could utter a word orders were being shouted on the cliffs. Arrows sheeted down and then a great stone impacted in the middle of the enemy archers, sending sand everywhere.
Men were screaming all kinds of things. “The Drowned God!” came from the beach, whilst “Harlaw!” and even “The Reader!” came from the shield wall. She nodded at her uncle and then ran down to the wall to encourage the men, realising after a moment that he was at her heels.
“Push!” She bellowed. “Push!”
It was an eternity of fighting after that. She felt rather than heard the stones of the catapults going overhead, heading for the other ships, the snap of the scorpion bolts as they hissed through the air. The enemy had scorpions too, but they were running out of ships. Men with swords tried to beat their way through the spears, and those were the men she killed. Sometimes they had faces they she recognised.
And then she heard the voice. The bellows. Victarion Greyjoy was staggering forwards, a great axe with a wicked blade in one hand and a shield with many arrows embedded in it in the other. His helm was a ruined thing, missing half the limbs of the kracken and there was blood running down his face as he bellowed like a maddened bull.
But then there was an answering shout. Uncle Rodrik was there, his sword in one hand and his shield in the other, his faceplate down. He slammed into Victarion, making the bigger man reel backwards, before rallying. The axe swept up and then down – but was met by the sword. This time The Reader staggered back, before slamming into Victarion again. The shield battered into him and then the sword bit into Victarion’s elbow. The bellow redoubled as the axe wavered – and then a spear came in from one side and punched into Victarion’s knee, at the join of the plate armour he was wearing.
Her uncle screamed, before Lord Harlaw’s sword came down again and slammed into what remained of Victarion’s helm. The impact threw his head back – and then he slumped to his knees and then onto his side.
“HARLAW!” The cry burst from a hundred, no, two hundred throats or more. The men from the Ironfleet were retreating now, running for their ships, running from the thirsty spears and the hungry arrows.
She could hear horns in the distance and she looked seawards. The ships of Harlaw were at the entrance to the cove and she found a strange feeling sweeping over her. Joy and mourning. This was victory. But victory at a terrible cost to the Iron Islands.
Gods damn her father.
Chapter Text
Robb
When they first caught sight of the Nightfort a large part of the party paused a little to stare at it. It was a ruin indeed, with broken walls and roofs jabbing up into the sky. Here and there they could see new timbers and roof tiles though. The damage of centuries was being patched up, slowly it seemed, but it was being repaired.
But as they drew closer to it, the more he felt that something was wrong. “Ser Alliser,” he called out to the sour-faced man, “Is there supposed to be a party of your men at the Nightfort? I can’t see anyone there.”
The master-at-arms at Castle Black shot him a look that seemed to combine surprise and very grudging respect. “I was thinking the same thing. There’s supposed to be a party of builders and volunteers there, twenty strong.”
“Why so few?”
A glower and then a shrug. “Nightfort’s the oldest of the castles. Biggest of them too. The resources needed to get it habitable would be enough to restore two or even three of the others. We’ve got more volunteers coming in, but for the time being we’ve just got enough men there to repair the worst of it and just make a small part of it ready for when we send more men and resources to the bloody place.” He peered at the approaching gates. “No smoke coming from it. No sign of a man on the gate. Nothing. I don’t like it.”
He nodded and then turned to Theon. “There might be trouble up ahead. Keep that bow of yours at hand and watch the upper parts of the building. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
Theon nodded at him and then slowly unslung his bow. “Let the direwolves loose as we approach the gates?”
It was a good idea and he nodded, before looking over at Jon. His brother seemed to sense something wrong as well, judging by the frown on his face, and they exchanged a nod. Brother. Jon was his brother, no matter what anyone said should the secret ever come out.
The Wildlings seemed to sense something as well as they approached the gates. Ygritte’s bow came out as well, casually, whilst Tormund Giantsbane seemed to be sniffing a lot, as if he was trying suck sustenance out of the very air through his beard.
The courtyard was deserted, but was at least clear of obstacles. He could see that trees had once been growing through the flagstones but that they had all been levelled and then cleared completely and the wood stacked up to be reused eventually. Scaffolding could be seen in what looked like the great hall.
Most of the party dismounted, with the exception of Tyrion Lannister and Val, both of whom were looking about with frowns. All three direwolves were on the ground and were looking about with ears pricked and whiskers whiffling as they sniffed the wind.
It was Grey Wind who stiffened first and then sniffed at something on the ground, before looking up at him. He took a long step over and looked down. There was a smear of blood on the ground. Looking up he peered at Theon, who was apparently fiddling with something on his saddle, using the horse to conceal the fact that he was actually fitting an arrow to his bow. ‘Being watched,’ Theon mouthed to him. ‘Two archers on the roof.’
He nodded slightly, before looking at Ser Alliser and the others. They were tense as well and as he looked at them he could see that the bloody man was on the point of shouting a challenge to whoever was out there. It was then that the man of the Night’s Watch saw how alert Robb was, as well as Theon’s eyes sliding sideways to the roof. He opened his mouth for a moment – and then he tensed and nodded reluctantly, as if he was ceding command of this situation to Robb.
He clenched his fist as he held it against his chest and then he splayed three fingers at Theon, who nodded. Then two fingers. Then one. As he withdrew his last finger Theon sprang back and the bow sang, before he pulled out another arrow, nocked it and then loosed again.
“To arms!” Robb shouted as he pulled Ice free of his sheath on his horse. Ygritte’s bow was singing as well and there were no fewer than five bodies slumping down, falling down off the roofs and onto the flagstones. They were dressed in furs. Wildlings. They were wildlings.
Seeing movement to one side he turned. A mass of men in furs were emerging from deeper in the Nightfort, led by hulking man who hefted an axe with a long handle. He seemed to have lost a lot of fights, given the scars on his face and the way that he was limping. He was also glaring at Mance Rayder with open hatred.
“Friend of yours? Robb asked drily as he hefted Ice.
“Just a fool who hated the fact that most of his tribe followed me and not him,” Rayder said with a rather unsettling grin on his face as he pulled out his own sword. “Ho! Torgett! Come to lose again?”
“I’m going to gut you like a fish, Rayder,” the hulking man growled. “Taken up with Crows have you? You always were soft.”
“My people are passing through the wall and are safe,” Rayder grinned. “Where’s the rest of your lot? Abandoned North of the Wall? How many have you lost?”
There was no reply, just a bellow and a rush as they came at them. Theon and Ygritte’s bows were singing again, but Robb barked a command to a snarling Grey Wind to stay back, before he faced the man coming at him. He was dressed in all kinds of furs, he had a rusty looking sword in his right hand and Robb swung Ice as Father had taught him, in a forward slash that shattered his enemy’s sword and then bit deeply into his side. The man let out a choked scream and then Robb kicked the blade free and hacked his head off. This seemed to alarm the next man, who made the mistake of checking his rush a little. Ice caught him in the chest and crunched into something, because the man fell where he stood with a spray of blood upwards.
He wrenched the blade free again and set his jaw at the next man, who had a small shield and an axe. The shield shattered when Ice hit it, along with the man’s arm. He screamed and dropped his axe as he clutched at the wound, which was why he never saw the Valyrian steel blade as it met his throat.
Memories were hammering at his mind, memories of the battles he’d fought against the Lannisters. Oxcross came to mind. “The North!” he found himself bellowing, “The North and Winterfell!”
Another man came at him and he swung twice, once to lop the poor bastard’s hand off and again to reduce his face to a bloodied ruin. Men were avoiding him, which was a good thing. He could pick his own fights now.
Not that there were many of them left. Although one of Ser Alliser’s men was down with a head wound that looked fatal the sour looking man was fighting like a man possessed by cold fury, with three bodies at his feet and two in front of his Night’s Watch brother. A very pale Jon had killed two men and Theon’s bow had claimed at least three more.
As for Mance Rayder he was still fighting this Torgett. The King beyond the Wall was unhurt, which was more than could be said for the hulking axeman. He was bloodied and looked as if he was tiring. Which was where he made his fatal mistake. He tried a great overhead blow, but he was too slow. Rayder was faster. His sword slashed out and all of a sudden it was Torgett who was gutted like a fish. He screamed as his entails spattered on the ground and as he screamed everyone paused to stare at him. The screaming ended when Rayder rammed his sword through his throat.
Robb looked about. The fight was leaking out of the remaining wildlings, but as he turned he heard a sudden shout from the gates. There was a party of ten men there, all wildling, who were throwing the carcass of the deer that they had been carrying to one side and drawing their swords. And they were in charging distance of Val and Tyrion Lannister.
He turned and grabbed for his dagger, before throwing straight at the face of the leading wildling, as the three direwolves snarled and darted at the new enemies. The man never saw it coming, the blade slashed into his eye and he screamed and went down. But there were others. Val threw her own dagger, whilst Tyrion Lannister drew his sword – and then there was another shout from the gate and three cloaked and hooded figures were there. Swords shone in the hands of the leading two, whilst the third had daggers that flashed through the air and into the backs of two of the rearmost wildlings, who screamed and then collapsed.
The two swordsmen were obviously friends, or had trained together, because they slammed into the wildlings like a well-trained pair of fighters. And whatever was in the hands of the taller of them, it sheared through the battered weapons that the wildlings held rather like Ice had.
Somehow he found himself in front of Val and as another wildling rushed at them he set his shoulders and unleashed a sideways blow that cut the man almost in half.
And then it was over. The remaining wildlings threw down their weapons and cried for mercy. Robb lowered Ice and stood there panting. There was blood all over the place, not a little on him. Grey Wind and the other direwolves were looking rather pleased with themselves.
“Do you know how close you got to getting a dagger in the back of your head?” Val said acerbically.
He looked at her. “I thought that you threw your only dagger?”
She sent a flat look his way and then all of a sudden there was a throwing dagger in both hands. “You thought wrong.”
He tilted his head and looked at her. She was nothing like any other woman he had ever met. “I did indeed think wrong,” he replied, before nodding at her. “A valuable lesson for me.” She blinked at him as if he had surprised her a little.
“And who,” said Ser Alliser as he stepped forwards, “Might our new ‘friends’ be?” He stared hard at the three at the gates.
The tallest of them sheathed his sword and then pulled his hood down. He was blonde, about ten years older than Father, judging by the touch of grey at his temples, and had a white patch over one eye. “Just some passing travellers,” he said cheerfully. “Why, Tyrion! Hello there!”
Tyrion Lannister stared at the man, who was now framed by two young men, both of whom seemed to have Summer Islander blood in them. When he finally spoke it was at a squeak. “Uncle Gerion?”
“Well-met! Interesting company you came with.” And then he looked about with a smile.
“Uncle Gerion?” The squeak was still there.
“Yes.” Gerion Lannister peered at his nephew. “Are you alright, boy?”
“Uncle Gerion.” The squeak was gone, replaced by flat incredulity.
“Yes. It’s me. Your uncle Gerion.” He spoke as to a small child.
“Uncle Gerion.” And then Tyrion Lannister’s eyes rolled up into his upper eyelids and he slumped over onto the neck of his horse in what looked like a dead faint.
Gerion Lannister darted forwards and caught his nephew just before he fell off. “Well,” he said wryly. “I think he missed me.”
Cat
The Terrible Threesome were playing in the courtyard again, watched discreetly by Jory Cassel and his smiling wife. From the way that young Edric was moving his arms stiffly and shuffling, they were playing Knights and Wights again and she shuddered delicately for a moment. “How quickly they turn terrible things into games,” she muttered. “They’re only boys.”
Someone cleared a throat to one side and she started slightly and looked over. Ah. Luwin had come through the open door and was standing there with his usual look of stoic patience. “I’m sorry my Lady, I did knock, but you seemed intent on the view, so I entered.” Heeding her nod of apology he walked up and looked out of the window. “Ah. Knights and Wights again?”
“It’s just a game to them,” she sighed. “Just a game. They don’t understand the danger do they?”
“They’re young, my Lady,” Luwin sighed. “They think that their fathers are giants who will beat back any threat. They see no danger. Not yet, not truly.”
She sighed and then shook her head. “When the winter comes, if it is a second Long Night, who know when it will end? By that end…. We might see all three of them wielding swords for real. It chills my heart Luwin.”
He looked at her with sympathy in his eyes. “No parent ever wants to see their child go off to fight a war my Lady. But there are times when it must happen, no matter much you might not want to see it.”
There was a long pause and then she nodded. “Aye. How go things anyway?”
The Maester removed a book from under his arm and then placed it on the table. “The amount of land under the plough for the harvest to come is... something of a record one. The number of people who are sowing what they can where they can is astonishing my lady. And with so much being brought in by these volunteers, well, there will be no shortage of seed any time soon. Barley, oats, grain... it is all being grown. And those rich enough to have the glass houses are taking full use of them. All kinds of requests and notifications are coming in as well. The Umbers are even talking about breeding a shaggier kind of cow for the winters to come.”
She looked up from her perusal of the book. “Shaggier cow?”
“One with longer hair my Lady.”
“Very well,” she said, feeling faintly bewildered. “Tell them to do their best.” Then she paused. “What news of the Company of the Rose?”
“They are about ten days travel away.”
She sighed. “Odd to think of so many cousins to the nobles of the North being so far away, and for so long.”
The Maester of Winterfell pulled a slight face. “I must confess, my Lady, that I had wondered the same thing. There are certain... oddities of timing to their existence that I find of interest.”
Cat looked up again sharply. “Such as?”
“The founding of the company was so very close to the capitulation of the last King in the North. That is... interesting. No other families from Westeros saw family members go in such numbers. I wonder why? And given the book in the hidden room detailing what they seemed to be earning... well, I think that their leader needs to be asked about the reason behind the founding of the company. There seems to have been closer links between it and Winterfell than many might have thought.”
That was indeed interesting and she paused to think about it. “I think that might be something to ask them about. I just wish that Ned – I mean Lord Stark – was home by the time that they arrive.”
Luwin nodded sombrely – and then there was the sound of a knock at the door. They both looked over to see a rather sullen-looking Arya standing there. “You asked to see me, Mother?”
“I did. Come in and close the door behind you.”
Arya obeyed orders, shooting the occasional glower at her and Maester Luwin, although she seemed to be glad that it was just those two adults she was facing.
Cat sat down in her chair and then, when Arya also sat in front of her, did her best to give her second daughter a hard stare. Arya seemed to be a bit restless at first – and then she stopped, straightened and much to Cat’s surprise stared back.
“Arya,” she said eventually, “Septa Mordane has been to see me. She is very disappointed in you. You seem to be refusing to learn any of her lessons and she’s upset.”
Arya seemed to droop slightly before bristling a little. “I’m very sorry for upsetting her,” she said stiffly after a long moment. “But I’m not learning anything useful from her.”
She frowned slightly. “What do you mean useful?”
This time Arya rolled her eyes. “Useful, Mother. All she teaches me is embroidery, and morals, and what the Seven think.”
Cat counted to ten in her head and then looked severely at her daughter. “Arya, that’s what she’s here to teach you.”
Arya sent back a flat glare. “What, how to be a lady?”
“Yes, Arya, you-”
“But I don’t want to be a lady. That’s not what I want at all. And given what’s coming, why should I need to be a Lady?”
Cat rocked back in her seat a little, astonished by Arya’s vehemence. “Arya,” she tried to rally, “You are my daughter and you-”
“I am a Stark of Winterfell. I do not need to be a lady, I need to be a Stark. Winter is coming! That’s our motto isn’t it? Well, I need to be a proper Stark! I don’t need to know about embroidery, or the Seven Pointed Star! I need to know about how to use a sword and a spear and to ride a horse! And I need to know about the Old Gods, not the New! I’ve seen the Old Gods speak through the mouth of my Father and my brother, so I’ve heard them!” It was an extraordinary outburst, at first spoken and then rising to a shout at the end, and afterwards her daughter sat there and looked faintly terrified – but also very resolute.
“Arya,” she replied eventually through a very dry mouth, “You do need to be a lady. You have certain obligations as a daughter of Lord Stark and-”
“Mother, a long winter is coming, it might be that another Long Night is coming. The Others are coming. I know it. You know it. Everyone knows it. If the Wall falls, and the Others besiege Winterfell with an army of wights, what am I supposed to do? Embroider something and throw it at the nearest wight? I need to know how to fight. I am a Stark. I am a warg!” And after saying that last impassioned word she went as white as a sheet.
“Arya,” Cat chided, “Just because you found that crypt with those tombs, that does not mean that you are a warg!”
“Then why did the Old Gods call me a warg when they took Jon over?”
She paused as her thoughts tumbled over a precipice. “I don’t know but-”
“Mother I am a warg! So is Bran! And we need to learn how to warg better! Can Septa Mordane teach us that? No!” And with that her daughter sprang up and ran from the room, her eyes filled with tears.
“Arya!” Cat cried after her, in vain. “ARYA!” But she was gone. Cat passed a despairing hand over her eyes. “Maester Luwin, what is to be done with her?”
There was a pause and then she looked at the Maester, who looked deeply troubled. “Luwin? What is it?”
The older man pulled a slight face. “Given what has happened of late, well – I would take her claim seriously. Much has woken up of late my Lady. Why should we not think that she – and Bran – could be wargs?”
She thought about it for a long moment. There had been a time, not too long ago, when she would have dismissed it instantly. But now... “I think I need to talk to her again.”
Tyrion
It was possibly the oddest dream he had ever had. He could see Uncle Gerion peering down at him and asking him if he was alright, before turning into a bird and flying away. And then Father appeared and started to shout at him, only it wasn’t really Father, it was someone who sounded like Ser Alliser Thorne, who was shouting at Mance Rayder about wildling treachery, only to have Rayder reply that he’d killed three of them himself, so could he please shut up. And then, finally, there was the sound of Poderick Payne asking if there was a well nearby.
At which point he opened his eyes and stared blearily at the sky. Urgh. What had happened? He was lying down on something very cold and flat. Oh wait, flagstones. He sat up and discovered that Mance Rayder, Ser Alliser Thorne and Robb Stark were having a very intense conversation about the corpses that lay all over the place.
“Are you alright my Lord?” The words came from a rather worried Poderick, who was clutching a bucket and looking at him in a very concerned manner.
“My… my uncle. I had the oddest dream. I saw my dead uncle Gerion,” Tyrion all but stammered in reply. “And he was here. Wait… how did I get to the ground? Did I fall off my horse?”
“If I said that it wasn’t a dream, will you faint again?” The question came from behind him and the voice was that of Uncle Gerion. Tyrion froze in place and then very carefully turned his head to look behind him. It was in fact Uncle Gerion. “Good Gods,” he whispered – and then he stood up and peered at the other man, who was watching him worriedly. “Is it… is it really you?”
“Well, who else would I be?” Gerion asked the question with a baffled frown, before smiling in that crooked way that he sometimes had. “Hello Tyrion. How have you been?”
He thought about that for a long moment, before standing up and walking over. “I thought,” he said hoarsely, “That you were dead, Uncle Gerion. Dead. Where… where have you been?”
Gerion sighed deeply and then scowled at his feet for a moment. Tyrion looked at him during that moment. His uncle was a little thinner than he remembered – and then there was that eyepatch, with appeared to be a scar visible on the skin by the top and bottom of it.
Finally he looked up again. “I was in the Summer Islands,” Gerion said eventually. “I’ve been there for some time now. With my family there.”
Tyrion blinked at him. “Your family there? What family?”
Gerion looked to one side and gestured for the young man who was standing to one side and looking awkward to join them. He was almost as tall as his uncle, with dark blonde hair and… oh yes. This was interesting. He was only half-Westerosi. What was the other half?
“This is my son, Allarion. And Allarion – this is your cousin Tyrion.”
The younger man did not stare. He merely smiled politely, ducked his head a little and held out his hand. “Honoured to meet you cousin.”
“Honoured to meet you, cousin,” Tyrion answered, shaking hands with more than a little bemusement. “Uncle – would you mind explaining a few things, such as the fact that Cousin Allarion here must have been born long before you went missing in the Smoking Sea?”
His uncle coughed a little at that, before looking around. More than a few of the others were watching their reunion and he sighed. “Let’s get somewhere more comfortable shall we? This will be a long tale.”
They moved towards the great hall there, a place that had seen some repairs. Poderick – or Pod as he needed to be called, as ‘Poderick’ was far too long a name for his face – scurried about as he first peered up the chimney and then kindled a fire in it to cook their food, whilst Mance Rayder and Ser Alliser Thorne supervised the assembling and burning of the various bodies.
The Starks and the others watched – and listened quietly as Uncle Gerion sat down on a bench that looked as if it had been repaired recently. As for Tyrion he sat on a very battered stool and watched at his uncle made himself comfortable, pulling the sword at his side to one side. Tyrion eyed that sword carefully. He’d seen it shatter weapons. It had to be Valyrian steel, surely.
After a long moment his uncle took off a locket that had been hanging around his neck, hidden by his shirt, and opened it, before handing it over to him. Inside was a little painting of a woman. She had dark skin, brown hair and a brilliant smile.
“Her name,” said Uncle Gerion in a voice that combined wistfulness and love, “Is Allara. I met her, oh, just before Robert’s Rebellion started. I was in Myr, on a trade mission for your father. She was there on a trade mission from the Summer Islands for her own father. We met, we talked, we haggled – and somewhere along the way we discovered that we had that most dangerous of things, the same sense of humour. That led to a connection, and then an attraction and then… well, you can guess where I’m going with this.”
“You fell in love,” Tyrion smiled. His uncle had had such a look on his face when he has mentioned Allara that he barely knew him for that moment, a look of tenderness and memory.
“I fell in love. For two weeks I wandered about like a love-dazed child. I wanted to marry her straight away. And then I realised something. That-”
“Father would never have agreed to your marrying her.” He said the words with a great deal of bitterness. “Father has… views… on marriage alliances conducted without him.”
“I know, Tyrion. And them, in a moment of absolute clarity, I knew that I had to keep Allara safe from your father. That Tywin could never know about her. So I never told anyone about her. Every time I went to Essos on business, or looking for evidence of Tommen’s Fleet and Brightroar, I would find the time to meet her. She gave me Allarion and other children that you’ll one day meet. And oddly enough she didn’t agree to marry me at first. She’d love me and bear my children, but… well, the Summer Islands are a different place.
“And every time I went back to Casterly Rock I’d smile and watch my language and give every impression that I was the same old Gerion. I think that Tygett suspected before he died, but he never said anything. And yes, that… meeting that led to Joy being born was a ruse to put your father off. Allara knew. It was her idea.”
The sound of bodies being dragged off came to one side and they looked over to see that the last of the dead wildlings were being pulled over to a makeshift pyre by the remaining live wildlings.
“Anyway,” Gerion said as he watched. “The irony of my time in the Summer Islands with Allara and our growing family was that it gave me a missing piece in the puzzle of what had happened to our ancestor and his fleet. I found by chance a reference in a log from about the right time written by a captain of a swan ship that said that he had seen a storm-battered fleet with red sails being driven by high winds to the South-East of the islands. And on the sails were golden lions.
“We always thought that Tommen II must have left Volantis with his fleet and gone East. We never thought about if he’d gone South instead first, and then been caught in a storm. So on my last voyage East I bought a ship and recruited a crew.”
Tyrion ran a hand over his stubble. “That would seem logical,” he muttered, thinking about the map of the area. “The Smoking Sea is particularly bad in the West. But I’m confused. Father traced you and your ship to Volantis, not the Summer Islands, where half your crew mutinied and you were forced to replace them with slaves.”
Gerion scratched his eyebrow and coughed in a rather embarrassed manner. “Yes, that was a mistake of mine. Some of the idiots claimed that they thought that I had not been serious about going to the Smoking Sea. When I said otherwise… well, it made for an interesting few days.” He peered at Tyrion. “So, your father sent men to find out what had happened to me? Was he really searching for me, or for word on if I’d found Brightroar and then vanished?”
This was enough to earn his uncle a pointed look at the sword at his side. “Uncle, you do seem to have a sword of Valyrian steel, or something like it, at your side…”
His uncle’s bark of laughter drew many looks from the others. Gerion grinned and then raised a hand. “I’ll get to that part later. In the meantime, yes, I recruited slaves. And the moment that they set foot on my ship I freed the lot of them. Told them to their faces. Some cried, some laughed because they didn’t believe me and then cried…” His face worked for a moment. “You had to be there,” he said eventually. “Freedom given to a slave… well, you had to be there.
“Anyway, I had a plan for the Smoking Sea. I’d read a lot about it. I even went to the Citadel. Something had struck me about it, about the links between it and Blackwater Bay, in the waters around Dragonstone. The Spears of the Merling King in fact.”
Tyrion blinked. “Erm… Ah. The same kind of rock formations? Dragonstone has a fire-mountain, erm, what the Maesters call a volcano, that hasn’t erupted in centuries but…”
“Tyrion, some of the areas around that island are avoided by sailors that know the seas there. There are tales of the seas boiling near there in the past. If the sailors know which areas to avoid, I realised that I could learn to do the same in the Smoking Sea. I had a plan. I needed to map out where it was safe to sail through and where was too dangerous.”
He thought about that for a moment. “Uncle, that’s positively brilliant. How?”
“We set sail from the Summer Islands and found an island on the edge of the Smoking Sea that had a good-sized hill. And then I sat up there, with the best Myrish glass I could get and a map and those of my crew with the best eyesight and I spent three days mapping every disturbance, every place where the sea boiled, or spat rocks, or even breathed fire. And we also looked for an island as tall as the one we were on, so that we could do the same thing further into the Smoking Sea.”
He paused. “And we needed to. There was another ship in port when we left the Summer Islands, a Volantene whose captain laughed a lot at me and said that he had eyes like a cat and that he’d beat me to Valyria. Two weeks into the trip, after we’d hopped from island to island to island, we passed some floating wreckage. Part of the planking was charred and there was the body of a badly burnt man lashed to it. From the colour of the planking it was all that was left of the Volantene.
“Once they realised what I was doing there was no further problem with the crew by the way. Lots of fascination, combined with them using their own eyes. We went deeper and deeper into the Smoking Sea, going from island to island, inspecting the area around us carefully.” He rubbed his chin and sent a rather rueful glance at Tyrion. “We saw many things, but one of them… do you remember when I once had to tell you that you couldn’t be a dragonrider because there were no more dragons?”
“Yes,” he replied wryly. “Although there are odd reports from Pentos that Daenerys Targaryen has three baby dragons at the moment.”
“Yes, I heard that too. But there are others out there. I know, I’ve seen one that seemed bigger than the tales say that Balerion the Black Dread was. We saw it from a distance, this great dark shape in the sky, bigger than any creature I’ve ever seen, living or dead. It didn’t make a noise other than the beating of its wings. It didn’t deign to notice us. It just sailed over us and vanished into the clouds, leaving us speechless and not a little terrified.”
There was a dead silence in the great hall as everyone stared at Gerion Lannister. “You’ve seen a true dragon, Ser Gerion?” Jon Stark asked. He seemed very pale for some reason. Then he nodded. “Your pardon. I am Jon Stark.”
“I have. And that was not the last time that I saw the creature. Where was I? Ah yes. We went deeper and deeper into the Smoking Sea, mapping the seas around each island. It wasn’t easy and there were two times where the seas ahead were so unpredictable – they boiled at all kinds of times without any warning at all – that we had to change course. But we were getting closer and closer to our goal – Valyria.
“And then we finally approached the place that I’d been eyeing for days – a great crag standing proud in the sea, with a ruin on the top of it. It had been a stronghold built by the Valyrians. Its name was long since lost, but there was a dock on its Southern side and stairs that snaked up the side of the cliffs. We had about a month’s worth of food, but I was still getting worried about how much longer we could stay there in the Smoking Sea and I really wanted to see that view from the top of it.
“There was a lot of wreckage outside the dock and I was a bit worried about getting into it, but we managed it.” Gerion paused and smiled slightly. “If only I’d looked more closely at that wreckage. Ach, never mind. We moored the ship and I took some of my men up those steps to the top of the crag. Made it with my legs burning and my chest heaving from all those steps, but the view… Gods. We could see for miles around up there. The ruin was behind us, a wrecked building with huge walls, but we could so much from there. And then I saw it, just for a moment. To the North I saw ruined towers, like broken fingers jutting into the sky, with a terrible red glow behind it, before the clouds hid it. I have seen Valyria, Tyrion. Just for a moment, but I’ve seen the place where the Doom happened.”
The room was silent again as all stared at Gerion Lannister. He looked around at them and smiled slightly. “And then came the price,” he sighed. “We headed down the stairs again to the dock when… when they attacked us.” His voice wavered for a moment at the ‘they’.
“Who?” Robb Stark asked from where he was sitting next to the Wildling girl Val.
“I don’t know who they had once been. I just know that they were more ‘what’. They’d been men once. Now… well, their heads were not human. They had been... changed. Some had the heads of dogs, or similar creatures, or wolves. Some had the heads of lizards. They were led by two great men with the heads of bulls, holding great two-headed axes, and behind them all stood what I thought at the time was the oldest man I’d ever seen, a hunched man dressed in black. His face was so wrinkled I could barely see his eyes and all he ever did was point with a gnarled finger.
“They overwhelmed us. We weren’t expecting a fight, all most of us had on us were daggers and knives. They killed some of us, but they were trying to take us prisoner, not kill us all. Something got me at the back of my head and when I came to I and the others were being dragged into tunnels in the base of the crag that we hadn’t noticed, and then up stairs lit by driftwood torches.
“Eventually we reached a great hall with pillars and at the end was a dais and a chair and a man that realised was the actual oldest person I’d ever seen. He was dressed in what might once have been white robes, but which were now filthy and… well, he looked like a madder and more ancient version of Aerys Targaryen. Long white hair, eyes that were wide and bloodshot, fingernails that were long and twisted. Oh and he was far madder than Aerys had even been. Aerys had been sane compared with this lunatic. All he spoke was Old High Valyrian and the only volume he knew was the top of his voice. The last Dragonlord he called himself, but if he had a name he never said it. I just named him the lunatic. We were traitors, he said, traitors and spies and thieves, trying to take his great work from him, or at least that was what I thought he said. They dragged us from the room and into a large cell.”
His uncle paused for a long moment and then accepted a wineskin from his son, who was watching him worriedly. “Thank you my boy,” he said after drinking. He smiled at Tyrion. “He worries about me sometimes. This is the part of the tale that starts to bring back nightmares sometimes. We were prisoners for days, fed with our own supplies. What the guards ate I’ll never know, nor do I want to know. Every other day they took one or two of my men and never brought them back. We didn’t know what had happened to them until the fourth day. I saw a new guard, a man with the face of something like a boar. And on his forearm he had a tattoo of a mermaid. I remembered that tattoo. It had been on the arm of one of the crewmen that had taken away. And then I knew what they were doing to my men.
“I went a bit mad at that point. Roaring and screaming, bellowing for that madman to come down. I made so much noise that the old man in black, the Steward as we had named him, came and stared at me and then flickered a finger for the guards to grab me.
“They dragged me before the lunatic on his throne and I tried to free myself and kill him. He laughed at me as I raged and swore vengeance on him, which made me even angrier until eventually I swore that I wouldn’t rest until he was dead, that I, Gerion Lannister, would come at him with everything I had. He laughed even harder at that, almost gleefully. “Another lion,” he crowed, and then he giggled something about new for old and then something about lion meat being all the better for dragons. And then his mood changed and he started shouting some mad rant at the Steward as I was dragged back to the dungeon.
“They took no more of my men after that. They left us alone. But two days afterwards the Steward came to the dungeon. He didn’t say a word, he just stared at me for a while and then left. For two days after that he did the same thing. On the fourth day he finally said a single word: “Lannis-is-ter.” He spoke in a voice that was old and unused, as if he hadn’t spoken in years.
“I just stared at him. “Yes,” I said. “I am a Lannister. I am Gerion Lannister.”
“He stared back at me. “Does… does… Casterly… Rock still… stand?”
“I gaped at him, I confess it. “Yes,” I said, “It does.” And he looked at me, and then he hung his head and left.
“The day after that… well, we all woke up at the same moment, because we could all hear the voice of the lunatic. He was chanting something, chanting it in a variant of High Valyrian that set the hairs on the back of neck on end because there was something dark and terrible about it. He called to the Valyrian Gods by name, in a way that made me shiver. And he was calling on them for a boon. A service. I listened to that mad voice speaking that invocation and I realised that it was a spell. We’d been working on some metal spindles we’d found hinging a box of supplies and some other pieces of metal that we’d been hoarding and we thought that we had enough to try and force the lock when the guards weren’t looking.
“We didn’t need to. Suddenly there was a clatter down the corridor and then the Steward was there. He had a key in his hand and he unlocked the door and gestured to us. “Come,” he said, “Come.”
“As we surged out I looked down the corridor and I saw two guards on the floor to the left. They had bowls in their hands and the Steward saw where I was looking. “Poison,” he said, and then: “Come. You… must go. He thinks… he has… what he needs. A spell. Come. Weapons.” And then he led us all down the corridor, hobbling like the ancient old man that he was.
“He led us to another room, which he unlocked for us. It was filled with weapons, Tyrion. Weapons and armour from all over Essos and Westeros. Who knows how many ships had docked at that crag in the past? My men fell on everything with glee. The Steward pulled me to one side though. “Spell is… a summoning.” He seemed to be getting more and more voluble with time. “He summons The Greater… Doomwing. A wild, feral, dragon. He seeks to enslave… its mind. Dangerous. He needs a noble blood… sacrifice.” And then he led me to the back of the room. There was a long shape on a shelf at the back there, something wrapped in a faded red piece of cloth. He took it and he gave it to me.
“I unwrapped it and then I saw what was in it. I almost reeled, I knew what it was at once. Brightroar.” He pulled out the sword and held it tip down to the floor. “The sword of Tommen II, King of the Westerlands before the Conquest. I looked at it and up into the face of the Steward. He covered my hands as they gripped the sword with his own and looked back at me. “I hope that you wield it with more… wisdom than I did when I… bore it.” There were tears rolling down his face. “Pray in the Stone Garden for me. My folly led to a punishment that was… cruel. Long and cruel. Tell them… I died with honour.”
“I wanted to ask who he was, because I only had one possible name in mind, but then he turned and walked from the room. “That way,” he said, gesturing to the left. “Down four flights of stairs. Then right. Your ship is there.” And then he was gone, heading right, deeper into the crag.”
Gerion sighed and resheathed the sword, before swallowing some more wine. “We made it two flights down before the guards discovered us. There was a roar and a clatter of boots and they were on us. But unlike before we were ready. And we knew that it was fight or die – or worse. We fought like wild animals and they quailed at sight of our swords and our bared teeth. We slaughtered all who came before us. Down we fought. Another level. And then another.
“The first of the bull-headed men found us there. He killed two of my men with that axe of his before I could finally fall on him with my bosun at my side. My bosun got that bastard in the side with a spear and then I got him in the stomach and gutted him.
“The second found us in the passage that led to the ship. He was older I think and more experienced. He killed three of us and then hacked the tip of my bosun’s spear off. And then I faced him. That was a hard fight, even with Brightroar in my hand. He was good, very skilled and he shattered my shield with one blow and almost stunned me with a blow to my helmet with another. But then he gave me the smallest of openings, just the smallest and I took it. Brightroar caught him in the neck and he started to bleed. He roared with fury and I caught him again. Someone got him in the leg with a spear and as he went down on one knee I got him again in the throat. But killing him made me vulnerable to a last final slash as he used his dagger. Cost me my eye.” Gerion’s hand went to the eyepatch, a hand that shook a little.
“The guards broke after that. They ran. We headed to the ship and discovered that it was intact. They’d taken some supplies to feed us, but that was it. I was bleeding badly and sitting by the tiller as the crew ran like madmen to unmoor the ship and raise a small sail to get us around and out of the dock without hitting anything.
“The voice of the lunatic was still booming around us and then all of a sudden I saw a shape in the clouds. That dragon was there, the huge one. It was flying slowly towards the crag and as it flew it shook its head and screamed in what was perhaps pain, or anger – I don’t know what. All I know is that the moment we saw it we all sprang to the sheets in panic. I was pulling on ropes as we raised sail at a speed that was very dangerous in such a small space, but we managed it. I collapsed by the tiller again, blood running down my face as watched the cliffs go past with greater and greater speed.
“And then two things happened. The first was that I saw that one of the wrecked ships at the entrance had faded – very faded – red sails and a figurehead that was a lion. The second thing was that the voice faltered and then stopped. There was a scream of pain and then a bellow of rage about traitors. I think I knew then that the Steward was dead. And then there was another pause and then the lunatic started chanting again, but now there was a desperation about it, an air of panic, as if he was trying to control something with his voice alone, that things had gone horribly wrong, because he knew that we had escaped. And then… then there was this… noise.
“It was as if the dragon was screaming but then the scream changed and became a roar and then something deeper and more terrible and… then the top of the crag just vanished in a great ball of fire and flame and disintegrating rock. The noise was… indescribable. It was as if the sky itself had screamed, a noise that shook the boat and sea and all of us. The ball of fire turned to smoke and then we could see the bits and pieces of debris hurtling through the air up – and then down. I remember screaming orders when the first pieces splashed and roared into the water around us. Pieces of rock, dressed stone, wood and… well it must have been bits of dragon. And a lot of it was smoking or actually still on fire.
“My memories get a bit hazy from then onwards. Two men were killed or injured badly by falling debris and then… then I remember nothing. Apparently I collapsed. They got me to my cabin, dressed my wounds and then, whilst I lay there dead to the world, my bosun plotted a course to get us away from that accursed place and back to the Summer Islands as fast as possible.
“They told me later that fever almost killed me not once but twice. All I remember is a lot of very bad dreams. When they got me to Allara… well, I thought that she was nothing but a cruel hallucination dreamt up by my mind. Her sister is their equivalent of a Maester of healing though and between them they nursed me back to health. As you can see!” He grinned wryly at him.
Tyrion sat back and blinked. Uncle Gerion’s tale was… astonishing. “And you’ve been there ever since?” It was a question that had to be asked.
“Yes.” Gerion stared at his feet for a long moment and then looked up at him. “I almost died Tyrion. And for what? A sword. My Allara and my children almost lost me. That puts a lot of things into perspective. Home. What does that mean? In my case – my family. My children. So I stayed with them. And I knew that it was the right thing to do because it was then that Allara agreed to marry me. She knew that I realised where I had to be from now onwards.” He paused and then smirked a little. “You have more than a few cousins now. Including at least one that should have been born by now.”
Allarion looked intensely embarrassed by that. “Father,” he started to say, “Do you have tell-”
“Do I have to tell people that? Yes, I do! I’m proud of it! Don’t blush, boy. Your parents have sex a lot. Stop being so Westerosi.”
Someone snorted with laughter to one side and Mance Rayder walked off with Tormund Giantsbane next to him muttering about Kneelers and their prudish ways.
However, Tyrion looked at Brightroar. “That Steward… his words… he couldn’t have been… could he?”
“I don’t know, Tyrion,” Gerion said sombrely. “I’ve always wondered. Valyria was a strange place that used magic more than we might have thought. Used it in ways that we can’t even imagine. The man who called himself the last Dragonlord – who knows who he was really? Or how old? There’s a theory in the Summer Islands that the Doom was caused by the Dragonlords overreaching themselves, trying to cast a magic that caused the land itself to revolt. Maybe that’s true. All I know is that magic is strong there. And that all things come with a cost attached.”
And with that Gerion stood. “Right. So – what’s for lunch?”
Chapter 28: Robb Returns 28
Chapter Text
Ned
The line of Wildlings never seemed to end. They came through the gate at Castle Black as a long straggling column, all ages, in all kinds of conditions. Some were wounded, some were visibly pulling themselves along through willpower alone, some strode through fast and with grins and others struggled through with grief etched on their faces. And their clothing. Some wore furs that had been stitched together with all kinds of threads, whilst others wore leather or in some cases cloth.
One little group caught his eye. A tall grim-faced woman came through with a small baby in a sling around her neck and a large pack on her back. By her side trudged a small boy pulling a little sled that had a pile of furs on it. All of them looked tired and as the woman looked around Castle Black her face worked for a moment and grief cascaded across it. And then a moment later the mask of tired reserve was back. No-one else was with her. Whoever the father of the children was, there was no sign of him and Ned wondered what the story of that family was.
“Makes you think, doesn’t it?” The words came from Jeor Mormont, who had approached quietly from one side. “Poor buggers.”
“Aye, it does,” Ned sighed in response. “And if we don’t hold the Others here at the Wall then that’s going to be what the people of the North look like as they flee past Moat Cailin. We stand here and we win here, because otherwise…”
The Lord Commander shivered a little. “Aye, and don’t I know it.” He then sighed. “At least some of my men are starting to get his head out of his arse.” He jerked his head to one side and Ned could see one of his senior lieutenants, Quorin Halfhand, standing to one side and watching the Wildlings with a peculiar look to his face.
“What’s up with him?” Ned asked.
“He used to think that the only good Wildling was a dead one. Fair enough, they’ve spent centuries raiding our lands and we’ve spent centuries tracking them down and sticking their heads on spikes. Now, for the first time, he’s having to think of them as people who need to be saved from the Others. Look at the poor bugger’s face. He’s a good man, but once he’s got something in his head it’s hard to shift it. He’ll learn. He’s learning now.”
“Good,” Ned sighed. He hated to think about what must have happened to the Lord Commander in that terrible future that Rob had been sent back from. Rob had had word of a Great Ranging that had gone badly wrong.
There was a pause and then Ned heard a horn sound from the top of the wall. He looked up and frowned. “What was that?”
“Someone trying to get my attention,” Jeor muttered and then he stumped off to the lift. Ned watched him go and then looked back at the flow of men and women as they came through the gate. They included another group of giants and their mammoths and he blinked a little as one of them noticed him and said something to the others, before they all nodded their heads at him ponderously. He nodded back at them and they strode off through the South gate. What was it that they had recognised? His description? Or the Fist of Winter?
He looked down at the great mace. Why had it been hidden away for so long? He had no doubts about using it now, the times required it. But when had his ancestors put it away in that room?
“Ned!” Jeor was shouting his name from the lift as he came down in it. He frowned and then walked over to it.
“What’s wrong?” he asked as he approached the base of the approaching lift.
“There’s a column of men coming in. Odd armour, from the colour of it. They’re bearing peace banners. Based on what some of the Wildlings said, it might be the Thenns.”
Ned paused and then nodded. “Right then. I’d best look impressive shouldn’t I?”
Jeor barked with laughter as he burst out of lift and then looked him up and down. “Not too shabby,” he grunted. “You look a bit thin from all that riding, but you’ll do.” Then he looked around at Castle Black. “The Thenn are coming!”
Some stared, more than a few swore and some gripped the pommels of their swords and looked grim. But the Old Bear’s gaze beat down that of anyone who looked as if they might object.
Ned turned to the gate on the Wall and waited. And then a long double line of men strode through the gate. They were dressed in bronze armour, or what passed for armour, some with leather shirts sewn with bronze discs and scales, and some in bronze cuirasses. All had a shield and a spear, the latter with leaf-shaped heads.
They were led by a tall, lean, man with a shaved head and face. He wore bronze scale armour, bore a spear with an elaborate head and after a moment Ned realised that the man had no ears, just holes in the sides of his head. Frostbite perhaps? The man raised his spear and the men came to a ragged halt.
The leader of the Thenn looked about – and then his eyes fell on Ned and he seemed to collect himself slightly before his chin came up a little and he strode over to him. As he approached Ned could see that the man had been in a fair few fights – and then he was trying very hard not to seem nervous, especially when the man’s eyes darted to the Fist at his waist.
“You are The Stark?” The Thenn spoke in the Old Tongue, the language of the First Men, something that Ned was now very familiar with after all his studies.
“I am The Stark,” he replied in the same language. Placing a hand on the head of the mace at his hip he added: “I bear the Fist of Winter. I am the first Stark in many years to wield it.”
The Thenn nodded slowly, before bowing his head. “I am Styr, Magnar of the Thenn. You… you lead us now. The Long Night is on us, as it was foretold. The Others return, leading dark things. You hold the Fist. Lead us- we will follow.” His face worked for a moment. “We failed you,” he said hoarsely. “We failed you.”
He stared at the earless man who looked so upset. “Failed me? I don’t understand.”
Styr looked up at him. “Your ancestors gave my ancestors duties, long ago. Keep the peace beyond the Wall. Lead the Free Folk in keeping watch. Beware of Hopemourne.” He closed his eyes for a long moment. “We failed to keep the peace and the Free Folk and the Nights’ Watch fell into war. We failed to keep a good watch. Hopemourne awoke and we did not see it.” He bent and laid his spear on the ground in front of him. “My life is yours. I will take your punishment on behalf of my people. My son, Sigorn, will lead the Thenn afterwards.” And then he knelt and bowed his head.
‘By the Old Gods,’ he thought, ‘he expects me to kill him.’ Instead he leant down and picked up the spear. “Stand, Styr, Magnar of the Thenn. The Stark commands it.”
The lean man looked up uncertainly and then stood. Ned looked him in the eye and then handed him the spear. “Much has been forgotten, South of the Wall as well as North. Old alliances must be reforged. My Father was murdered before I could be told much about what it means to be a Stark, but I suspect that things were buried by a weight of years before then. The Thenn have remained true though. You remembered old truths. Let us build on that.”
Styr stared at him for a long moment – and then he nodded slowly. “We are sworn to The Stark and the Stark alone now. Command us.”
Ned nodded back and then looked at the line of men. “Is this all the strength of the Thenn?”
“A part of it. More wait beyond the Wall. We have stripped the Valley for the first time in centuries. Supplies, forges, grinding stones – we have brought it all.” He said the words with simple pride.
“Have your men pass on into the Gift. Places have been set aside for your people,” Ned said quietly. “You and I must talk though. We must talk of many things with the Magnar of the Night’s Watch.”
Styr’s shoulders seemed to relax just a little and then he turned and bellowed orders to his men, who started to march through the South Gates. Ned looked at Jeor Mormont, who had been a fascinated spectator to the whole thing. “Time to dicker again Jeor.”
“Aye – I’ll fetch more ale.”
Perestan
The problem with old inscriptions was that they were, well, old. And they eroded, weathered down by wind and rain and sheer time. Fortunately someone had once had the presence of mind to write some of them down before they wore away completely and now he was sitting at a desk with ramparts of books looming over him, happy as a novice given his first glimpse of the library.
The books were in excellent shape (and so they should be) but he was getting a bit frustrated. There were a number of particularly pertinent inscriptions and other records, but the main fact was that the exact history of the early part of the Hightower itself was, well, murky at best.
No-one knew who had built that lower course. Yes, there was evidence in the form of inscriptions that the First Men had built the part above that – Bran the Builder yet again – but again there was some ambiguity there. Bran the Builder must have been a very busy man indeed. The lower part, with that strange stone…
A cough and a sniff heralded the arrival of Marwyn, who peered at the collection of books. “How goes it?”
“Slowly,” he muttered as he made a note on a piece of parchment. “Which to say better than no progress at all. The earliest of the runes are… problematic.”
“What about the runes on the gate?”
Ah. He smoothed the scowl from his face. “Those are… peculiar. I thought at first that they were an old variation of the tongue of the First Men, but there is something… odd about them. Different. They remind me of carvings I have seen near the God’s Eye once, many years ago. I have a theory, but it remains in its infancy and cannot yet toddle.”
Marwyn gave him a rather baffled look. “I see,” he said, sounding as if he didn’t. Then he sighed. “Tudyk is declining. He wants me to take over his position.”
Perestan looked up and grinned slyly at the other man. “Too much work?”
A slight groan was all the answer he needed. “All that faffing about… all that paperwork… Gods…” He shook his head. Then he looked at Perestan again. “Word of the Gate at the base of the Hightower is beginning to spread. It’s just a matter of time before it reaches the Starry Sept.”
Now it was Perestan’s turn to groan. “Oh joy,” he said sarcastically. “Remind me again about the benefits of religion?”
“Keeps the smallfolk quiet and stops nobles from being greedy idiots.”
“They’re always going to be idiots.”
“Aye, but they can at least appear to be pious.”
This was a good point and he nodded slightly. “Well then. I’d love to see the reaction of a Septon to that gate. Whatever it is, it makes bladder control difficult.” He looked back at the mound of books. “I wish I knew what it is! It’s old Marwyn, it’s very old. Older than Oldtown, older than the rest of the Hightower. And whatever’s on the other side of it… well, I’m glad that it’s locked.”
There was a long silence and then the door opened on the far side of the room and Ebrose walked in. A fat lad followed him, who was looking about the room with a great deal of interest. The Archmaester looked at Perestan and Marwyn and blinked more than a little. “You two don’t normally get on together.”
“Driven together by research,” Marwyn replied dryly. “That and mutual griping about stupidity.”
“Ah,” said Ebrose. “Yes, well, we all roll our eyes at that. This is Samwell Tarly. Lord Willas Tyrell sent him here to carry out some research. Research about the founding of Highgarden and Garth Greenhand.”
Marwyn squinted at the lad. “Tarly? Any relation to Randyll Tarly?”
“I’m his eldest son and heir,” the fat lad replied. “And you are Maester…?”
“He’s Marwyn and I am Perestan,” Perestan replied with a grim smile. Then he peered at the young man. “You look nothing like your father.”
The lad shifted from one foot to the other and then back again. “Yes,” he said quietly. “I know. It might have been pointed out to me quite a bit.”
There was a brief silence and then Perestan looked back at Ebrose. “Why is he here? In this room?”
“He needs access to some of the books you have.”
Perestan glared. “I happen to be using them.”
“Not all of them at the same time, Perestan? Surely he can read some of them when you are not looking at them?” He gestured at the rampart of the books.
After a long moment of thought Perestan reluctantly conceded that he might have a point. “Why Willas Tyrell, by the way, not Lord Tyrell?”
“Lord Tyrell is on a prolonged hunting trip,” Ebrose said, staring at the ceiling. “Lord Willas is effectively in charge of the Reach at the moment.”
Perestan absorbed this for a moment. “Well,” he said eventually, “Anyone has to be an improvement on Mace Tyrell.” Then he looked the boy up and down. “Lord Willas sent you to research the history of Highgarden and Garth Greenhand?”
“Yes Archmaester.”
“Why you?”
“Well,” the lad said with a gleam of something undefinable in his eyes, “I do have some experience of finding information for Lord Willas Tyrell. And things. Otherbane for example.”
They all stared at him. “Otherbane? The weapon of the Gardener Kings? The weapon that hasn’t been seen since the Field of Fire?” Marwyn was openly staring.
“Yes,” Tarly said with a hint of defiance. Then he pulled out a piece of parchment. “Now, if you’ll excuse me I have an initial list of books I’d like to take a look at.” Perestan peered at the list. It was a very long one. Hmmm. It was possible that the lad might have a little potential.
Cat
She pattered on next to noiseless feet along the corridor and then very carefully peered around the corner. Arya had not diverted from her course at all and was indeed headed to her room. Her shoulders were slumped and Cat’s heart ached for her daughter. She looked as if she was deeply sad and Cat knew that it was her fault.
As a result she had been avoiding her own mother all day – and now Cat had had enough. She waited until Arya and Nymeria entered the room and then she strode in behind them and closed the door.
Arya looked at her in shock, followed by some sullenness. “Hello Mother.”
“Arya, sit down. I need to talk to you.”
Her second daughter rolled her eyes, but obediently sat on her bed, with Nymeria sitting next to her.
“Good,” said Cat as she sat on the other side of the bed. “Now – Arya I need to talk to you.”
“Mother, if this is about the Septa again…”
“No, this is about the other matter. This is about you saying that you – and Bran! – are a warg.”
The brows came down into a stubborn scowl and her daughter crossed her arms. “What about it?”
“Arya, this is important. And… this is something that I am having trouble with. I know that the Old Gods have spoken through your father, yes, I know, and Jon. I believe in the Seven, but I also believe in the Old Gods. I have to, too much has happened. You claiming to be a warg is important. I know that you believe it. So – help me to believe it. I want you to prove it to me.” There. The words were said. She couldn’t believe that she had said them, given her upbringing.
Arya was directing a very odd look at her, a look that somehow combined utter disbelief with wild hope. “You… you want me to show you how I warg?”
She swallowed. That part of her mind that said that this was all unnatural was screaming at her. “Yes.”
Her daughter searched her face with her eyes, before making an ‘eep’ noise of excitement and then scooting back to that she was pressed against her pillows. “This will take a little while,” She said quietly. “I’ve showed Bran. I’ll show you. Mother – my eyes will turn white. And I’ll be in Nymeria. You need to ask me to do things through her. I mean that I’ll be in her, but you need to talk to her to give me orders. Does that make any sense?”
She ran her daughter’s words through her head, winced a little but then nodded.
Arya’s eyes searched her face again, her own face more serious than she had ever seen it, and then she closed her eyes. A long moment of silence followed and Cat could feel her heart pounding in her chest. Part of her mind was still pointing out that this was blasphemy whilst another part of her remembered the red fire in Ned’s eyes on the night of the direwolf.
On and on that silence went and just as she was starting to wonder what was happening Arya’s eyes suddenly flickered open. They were white – not the white of the roll of an eye, but an absolute white that almost glowed. Cat’s hands flew to her mouth almost without her thinking about it – and then she noticed that Nymeria was standing to one side, her head tilted to one side. They she huffed a little and leapt down to the floor, where she sat.
Cat peered at the little direwolf, her hands gripping her knees. “Arya?” Nymeria nodded and then panted happily. Cat looked at Arya for a moment and shuddered a little at those white eyes, before looking back at Nymeria, her mind whirring. “Arya, what’s four plus three?”
The direwolf huffed again, before barking seven times. “Ten minus five?” Five barks. “Raise two of your paws.” A front right and back left paw was raised.
“It’s true,” she muttered, utterly stunned. “It’s true. You are a warg.” Nymeria darted forwards and licked her hand, before doing back and sitting on her haunches. Then she looked at Arya. Cat also looked at her daughter – and then she gasped as the whiteness faded from Arya’s eyes, returning to their natural grey.
“Are you alright Mother?” Arya asked the question quietly, almost fearfully. “It’s just me, and Nymeria, I mean warging… I’ve read about it, Starks did it in the old days, there are statues in the crypts and it’s natural Mother, it’s not unnatural and you’re staring sat me and I don’t know what else to say and-”
Cat shut her daughter up the best way that she knew, by hugging her. “You are my daughter,” she said fiercely, as Arya squeaked and then melted into her embrace. “My daughter the warg.” And then she wondered what Ned would say. It would not matter to him, she knew. Arya would always be Arya.
Gendry
The long line of men on horses stretched ahead of him and he winced a little as he tried to find a new way of seating himself on the saddle that didn’t hurt. This wasn’t his first time on a horse – he’d travelled on business a few times for Master Mott. He’d quite enjoyed it at the time. Of course he was now facing a longer trip. A much longer trip.
He’d heard about saddle sores from some of the other men. He wasn’t looking forwards to finding out exactly what they were like. His new clothes were taking some getting used to as well. They weren’t as nice as the clothes that Shireen and the others were wearing, but they were still better quality than he had ever worn before. And they were warm. It was colder than King’s Landing here. Colder but oddly… cleaner. Nicer. The smells were better. He’d lived all his life with the stench of the city in his nostrils. White Harbour had been so clean. And now the road was clean as well.
A rider galloped past him and he watched him go carefully. Lord Stannis had been very clear: “Stay at the back of the column, watch the men around you and be wary. There’s some here who wish you ill. You can be sure of that.”
It all made him uneasy and he’d taken to watching everyone carefully. Especially the man in red cloaks. Lannister guards. He’d already had one good reason to be cautious. He’d found his horse to be a bit skittish that morning. Checking every part of the saddle he’d found out why – a small caltrop placed under the saddle. If he’d mounted his horse then a prong would have maddened it beyond belief.
Lord Stannis had seen it when he surreptitiously shown him and ground his teeth a bit. “Well spotted,” he had told him. “Keep being careful. I’ll set a good man to watch you.”
The good man in question was a knight, Ser Jorah Mormont. A knight, or the Northern equivalent. He was riding next to him now, a tall and rather solemn man with thinning hair. He’d seen him sparring with Father in White Harbour.
Father. It was still so strange to think that his father was actually his Grace the King of the Seven Kingdoms. Robert, the First of his name. It still made him feel strange inside.
He’d seen his half-brothers and sister once or twice. They were very blonde, very much like their mother. Prince Joffrey, from what the guards and servants had said, was a right little shit, but Prince Tommen and Princess Myrcella were said to be very nice. Kind even, although the little boy was oddly fixated with cats.
And then there was the Queen. She was beautiful, if cold. Blonde and cold, like gold made flesh. She was travelling in a carriage that seemed to annoy her a lot. There had been talk of a wheelhouse, but on a trial run the wheels had all fallen off after a mile.
He’s also seen the sworn sword, or bodyguard, or whatever the seven hells it was, to Prince Joffrey. Sandor Clegane was large, had a fascinating helm in the shape of a dog and was horribly scarred on one side of his face. He was, in a word, intimidating. And someone to avoid. The man was… dangerous. He wasn’t sure why, but he avoided him as a result.
They rode a long way that day. A long and painful way by the end. He ached in all kinds of places that he’d rather not think about and then there was the chafing… But eventually they came to a stout keep ruled by a large man with Manderley blood and his doting wife and seven (Gods almighty, seven?) children.
Rhys Greensnow was some descendant of a Manderley bastard perhaps and had had plenty of warning of the arrival of the King and his huge group, and probably coin from White Harbour to help with the cost of hosting them all. There was already a couple of beef carcasses being roasted as they arrive and as the King boomed his pleasure at the welcome, whilst the Queen sniffed and looked chilly.
As everyone scattered to their various quarters, some inside the keep and some in the nearby inn Gendry looked about, jiggled his legs and wondered if his balls would ever forgive him for the ordeal that they had just gone through. They’d have to – it was another half a day to the ferry over the White Knife and then the road that joined up with the Kingsroad, or so people said. Ser Jorah slapped his shoulder, nodded at him and then walked off to join his all-but-wife Leera.
Hearing the puff-huff of a bellows in the distance he looked over to one side. Yes, there was a smithy there and before he knew it his legs had led him there.
The blacksmith was a short burly man with enormous black eyebrows and a surprisingly deft swing of the hammer. His assistant, who was pumping the bellows of the forge every now and then, was cut from the same cloth and was obviously his son, although by the way that the younger man was wiping his forehead and shivering, he was also ill. Both looked at him briefly as he approached but said nothing as he folded his arms and watched.
The blacksmith was making a sword, and not a bad one, but as the steel started to be shaped Gendry could see that the younger man was starting to shiver again, this time more violently. He pulled his jerkin off and strode over to the bellows, placing his saddlebags to one side. “Give over, I’ll take it.”
The blacksmiths son peered at him. “Can you handle a bellows?”
“I could at King’s Landing. I can do the same here.”
The two Northern men looked at him, then at each other, and then the older one shrugged. “Get to bed, Jon. That wife of yours will never forgive me if you fall over in the forge. You’re not well.”
The younger one opened his mouth as if to argue, before shivering again and then relinquishing the bellows, before taking off his leather apron, hanging it neatly up, looking around the smithy and then walking off. Gendry nodded and then pumped the bellows hard to get the temperature up a little as it did not look quite right. This seemed to please the blacksmith, if a grunt and slight nod meant what he thought, who then reheated the sword before pounding on it again.
“Apprentice?”
“Aye.”
“To anyone good?”
“Master Mott in the Street of Steel in King’s Landing.”
“Passing though?”
“I’m with the King’s party, on the way to Winterfell.”
A pause. “You heard the bellows then?”
“Aye.”
The sword was coming together nicely now, the steel just the right colour and Gendry watched as it was shaped to just the right manner before being quenched in the right bucket. The blacksmith looked up. “You here to just pump the bellows or work?”
“I can take work if it allows me to do my own bit.”
“What are you working on?”
He pumped the bellows hard for a moment and then reached for his saddlebags. He didn’t have much, but he had enough to start making two objects in White Harbour. One was a helmet in the shape of a stag’s head, the practical kind, mind. The other was a simple helmet with a faceplate. Something that didn’t make him stand out. He pulled them both out and handed them over.
The blacksmith turned each over in his hands, inspecting them carefully as Gendry pumped the bellows every now and then, as well as adding coal in the right grill. “This is good work. Both of them. Why a stag though?”
“For… for my father. He… wears Baratheon colours.”
“Oh aye?.” Shrewd eyes searched his face. “There’s two swords and five knives that need making over there. Finish them and you can work on whatever you like.”
Gendry thought about it and then nodded, before reaching for a leather apron. Best to hide in plain sight for a while.
Edmure
He found Father in his solar, sitting at his desk and staring at a map of Westeros on the wall opposite. Father was having one of his good days, which tended to outnumber the bad days at the moment, although as Maester Vyman had warned him, there was no guarantee that this would continue.
As he closed the door Father looked up and smiled slightly. “You watched them for a long time from the ramparts.”
Edmure nodded slightly and then sat down. “Odd to see Uncle Brynden so… changed. And that woman he was with…”
“Brienne of Tarth. Daughter of the Evenstar.” Father shook his head slightly. “I will write to him of this. He would be proud of her.”
He nodded. And then: “And the Green Man… I don’t know what to say about him.”
“Ser Duncan the Tall…” Father shook his head. “I remember him from when I was younger. The noblest man the Kingsguard has ever had. I thought that he was long dead. But then there is something about being the Green Man that… can’t be explained.”
Father sighed and then looked at the map again. “I never thought that I would see the day that the Green Men went forth from the Isle of Faces again. It was foretold a long time ago. The thought of living in a time of prophecy is… disturbing.” He looked at Edmure and sighed again.
“Edmure, I do not know how long I have left. Vyman says that I might or might not recover from this wasting sickness. Given what has happened, I feel that I cannot take the chance of presuming that I’ll get better. You must prepare to succeed me, perhaps sooner than you might have liked. And there’s a lot you need to know.”
“I know Father,” he groaned. “Better skills at placing men in battle for a start. High Heart could have been nasty.”
“That’s one thing,” Father said heavily. “But there’s something more important. Tullys have ruled the Riverlands since Aegon’s Conquest. What is not widely known is that the coming of Aegon was predicted. The Green Man at the time sent word to our ancestor Edwyn Tully to come and meet him on the Isle of Faces. It was a time of great tension – Harren the Black was looting everything that wasn’t nailed down in the Riverlands and even his own Iron Islands to build Harrenhall.
“He even broke the old agreement not to bother the Isle of Faces, or at least he tried to. He sent three ships filled with men with axes to chop down the weirwood trees there. They all vanished – never to be seen again. The Green Man of that time warned him never to try again. And also told him that even stone could burn. He didn’t listen, and we all know what happened next.”
“Balerion the Black Dread happened to him,” Edmure muttered with ice sliding up and down his spine for a moment. “And Harrenhall burned.”
“Yes. Edwyn Tully was told by the Green Man what would happen. The Green Man was his uncle.”
He sat up at this. “Green Men have been Tullys?”
“Green Men have come from all over the place. All over Westeros. Our ancestors have walked on the Isle of Faces. It must always be protected. There was an agreement. And… Edwyn Tully made two trips there. One in which he was warned about the arrival of the Targaryens. And one in which he was warned about what would happen next. The warning was for his descendants. I suspect that the warning was for us.
“It came in three parts. One was that there would never be any more Valyrian steel, that the secret of making it had been lost. One was that another Valyrian secret would be lost – the one that would allow brother to marry sister and not have deformed or mad offspring. We both know how that ended up.”
“The Mad King,” Edmure said through suddenly very dry lips. “And the third?”
“That the dragonlore of the Targaryens would one day fade. That the dragons would vanish. But that one day they would be needed again. On a day when fish were black on the Isle of Faces.” And with that Father leant back and stared at Edmure with one eyebrow raised.
He stared back at father for a long moment – and then the ice reappeared on his spine. “Wait – Uncle Brynden was on the Isle of Faces. The Blackfish was there.”
“Yes. The day that your uncle named himself the Blackfish I was angry and thought nothing of it. Then I eventually remembered what my own father had told me of that long-ago meeting on the Isle of Faces. And I looked rather like you do now.”
Edmure swallowed and then ran a hand over his face. The implications were… disturbing. “Why would dragons be needed now?”
“We both know why. You heard the Call as loudly as I did.”
“The Others come.”
“I suspect that they do.”
He sat there for a long moment, all kinds of thoughts and emotions roiling through him. “Then… what must we do?”
“Word has come from the Citadel that the Maesters are debating whether or not a long winter is coming. Given everything else, all this talk of the Others, we must assume that it will be a second Long Winter.” Father’s nostrils flared for a moment. “We face legends. Perhaps this is a time of legends. We need to be worthy of such a time, Edmure.”
Legends. He did not feel as if that word fitted him. Could ever fit him. But he needed to try and rise to the challenge. “Any word of the choices I face in marriage?”
Father chuckled slightly. “I am making a list. No Freys of course, even though Walder Frey has always sent me the names of those of his daughters that are unmarried at the moment. What about Marianne Vance or Roslin Mallister?”
Edmure felt his cheeks heat up for a moment. “I’ve met Roslin Mallister before. She’s very pretty. Marianne Vance is half-Frey Father!”
“But not all Frey. The Vances are loyal to Riverrun.”
“No Brackens or Blackwoods – a good idea Father.”
“Aye, pick a girl from one family and the other would scream in protest. That said, the two houses have both done a lot to mend their relations recently. That great oath of theirs, as well as them both defending Raventree Hall… well, I have to say that they are both striving mightily to do the right thing. We cannot do anything that threatens their fragile truce.”
“Aye,” Edmure muttered. “Perhaps a meeting with Lord Mallister soon then?”
Father nodded. “Soon. In the meantime we need to work out what to do with our mad blackfooted guest.” He sighed, leant back in his chair and passed a hand over his face. “I believe in the Seven, but he is a disgrace to them. He places himself first, that much is evident. He is a fool.”
“What does Vyman say about him?”
“That he’s a drooling madman now. He cannot explain his blindness. No-one can. You were there – can you explain it?”
He thought back to that night and then he shook his head. “No. The Green Man took his sight just with his words. I cannot explain it.”
Father just looked at him. “And since he went mad and blind the number of attacks and unrest by the Faith Militant have diminished. He seems to have been behind so much of it. So what do we do with him?”
That was a good point. He rubbed his chin. “The man is mad. He has committed such crimes, but can we execute him now?”
“If I could, I’d throw him off the ramparts and into the waters below – and good riddance to very bad rubbish. But I think that we must tread most carefully on this matter. I have sent a raven to the Small Council at King’s Landing asking what to do with the wretched man, the last thing we want is the High Septon to be critical.”
Edmure pulled a face as he thought this through, before nodding. “I understand, Father. At least he’s stopped befouling himself.”
Father shuddered a little – and then they both looked u[p at the tap on the door. It was Vyman, who was holding a letter in one hand, which he held out as he approached Father’s desk. “I beg your pardon my Lord, but a merchant from Essos arrived bearing this. The seals on it are… interesting.”
Father took the letter with a frown and peered at it carefully, his frown deepening as he looked at the wax seals that had been pressed into the front of it. “Ah,” he said eventually. “Interesting.” Then he opened it. “Sit, Vyman. Tell me of this merchant.”
“His name is Teren, my Lord, from Myr. He says that he was headed to first Tyrosh and then King’s Landing on business when he came upon the Golden Company, three of whom heard about him and then asked him to pass on that letter when he arrived in Westeros.”
“He’s quite a way from King’s Landing,” Father muttered as he opened the letter carefully, unfolded it and then read it. Then he frowned mightily and re-read it, before putting it down and steepling his fingers under his nose for a moment. “How to deal with this,” he half-whispered. “How indeed?”
“Father?” Edmure prompted carefully.
“What? Oh – Edmure. It seems that the Call wasn’t just heard in the ranks of the Company of the Rose. Other exiles heard it too. And they have asked about the possibility of a pardon and a return from exile.”
“Who?” Edmure asked. “Members of the Golden Company obviously.”
“Aye. They claim to be, well, members of Houses Strong, Lothston and, well, Mudd.”
Edmure stared at him – and then he reached for the letter and stared at the seals. “My Gods,” he said eventually. “Can it be true?”
“I do not know. But the seals are right.”
“Seals can be forged.”
“They heard the Call, they write the words of it.”
“They might be lying.”
“Aye,” Father muttered. “But the King and the Hand must know of this at once. Think about the implications.”
Edmure leant back in his chair. Vyman was as white as a sheet in his own seat. Finally he looked up. “The ripples are spreading, Father.”
“Aye. And the Golden Company is likely broken.”
Edd
Riding with women was… interesting. Well, not to much riding with them, more in company with them. Sort of. Craster had had two horses of his own, as well as a cart and Jenn had crammed a lot of supplies as well as all of her fellow wives into it.
Craster’s Keep was no more and the funeral pyre had been a great one. Well, no matter. He’d thrown the dismembered pieces of the bloody man into the growing inferno himself, and good riddance to him. The thought of anyone at all ever worshipping those things was… wrong.
The further South they’d rode the more they had seen evidence that the Wildlings were on the move, and in huge numbers. In places the trees had been hacked down to allow the passage of what, from the ruts, might have been carts. And here and there was the occasional sign of a pyre, with charred bones visible. People had died nearby and the Wildlings had been burning them. Had to burn them.
Craster’s wives had not been the burden that some had thought. They were all Wildlings, but they had been grateful to them for killing their ‘husband’. The whole thing made his skin crawl. They’d stripped the ‘Keep’ bare of food and other supplies before it had been burned, and the amounts had been startling.
As the Wall loomed ever closer he noticed Ser Jaremy staring at the ground and the debris that some of the Wildlings had left behind in their passage South. “They’re all moving,” Ser Jaremy muttered. “All of them.” He reined in quickly, dismounted, grabbed something off the ground and then remounted and spurred up to rejoin them as he pored over whatever it was, before finally holding it up.
“Is that bronze?” Edd asked as he peered at it.
“Aye, Tollett, it is. Bit of bronze armour unless I miss my guess. Thenn-make, too.”
A lot of heads turned to stare at him, not least Craster’s head-ex-wife. “Thenn? Truly?”
Ser Jaremy hefted it and then tossed it carefully at her. “Thenn.”
The woman caught it and then looked at it intently, as one of the other women took the reins for the cart off her. “Fuck me,” she said in a stunned tone of voice, “Thenn. I never thought I’d see them this far South.” She hefted it carefully and then looked at Ser Jaremy. “If the Thenn have come South to the Wall, then that means that a storm is coming indeed. The Others have come and there is a saying amongst us that if the Thenn ever go South to follow the Stark, then another Long Winter will come.”
There was a pause amongst the men of the Night’s Watch as they looked at each other for a moment. Then Ser Jaremy finally admitted: “Before we left on our mission North of the Wall, word had it that Ned Stark was riding for Castle Black.”
Jenn stared at him – and then at them all – with a pale face, before looking back at the Wall. “Then if the Stark has the Thenn behind him to the South of the Wall, then the second Long Winter comes.”
They rode on in silence after that, until the Wall loomed above them and the gate to Castle Black could be seen in the distance. There was a long line of Wildlings passing through the tunnel through the Wall and as they looked at that line Edd saw Ser Jaremy’s jaw set and the knuckles of his hands whiten on the reins for a long moment, before he finally sighed and shook his head a little. “It has to be done,” he heard the older man mutter. “It has to be.”
Edd could see Dywen digging in his furs for his horn, which he lifted to his lips and used to blow a single, long, dolorous blast that told those on the Wall that Rangers of the Night’s Watch approached. A tiny figure far, far above waved at them and he sighed in relief as they approached the tunnel and then rode through.
Craster’s wives on the other hand seemed to be an odd mixture of relieved at being South of the Wall and fearful at being at the heart of the Night’s Watch. They were also astonished to see the huge direwolf sitting at the base of the stairs, next to a bearded man with long hair tied back. He was dressed in fine but functional dark leathers and by the fact that the Lord Commander was next to him and talking quietly he must have been important. Then he blinked a little. There were Stark banners flying here and there. Was that Lord Stark?
Ser Jaremy dismounted and nodded to the two men in front of him. “Lord Commander,” he muttered. “Lord Stark.”
“Ser Jaremy,” the Old Bear replied. “Interesting company you keep.”
“Craster’s wives,” the Ranger replied. “Craster’s Keep is no more, the man is dead. They seek passage South beyond the Wall to be safe.”
Jeor Mormont’s eyebrows flew up and down for a moment, before he scowled in thought. “Best send them on then. We need to hear your report.”
“I’ll have to make it with Tollett here.”
Edd stared at Ser Jaremy with something close to horror. “Me?”
“You.” Something close to a smirk crossed his face. “Tollett here has killed an Other.”
Everyone within earshot of this lifted their head and stared at him as his cheeks flamed. “Aye,” he said faintly. “I did.”
The Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch looked him up and down before tilting his head to one side. “Well, let’s hear this tale of yours.”
Lord Stark and the Lord Commander, with the direwolf loping ahead of them, led them all up the stairs to the Lord Commander’s solar. There they found a man dressed in bronze armour talking to Maester Aemon in what sounded like the language of the First Men. The first thing that he noticed was that the man in bronze had no ears. The second was that Maester Aemon’s eyes were… well, they were… could he see?
When the Maester then turned to look at them he almost walked into Ser Jaremy’s side, so quickly did that other man stop in his tracks. “Maester Aemon?”
“Ser Jaremy! And young Tollett. I see that you have returned from your mission. And yes, I can see.” His eyes twinkled with joy for a moment. “A gift from the Old Gods, thanks to Lord Stark.” Then he sobered a little. “This is Styr, Magnar of the Thenn. He speaks the old tongue of the First Men.”
The earless man nodded at them and seemed to be about to take his leave when Lord Stark sat next to him, gestured with one hand and said something in the language of the First Men. Styr looked a bit shocked and then looked at Edd. “I told him that you had killed what the Thenn call a White Walker. We must hear your tale at once.”
Edd found himself colouring a little. This was going to be embarrassing – the tale of how he fell on his arse and stabbed blindly at what many had thought to be a myth. Well. At least they could speak of Craster’s fate. That still cheered him up a little.
Tyrion
The Nightfort was not a place where he thought he could sleep easily, but so much had happened that he slept like a log that night. A guard schedule had been worked out, but he was not on it – much to his relief. No, he slept hard until dawn, when he was woken by Pod, who had a jaw-cracking yawn and a bowl of hot porridge.
As the others woke and he ate his porridge he looked about the building they were in again. It had been a great hall once. He wondered how much work it would take to get it repaired again. And then he worried about what kind of state the crypts were in.
Much to his surprise the letter written by Tyrek Lannister did not astonish his uncle as much as it had astonished him. Instead Gerion had read it carefully, mulled it over, given it to his frowning son and then raised his eyebrows at him. They had then had a silent conversation, conducted entirely in eyebrows and lip quirks. Hmmm. Uncle Gerion had a very close connection with his son.
“You don’t seem that surprised,” Tyrion said eventually. “Uncle, were you following us or coming here anyway?”
Gerion smiled slightly at him. “Both. I’ll explain later.”
He peered at his uncle. “See that you do, uncle, see that you do. Now – we have some crypts to explore.”
It wasn’t that simple of course. First they had to deal with the Wildling prisoners, who were the subject of a quarrel between Alliser Thorne and Mance Rayder that was only resolved by an annoyed Robb Stark, who reminded them both that Lord Stark had given orders that the Wildlings be allowed to settle in the Gift before the Winter started, and that Rayder had custody of them – whilst also reminding them of the laws South of the Wall. There had been a bite and snap of command in the voice of the young Stark that had made everyone stare at him and all but stand at attention, especially Rayder’s goodsister.
There it was again, that nagging other feeling he had about the boy. He seemed older than his years at times. Was that due to the situation here at the Wall? Or the fact that the North was a harsher place? Or… something else? He didn’t know.
Fortunately Stark had spoken enough sense to get through to Thorne. And Rayder then agreed to let the prisoners work on the Nightfort for a week as a penance before going South. And after that they could finally start to search the Nightfort.
The lower levels of the castle were not like the upper levels. He could tell quite quickly that the Nightfort was mostly built on the bones of past Nightforts. And his fears about the crypts were unfounded. They weren’t flooded or ruined, in fact they were well drained and sturdy.
The place where past Lord Commanders of the Night’s Watch were buried was a sombre place. Stairs led down to a chamber with passageways leading off to the right and left. Down each passageway were chambers hacked out of the bedrock, with slots in the wall for the dead. Stone box after stone box lay in those slots.
“They burnt their dead from the start?” Theon Greyjoy asked the question as he peered at the slots in one room with the light of a burning brand. “Those boxes are too small for bones, other then ashes of bones.”
“So it would seem,” Tyrion replied as his heart sank. Surely Tyrek Lannister would have been buried in a similar fashion – cremated and then the ashes placed in a box? “But then why would he write to me and say to seek out his grave? Let us keep searching.”
“The rooms are laid out in sequence,” Robb Stark pointed out. “The earliest Lord Commanders first, the later ones further up. Let’s search the farthest room.”
This was a good idea, and it was indeed there that they found what they were looking for. Tyrek Lannister’s tomb, if it could be called that, was a box in a slot in the wall – but a larger slot than they had seen before, because there was another stone box next to it. Oddly enough it was at just the right height for Tyrion to inspect it. And it had a small carving at the end. One of the Lannister lion.
He traced the symbol with a trembling finger – and then he clenched his fingers into a fist. The others behind him were all silent. After a long moment he reached out and pulled on the end of the stone box. Stone ground on stone and he panted a little as the box slowly came free – and then Uncle Gerion was next to him, adding his strength. The box slid out with greater speed and then Allarion was there to one side, helping as well.
They laid the stone box on the ground once it was free. It was about four feet long, a foot wide and a foot deep, with a lid that seemed to slide along its long axis. He peered at it and swallowed. “Let’s see what’s in this.”
The lid slid to one side with the greatest of reluctance and by the time it was off he was panting with exertion a little as he helped to lay it down. Only then did he look in the box. Inside was… an old black cloak? Oh wait, there was something under the cloak, a set of shapes wrapped in oilcloth. His mouth was dry suddenly and he moved the cloak to one side. There were three things in there. One was long, about as long as his arm, perhaps a bit longer. The second was smaller and the third a lot smaller – small and square.
He reached for the smallest one first. It was carefully stitched closed but his knife soon opened it. Inside was another piece of oilskin, also stitched closed, and inside that was a leather envelope. There was a name stitched on to it. His.
“This kind of thing always leaves me feeling a bit light-headed,” he muttered as he showed it to his uncle with a shaking hand. “He knew I’d be here. He… saw me. Dreamt me. Whatever the right word is.”
Gerion looked at him carefully. “You’d best open it,” he said eventually, with a note of… something that Tyrion couldn’t quite place in his voice. “We need to know what he wrote.”
He opened it carefully. Yes, inside was a letter, the writing thin and spidery, the script of a very old man. ‘My dear Tyrion. Again, forgive my informality. This will be the last thing I ever write, as I am now dying. It is not something I am enjoying very much, so please excuse my curtness. You stand next to my ashes. You know why Brothers of the Night’s Watch are burnt. Or you will soon anyway. There are two packages in the box that I ordered to be buried next to my ashes. The first contains an axe. The second contains two daggers. All are yours. I took them from a forgotten vault in Casterley Rock, a place forgotten about since almost the time of Lann the Clever. Our ancestors were fools who eventually grew arrogant. They forgot because it did not fit their version of the world, where they were more important than anyone else.
‘The light fades, or perhaps it is my eyes. There is more you must know. The axe is Rocktooth, the ancestral weapon of the Westerlands, the weapon that Lann the Clever himself wielded against the Others when he fought side by side with the then Stark of Winterfell. Use it wisely and with pride – it’s older than Lann himself. The daggers were also used by Lann. There were various names for them, including Lann’s Ears and Lann’s Whiskers, but their original name, according to the runes on them, were The Warnings. Heed what they tell you.
‘There is a room deeper in the crypts that you now need to find. Take the Stark who looks a bit like a Tully with you. And good luck my boy.’
It was signed ‘Tyrek Lannister’ and he felt more than a little faint as he handed the letter to his uncle, who read it with a look of the utmost seriousness. “He left them for you,” Gerion said eventually with a slight smile. “You should claim them.”
His hands were trembling as he cut the stitches on the other two oilskin packages. The long one first. Inside was… an axe. It was quite possibly the oldest thing he’d ever seen, a weapon ancient beyond words. It had an odd sheen to it – one that was familiar.
“Sky-metal,” he muttered as he traced a finger over it. “And… is that obsidian in the middle of it?” It certainly looked like it. It might have been made by the same man who forged the Fist of Winter. Its’ handle was made from wierwood, filigreed with threads of more sky-metal and there was obsidian set at the end of the handle as well as two places in the blade.
For some reason he didn’t want to pick it up. If he did so, Rocktooth was his, in a way that could never be taken back. He would no longer be studying the past, the past would become a part of his present. “If I take it, Father will never forgive me. I’d have something that he’d want.”
“Your Father wants Brightroar, and he’ll never have that. Take it Tyrion.”
“Shouldn’t there be thunder at this moment?”
“Ach, that’s for Durrandons and the Baratheons that followed them. Tyrion – this is your moment. Take it.”
He reached out with those treacherously trembling hands and picked the axe up. It wasn’t as heavy as he had thought it would be and he hefted it for a moment. Nothing crashed overhead, there was no boom of the earth trembling beneath his feet, it was all a bit anticlimactic. “I’ll need something to carry this in,” he muttered. “A scabbard on my back perhaps?”
“I’ll make something for you my Lord,” Pod muttered behind him. “I can stitch leather.”
Tyrion grinned at the boy for a moment and then cut open the other package. Yes, there were two daggers in it, both made from the same metal and both with wierwood handles. Gods, they were old. “I’ll need scabbards for these as well,” he muttered as he ran his hands over them and noted the runes on the surface of the blades. He’d need to translate them carefully. “They’re old.” He picked them both up carefully and thrust them equally carefully into his belt, before standing and looking around with Rocktooth in his left hand. “Let’s keep looking – there’s supposed to be another place in here. Another room.”
It did not take long to find it. There was another passageway, a long and thin one that was again carved out of the living rock. And at the end was a door. There was dirt and rubbish piled against the bottom of it, but halfway up it was a lock, an ancient thing with a seal pressed from some kind of red wax that covered it. Tyrion stared at it in confusion. Surely wax would have eventually crumbled to pieces after all that time?
“That’s the seal of the old Kings in the North,” Robb Stark muttered in a shocked voice. “The Great Seal of Winter. Father's got it in a box somewhere in his solar. The last time it was used was after Torrhen Stark bent the knee to Aegon the Conqueror."
He peered at it again. Yes, the seal was festooned with wolves. How very Stark-ish, if such a word existed. "Why would a room in the Nightfort be sealed off with the symbol of the old Kings in the North? Ser Alliser, can you shed any light on this?"
The sour-faced man shook his head, an expression of puzzled shock on his face. "There's nothing in the histories that I've read about this place," he muttered. "Nor less about the Stark Kings of old leaving their sign on the place." He walked up and peered at it closely, before tugging on the hasp. It seemed to be quite strong even after all these years. "A good lock, that. Odd. It's bloody ancient."
Something tickled at the back of Tyrion's mind for an instant. "I wonder. Tyrek Lannister told us to come with a Stark and mentioned that it should be the one 'that looked like a Tully'. Robb Stark - would you mind inspecting the seal?"
The heir to Winterfell looked at him in bafflement. "Why?"
"Oh, just a feeling I have."
Robb Stark looked at his friends, shrugged in bafflement and then walked up to the lock. He inspected it carefully and then reached out and tugged at the hasp - which snapped instantly like a rotten twig, before the entire thing crumbled like dust into his hands.
They all stared at the debris in his hands. "Good Gods," someone said faintly and after a moment Tyrion realised that it had been him. "Well now - I think that we were meant to open this door."
They had to dig the debris clear from the floor in front of it to make room for Robb and Jon Stark to both pull the door open. It shrieked as it opened and the noise set the hairs on the back of his neck on end in an instant. And as the door came open, a stench of decay reached them, one strong enough to make him pull a face.
"What in the name of all the Gods is that?" Theon Greyjoy gasped as he all but retched.
"Foul air and more. Give it a moment to pass," Tyrion replied. "Watch the torches carefully. If they start to gutter then the air is too foul to breath."
They waited a long moment until the stench diminished a little. Only then did they enter. Beyond the door lay a large room. It was dominated by a huge chair - almost a throne - that stood with its back to the far wall. And there were bones everywhere, strewn all over the place. There were rusted knives on the floor amongst the bones, and in one corner, next to a pile of rubble, there was what might have been the remains of a cauldron.
"These are human," a horrified Ser Alliser Thorne muttered as he looked about. "They're all human bones. Gods, what happened here?"
"A massacre?" Tyrion mused as he looked at bones himself. "No, the door was shut. Why seal the door? Are those marks on the bones from fighting?"
"Nay," Mance Rayder muttered as he lifted one blackened bone and peered at it. "This looks as if it's been flensed. Someone butchered this poor bugger."
"Why?" Theon Greyjoy asked, his face pale and wan.
"To eat him, boy," Thorne replied as he walked about the room and inspected the bones with distaste. "This is the lair of a cannibal."
The Greyjoy lad turned even paler but did not throw up. It seemed to be a close-run thing though.
One of the bodies seemed to be more intact than the others - if barely. It was a huddle of bones in a tattered black robe at the foot of the chair, or whatever it was. As he drew closer to the thing Tyrion could see runes on the sides of it, and carvings as well.
"This is odd," Thorne muttered as he peered at the skull of the body in the cloak. "There's finger bones threaded together with wire on this one's head."
There was indeed. He peered at it - and then light dawned. "A crown of bones. He was crowned with bones? How odd." He looked around again and then made another connection. "He might have been the one who cooked here - could this be the Rat King?"
The others stared and then there was a collective shrug. "Might be," Jon Stark muttered. "These bones have been here for centuries. It's an ancient legend though."
"Yes, but one based on something at least," Tyrion replied as he looked about again. "Someone killed men here and then ate at least some of them. And there are many dark legends of this place. Perhaps this is the place that spawned the legends?"
Val reached down and lifted a large and very corroded axe. "Wasn't there a tale of a man called Mad Axe?"
"Aye," Thorne muttered. He was staring at the pile of debris in the corner. "Is that a hole in the ceiling there?"
A number of the others walked over and looked up at it. "I think it is, yes," Robb Stark muttered. "It heads upwards."
"We need a volunteer," Tyrion said brightly, only to get some very dirty looks sent his way. He sighed and thought very hard, calling up the memory of what he had seen so far of the Nightfort. "Very well then - can someone go back out of here - via the passageways we entered - and get to the kitchens? I think that we are currently under the North-West corner of the kitchens."
"Come on then 'Giantsbane', Thorne said after a long moment. "Let's be at it."
The red-bearded man looked at the man of the Night's Watch as he walked away and then looked back at Rayder, who nodded. "My life is getting odder by the minute," Tormund Giantsbane muttered, but followed the receding figure of the man in black.
As they waited Tyrion turned his attention to the throne - because that was what it most resembled - in front of them all. It was carved of granite, or something close to it, and the more he looked at it the more he realised that this was ancient - even for the North. There were men, or the shapes of men, carved on one side, based on what light his brand was able to direct at it. And... some kind of tree? And then an animal of some kind. The thing was filthy as well as ancient.
But it was the runes that attracted his attention. They were of an ancient kind, proving how old the object was. He peered at them quizzically for long minutes as the others wandered about and expressed disgust at what they found in places. Some of the runes he could read. Others he could not. The one he definitely could read was the most obvious one. "'Stark.'"
Two heads turned to him. "What?" Robb Stark muttered. "Which of us do you need?"
"No," he replied, "That's what it says at the top of this... thing. It says 'Stark' there. This is old, very, very old." He went back to reading what he could of the runes, and the more he read the more confused he became. Eventually he looked about for an old sword and used it to scrape away at the base of the chair, where the tops of other runes could just about be seen. "This," he panted as he pulled the filthy debris away, "is also odd."
"Why, odd?" Rayder asked. He too was looking at the runes. "Wait... I think I know what that part says. 'Throne of... Winter?"
"Nay," Jon Stark broke in. "The Throne of Winter's at Winterfell."
"I know, I've seen it," Tyrion replied. "But that's not as old as this is. I think... I think that this might be the original Throne of Winter, or at least the first such object. But why seal it away? These runes are peculiar. They are older than anything I've ever seen. Some of the words are familiar and others are archaic."
It was at this point that they heard a very odd noise in the far distance. It sounded like a mammoth being strangled in the far distance, or something like that, and everyone looked about wildly, until Robb Stark walked over to the hole in the ceiling and squinted up at it. After a moment there was a sound like stone scraping on stone and eventually a faint light shone down from above, followed by a voice. "Is that you, young wolf?"
"Tormund?"
"Aye, me and this stone-faced crow, as well as some of the others. We're in the kitchens, or under them at least. Storage room underneath another storage room. There was a great stone slab over the hole leading down here. Sealed off probably. Might be that someone knew that something was wrong down there and stuck that slab over it all. Took five of us to move it."
"Anything written on the slab?"
There was a moment of muttering and then the voice of Ser Alliser Thorne said: "Yes, not to move it on orders of the Lord Commander."
"I think that this is the place where so many dark legends of the Nightfort were born," Tyrion told the others, before going back to the Throne of Winter. The others joined him. His scraping had revealed some new runes and he read them carefully. In the language of the First Men they read: 'Stark had me made. Onlie a Stark will I bade. If not a Stark ye shall fade.' He read the words out loud for the others, who looked at him with confusion.
"'Fade'," he mused. "That's an odd word to use. Why should someone 'fade'?"
"There's an old saying here in the North that when someone's gone a bit, well, odd, that they've faded," Jon Stark said eventually. "Could it be linked to that?"
"Odd as in mad you mean?" He thought about it - and then terror sparked his mind as a number of connections appeared in his mind. "No-one sit in that throne! No-one!"
"What?" Rayder asked, baffled. "Why not?"
"The legends of the Nightfort, the people that have gone mad here, murdering and eating them - what if they found this place and then, on some whim, sat in that? The runes say that whatever it is it will only obey a Stark and that it will make anyone else 'fade'. Go mad in other words. It's been sealed off from the world for so long, that other door seems to have only yielded to the touch of a Stark... how many of the Night's Watch can read runes? How long has the throne been neglected so that the dirt of ages built up about it? For all we know the Rat King, when he was just a cook, found this place and sat in that throne - and was sent mad. And the Night King, Mad Axe.... how many others?"
There was a sudden collective move away from the throne. Tyrion raised a placatory hand. "None of us have sat in it. I think that we are safe. But I have to transcribe those runes. Maester Aemon might have more light to shed on this. In the meantime I think it best that the slab above us be replaced and a new lock be made for the door. This is important. You Starks seem to have had some kind of a plan, or to have set something up here. A long time ago though. A long time ago."
Sandor
He found himself almost liking the North, as he rode along the road behind the brat. It was the kind of place where you could tell a man to bugger off and not be looked at funny afterwards, or worse still have some bloody fluttering prick claim that his honour had been besmirched and that they now needed to fight a duel.
The last time he’d fought a duel it had been very short.
No, but he did almost like the North. It was colder than King’s Landing and bleaker, but there was something about the place that he found… well, fitting. It was a place where he might one day find a place. Perhaps. Maybe.
The brat, of course, hated the place. It was too cold, the people didn’t seem to respect his father enough, or not enough for his liking. And him too. The brat thought that everyone should grovel before him.
To be honest the North was not a place where people grovelled. You couldn’t. It wasn’t that kind of place. This was a harsh, hard, place. The Gods only knew what it was like in Winter, and from what everyone was saying, Winter was coming. They were preparing for it too, something that balled the brat. “It’s still Summer,” the brat had told him that morning. “Winter is a long time away. The Citadel hasn’t even sent out their white ravens. What do those stupid peasants have to worry about?”
The fact that the North was, well, further North than anywhere else in Westeros obviously didn’t occur to the little prick. Did he never think about things like that? Of course not, he was Prince Joffrey, spoilt brat and prick of the first order.
Well, at least the little shit had stopped babbling nonsense about the sword. Stormbreaker was now something that he avoided looking at, did not talk about and avoided whenever possible. It was funny, in a way.
What was less funny was that there was another Baratheon about, sort of. Gendry Storm looked a lot like his father, something that the brat resented. Fortunately Gendry Storm also seemed to be always escorted by either Old Stoneface or a Northern knight called Mormont. The two boys had so far not met and long may that continue. The King seemed to like his bastard and that was something else that the brat resented.
He sighed a little as he looked back for a moment at the long line of men and women on horses and carts that stretched behind him, before looking at the line ahead. Somewhere on the road the King was riding with his second son, who kept asking questions about everything.
He had a nagging feeling that something was going to go wrong someplace up ahead.
Asha
She hated salvage work. Too much backbreaking work, often in freezing water, for too little reward. The bodies were also a problem, but in the worst cases you just put some rancid fat under your nostrils and breathed through your mouth a lot.
The ship she was working on had been impaled on one of the iron spars and sank in place. Now, at low tide, they had pulled out the spar and were patching up the side of the ship. There were some bodies at the stern, bobbing in the dirty water there. One still had an arrow in his chest, another was missing a leg. She had no doubt that that the leg was waiting to be discovered by some unfortunate man or woman.
Still, the work took time. Kept her busy. Stopped her from thinking about things. Like the fact that the Iron Islands were now effectively in a state of civil war. One that she was now a major part in. Yes, Father had started the whole thing, but… But what? What could she say in defence of her father now that so much blood had been shed?
The man working next to her stopped working all of a sudden and she was about to turn and snarl at him to keep at it when she noticed the approaching figure of her nuncle. A closer look at his face showed that he was in a rare taking – as angry as she had ever seen him. “What’s amiss?”
“The orders that Victarion was obeying. Or trying to obey. Gods damn your father. And especially Damphair.”
She looked at him as he raked his hair with a hand. “Victarion will live then?”
“He’ll live. He’ll have a headache for a week according to the maester and he’ll have a limp for perhaps the rest of his life, but he’ll live. It’s what he was ordered to do here that… words fail me. He and his men were ordered to raze Harlaw to the ground. The entire island. Buildings burnt, ships stolen, land ploughed with salt, men killed and women raped and deported to become salt wives. The Iron Price in full – on my people! And why? We are all heretics according to Damphair, we do not deserve to live!”
Horror stole over her. “Then they would have done the same thing to Great Wyk then?”
“Yes.”
“But that’s two of the largest of the Iron Islands. Thousands of people live on them… that’s madness.”
“No, that’s Damphair and your father. That’s how they intend to rule. The Drowned God rules them, and they rule us.”
She stood there, the thunder of the surf somehow a long way away, drowned out by the thunder of blood in her ears. She knew that she had made her choice to join her uncle – her sane uncle – months ago. But this all made things as real as they could ever be. Terrifyingly real. “Then we must talk to the Stonebrows and the others on Great Wyk. We must decide how to move against…” Something seemed to stop her from speaking for a moment. “Against my father. Uncle, I am ashamed to call myself a Greyjoy.”
He directed a sympathetic look at her. “You are not the only one. Your brother has written to me from Winterfell. It was a long letter that he said that he dared not send to your father. He has been touched by the Old Gods themselves he said. He no longer believes in the Drowned God, as I suspected. He touched on it in his previous letters – this was more detailed. And more anguished. But he has made his choice.” He paused and then pulled a face. “There was other news. The Silence has been seen off the coast of the Reach. Sailing North.”
Asha stared at him. “He would not dare – would he?”
“The man’s mad, Asha, he’s always been mad. I’ve always wondered what happened to him to drive him so insane. I wish I knew what happened to him.” He seemed to think for a moment, before shuddering a little. “On second thoughts, perhaps I don’t want to know. Madness is a place that it’s hard to come back from.”
“Where do you think he’s going?”
“I don’t know, but I have sent out a warning to Great Wyk. They’ll be ready if the Silence appears off their coast.”
She nodded sombrely. Then she looked at him again. “I would like to read what my brother sent you.”
“You’ll find it interesting. He was there when the Call was sent out by Ned Stark.”
She thought about this for a long moment. “My little brother’s been having an interesting time of it then?”
“Yes. But perhaps a bit less violent a time as we have had. Although he did say that he was going to the Wall with Ned Stark for a meeting of the Lords of the North.” He sighed. “It makes me ashamed. The North prepares to fight on the Wall against the Others, Robert Baratheon rides for Winterfell, there’s word that Houses Royce and Redfort also travel to Winterfell and the Company of the Rose has returned. And what do we do here on the Iron Islands? We fight each other because your Father and his brother deny the Call. Come. I’ll show you the letter. And we need to plan our next move.”
Gendry
Tonight they were staying at a place that really annoyed the Queen, a small keep that was apparently owned by some family that had just gotten back to the North from Essos, or something like that anyway, he hadn’t been near when someone had explained it to the crowd.
What he did know however was that the keep’s blacksmith was an old man with an apprentice who was so young that he barely knew the correct colour for iron that was ready to be beaten into shape. When he had offered his services in the forge the old man had accepted rather reluctantly, until he’d seen Gendry fashion his first sword.
And now he was pounding on what would be a hoe blade eventually. It was good to work on something that would be so needed when it came to tending the harvest. People seemed to be talking about it a lot around him – growing as much food as possible, getting ready for the winter.
“So this is where you are!”
He looked up at that and then smiled as he saw Shireen at the door to the forge. Then he frowned a little. “You stay there! It’s a dangerous place, a forge, and your father would have my head if you were hurt here.”
His cousin – that still felt so strange even now – rolled her eyes and then pointed at a low bench to one side. “Will you worry less if I sit there?”
He sighed. “Only if you stay there. It’s safe there. Forges are dangerous my lady.”
She rolled her eyes again. “Stop calling me that! I’m your cousin!”
The hoe needed some attention so be pounded on it for a moment. “Never had a cousin before,” he muttered in a low voice. “Still hard to know how to talk to you.”
Shireen directed a piercing look at him, before nodding and seating herself on the bench. “So – what are you making?”
“A hoe. For the crops.”
“How long will it take you?”
“As long as it takes. Too quickly and it won’t be much use. Too long and that’s time lost on making something else. You judge it as you go along.”
This seemed to make sense to her and she nodded, before watching as he worked – and occasionally asking some very good questions about what it took to be a blacksmith. It was all just enough to make him relax just a bit.
After a while she fell silent, before abruptly asking: “Can you make something for me?”
He gave the hoe one last tap and then looked at her. “What do you need?”
“It’s Father’s name-day soon. His old knife is broken and he was talking about getting it reforged. Can you make him a new one? I can pay for it.”
“A general blade, or specifically made for him?
Shireen blinked at him. “What’s the difference?”
“General blade is, well, made for anyone. If it’s made for him then it’s unique to him. The handle will be made for his hand, so I’ll need to know how large his hand is.”
His cousin thought about that and then nodded, before sitting back and watching as he finished off the hoe, before wiping his hands and the hammer free of sweat and then starting on a second hoe.
As he was about halfway through making it he realised that they were no longer alone. A slim blond boy was standing in the doorway. He was dressed in fine leathers with a lot of fur attached. Frankly he looked like a blond weasel wearing his mother’s furs. Gendry eyed him warily and bowed awkwardly. “My Prince.”
The Prince looked about with a sneer on his face. He didn’t step into the forge, he looked at the floor as if it was filthy. Behind him loomed the large frame of Sandor Clegane, the horrifically scarred man that men called the Hound. “So you’re the bastard,” he said eventually with an even larger sneer. “The blacksmith bastard.”
Anger stiffened his spine for a moment, but then reality hit him. “Yes, my Prince. I am a bastard. And I am a blacksmith. Do you need anything worked on at the forge?”
The Prince eyed him in a slightly confused manner, obviously wondering why the bastard was being so polite. Then he seemed to rally a little. “At least you know your place.” A smirk and a look over his shoulder at The Hound, who just stared back at him icily. “What are you working on?”
“A hoe my Prince. For the harvest.”
“Oh, a hoe. For the peasants.”
Anger prickled at him and he added: “I’ve also been commissioned to make something for the Hand of the King.”
The sneer seemed to deepen, if such a thing was possible. “Really? For my uncle, Lord Stannis? You are a bastard with delusions. You lie. Perhaps I should get my dog here to give you a thrashing for lying to a Prince.”
As he cursed himself for opening his mouth and took a slightly better grip on his hammer he was interrupted by a delicate clearing of a throat. “Actually, cousin Joffrey,” said Shireen, “He’s telling the truth.”
The Prince – no, the little shit as everyone else seemed to call him, amongst the Stormlanders and non-Lannisters at least – actually jumped a little, before stepping in and looking at Shireen. “What the Seven Hells are you here for?”
Shireen looked back at him stonily. “Commissioning a new knife for my father from our cousin. He’s very good with that hammer.”
The little shit seemed to quiver with uncertainty for a long moment, looking from Shireen to him, to the Hound and then back to him. He seemed to be slightly… fearful?... about Shireen and Gendry remembered the tales of how he had shunned her for her old greyscale scars. Then he seemed to rally a little. “Well, what a match. The bastard blacksmith and the… silly little girl.”
Shireen just stared at him and then stood up from the bench. “You wanted to say ‘scarred little girl’ didn’t you? Well, you can’t. The scars are gone. The Old Gods cured me. I’ve found things and seen things and lived though things that you can’t imagine. So, you know nothing, cousin.”
The little shit flushed with fury and took a step towards Shireen that raised Gendry’s hackles. Shit, he thought, this is going to be bad. And then another throat was cleared at the door on the other end of the forge, and Stannis Baratheon stepped into the room. He was dressed in his own leathers and had a sheath of messages in his hand. His eyes were also burning with anger. “Nephew,” he said, glowering at Joffrey in a way that made the little shit cringe more than a bit. “Are you insulting my daughter?”
The little shit paled and all but danced from foot to foot for a moment. “….No?”
The glower intensified. “Good. Do you have somewhere else to be?”
“…Yes?”
“Then I suggest you go and do something there. If I find you bothering my daughter or your bastard half-brother I shall be… annoyed.”
The little shit pulled a face that might have been an attempt at an ingratiating smirk, before all but fleeing. Stannis Baratheon watched him go with an odd, unreadable, expression on his face and then walked through the door that the little shit had left by. “Gendry.”
“My Lord?”
“Thank you for keeping my daughter safe in this forge.”
Gods, how long had he been there? “I’d never risk her here my Lord.”
His uncle paused for a moment and then tossed something at Shireen, who caught it with wide eyes. “The handle to my old knife.” And then he strode out.
Gendry looked at Shireen – who sent a beaming smile back at him.
Bronn
It was odd how the sight of the Foxhold up ahead raised his spirits. He’d spent so long hoping for a little holdfast somewhere and then when he did get one (well, bigger than he had ever dreamt of) he found himself getting far more emotional about it than he ever dared imagine.
Home. He was home. Such a strange concept. Father would have laughed his arse off and then paused and told him that he was right.
As he and his guards clattered in through the main gate and then up before the keep he could see activity as many people started to gather. Ursula Stone was one, as she directed people into place before smoothing out her skirts and then clasping her hands before her stomach. And then there was Maester Haster, who was walking into place. Both looked reasonably calm, which was a good sign.
Dismounting, he handed his horse off to a groom with a word of thanks and then walked up to the others. “She’s still alive then?”
“She is,” his Steward said in a hard voice. “She had a few close brushes with The Stranger, but she’s still alive.”
Bronn nodded and then dismissed all but Stone and Haster. “How is she?”
The Maester pulled a slight face. “She has good days and bad days, my Lord. Good days outnumber the bad days at the moment. On the bad days, the loss of her arm seems to come as a shocking surprise in the mornings. On the good days, well, she gives us a lot of orders.”
Bronn stared at them both. “Orders? What kind of orders?”
The Maester looked embarrassed whilst Ursula Stone looked a bit like her last name. Then she coughed a little. “Oh, orders on the lines of ‘Saddle the horses, I demand I be taken to the Eyrie at once’, ‘Send a raven to Winterfell at once, my son must be sent back straight away,’ and then ‘Lord Arryn is dead, I am the Lady Regent of the Vale, you will obey my orders at once.’ Only louder. Much louder.”
He rubbed at the bridge of his own nose for a moment. “Aye, well, she can whistle for all that. Lord Arryn is most certainly alive and well, and very angry with her. How long will it be before she’s well enough to travel?”
Haster chewed his lip for a moment and somehow managed to look even younger. “Travel to King’s Landing my Lord?”
“Aye.”
The lip got chewed a bit again. “Maybe a month. Maybe two. Losing an arm was a terrible strain on Lady Arryn, my Lord.” Something seemed to occur to him. “Is she even still Lady Arryn?”
Bronn’s eyebrows went up and down for a moment. “That’s a good question. I don’t know. Lord Arryn didn’t exactly say if he’d divorced her, although given the fact that she tried to kill him he’d have reason to. I would if I was him.” Then something occurred to him as well. “Does she even know that Lord Arryn’s still alive?”
“We haven’t mentioned it to her,” his Steward said with a distinct gleam to her eye. “It will no doubt come as a shock.”
He eyed her carefully. “And you think that I’m the one to tell her?”
“She should know how badly she failed.”
He was going to reply on the lines of ‘You’re a hard women Ursula Stone’, but then he remembered the thing that he was carrying. Instead he turned to the Maester. “I’ll talk to her later on. Monitor her closely – Lord Arryn himself wants her in King’s Landing for her trial.” Then he turned to his Steward. “I need to talk to you.”
They found a small room just off the main hall of the keep and once they were in it Bronn closed the door and then looked about. It seemed safe and secured, and this wasn’t King’s fucking Landing. Still, he kept his voice low as he asked: “Has she talked about the letter she had?”
“No, she has not. You gave it to Lord Arryn then?”
“I did. He was most grateful.” He paused and then he pulled out the piece of parchment from his coat. “He gave me this.”
She stared at it. “What is it?”
“A gift from Lord Arryn. To me – and to you – for our discretion about the letter.”
“That’s not very informative. What is it?”
“The document that makes you a Cawlish.”
Ursula Stone went as white as a sheet, her face shocked into total immobility. “…What?” she said eventually in a very small voice.
“I asked Lord Arryn if he could legitimise you. He’s acting Hand of the King at the moment.”
She stared at the document, her face still shocked and then she reached out with a trembling hand and took it from him. He watched as she cracked the seal on it and then read it carefully. When she was finished she stared at him as if she had no idea what he was. “Why?”
That was a good question, and one that he had long pondered over. “Because,” he said eventually, “I am Lord of the Foxhold, but I need a lot of help. This place is my home now. I need to know it better. I need someone who knows it. And you know it best of all. This was your home long before it was mine. I know that you had no plans to leave, but I wanted something to really ground you here and keep you…” He struggled for the next word. “Here. Helping me here.”
There was a long moment of almost audible tension in the air, as something bubbled up unsaid at the back of his mind – and then she nodded. “Very well. I know what you mean.” She sniffed slightly, her nostrils flaring. “You do need help.” And then she stared at him again. “You are a very odd man, Bronn Cassley.”
He smirked at her. “Oh, I’m practically unique! Thank you – Ursula Cawlish.”
There was another pause, as intense emotion flickered on her face – sadness and mourning and jubilation and something else – before she broke it by curtseying formally before him. “Thank you, my Lord.” And as she walked off there was a swish to her hips that most definitely caught his eye.
Tyrion
Oddly enough Mance Rayder turned out to be a very good artist indeed, skilled with charcoal on paper. His sketch of the Throne of Winter, or rather the oldest Throne of Winter, was a remarkably fine one and he was now inking over the charcoal with a quill.
The room was bare now, swept clean of the filth that had been everywhere. The bones had all been burned. All of them, and the rags that so many of them had been in. There was still a smell in the air but the room was as clean as it would ever be. It made the Throne of Winter stand out even more than it already did. It was, and the pun was unintentional, quite a stark thing.
The carvings were odd. They were old, oh, so very old. Cleaning them had been something of a trial, as no-one wanted to get anywhere near the bloody thing. He’d ended up wiping it down with a ball of wet cloth on the end of a stick, using the other end of the stick to push away the nastier debris at the base. All of that… filth… was gone as well. They’d had a big pyre for it all.
On the back of the seat of the chair there was a carving of a man, possibly with the head of a wolf overlaying the head of the carving. It had to be a Stark. On the sides of the throne, facing outward to the right and the left, were a small figure that might have been a child, except that it didn’t seem to have enough fingers and toes, and some kind of sinuous dragony-thing. It was hard to tell and he really didn’t want to get too close to it. Oh and in the left hand arm of the throne was a little alcove. It was empty.
All in all it was a most perplexing thing. The simplest way to test out what it was would have been to have a Stark sit in it, but neither seemed to want to go anywhere near it – not that he could blame them whatsoever. That said, both Starks were looking at it now, from some distance away. They seemed to have having a whispered conversation that covered much of his own thoughts. Whatever it was it had been… hidden? Certainly sealed away. Why? And what did it do?
He heard the sound of boots behind him, but didn’t turn to look at whoever it was. He was thinking too hard. The boots stopped suddenly and then a new voice said: “Bugger me, Robb, what have you found? What is this thing?” Startled, he turned. Benjen Stark was standing there in riding gear, looking rumpled, travel-stained and deeply weary. Deeply astonished as well.
“Uncle Benjen?” Both the Starks said the question at the same time, before grinning hugely and striding over to embrace their uncle, who returned the gesture with a grin that reminded him of Uncle Gerion, as their direwolves walked over and sniffed at him. “Whatever are you doing here, Uncle?” Robb Stark asked. “I thought you were headed South with the head of that wight, to show all the naysayers in high places there?”
“I was,” the First Ranger sighed, “But then I felt a sudden need to be here. At the Nightfort. I met a wandering Brother of mine, Yoren by name, and gave him the head in the cage as he headed South and then I rode North as fast as I could. What in the name of the Gods is it?”
Tyrion smiled wryly as he stumped up to the older Stark. “The Throne of Winter, and yes, I know, that’s at Winterfell. This seems to be a different, possibly older, version. The chamber was locked with the deal of the old Kings in the North, but we found, well…”
“People had found a way in through the ceiling Uncle Benjen,” Jon Stark muttered. “And there’s a carving on the throne that says that only a Stark can use it. If you’re not a Stark… well, you go mad, we think.” He looked at his uncle sombrely. “There were a lot of bodies here Uncle Benjen. Just bones, but… well, there were cooking pots in here too. We think that this is the place where the Rat King ruled, if you can call it that. This seems to be the place where all the dark tales of the Nightfort come from.”
Benjen Stark stared at them all carefully and then looked at the throne. “Are those runes on it?”
“Aye,” replied Robb Stark. “Old ones, according to Tyrion here.”
The First Ranger turned to look at him. “Lord Tyrion. We met briefly on the road to Castle Black did we not?”
“We did,” he replied as he shook the hand of the new Stark. “And I am very glad that you don’t have that head in a cage any more. It positively made the hairs on the back of head stand on end. Ah – the runes. Yes, they are old indeed. Very old. As old as the Wall I think.”
“By the Old Gods,” the other man muttered, before peering quizzically at Rayder, who was carefully inking the last of the drawing. “Why the picture? And… from the description, is that Mance Rayder?”
“I am,” Rayder replied as he looked up from his drawing. Then he grinned almost boyishly. “I’ve been asked to draw this for Lord Tyrion there and his lady friend – who sounds very interesting.”
Benjen Stark looked confused. “Lady friend?”
“Lady Dacey Surestone’s father was a notable historian,” Tyrion said with as much dignity as he could summon. “He wrote a history of the First Men and this surely deserves mention in it. She’ll want more than a description. Rayder here mentioned he could draw and by the Gods he surely can.” He paused. Benjen Stark’s face had frozen.
“Was? Lord Surestone is dead?”
“I’m afraid so. We think that he might have been murdered by a Riverlander who thought he was the Heir to Surestone. I escorted Dacey Surestone, his real heir, on the Kingsroad to Winterfell.”
“I remember him,” Stark said sadly. “A good man. He visited Winterfell one year with his family, just before I left to join the Night’s Watch.”
He peered at Rayder again, his eyes hooded. “Your people are settling well into The Gift, from what I saw.”
Rayder walked over to Tyrion and handed him the drawing, before smiling slightly. “We’ve got a lot to do there,” he muttered, before pulling a face. “I’m afraid that in places it’s-”
“Badly neglected?” Benjen Stark shook his head. “We’ve tried. All too often we’ve failed. Of course, past raids by your people haven’t helped.”
“I know,” Rayder sighed. “Ironic isn’t it? We repair the damage that we helped to inadvertently cause, because doing so will save us both. Winter is coming, as you Starks say.” And with that he walked off.
Benjen Stark watched him go with an enigmatic look and then a shake of the head, before looking back at the throne. “What in the name of the Old Gods is it?”
“We don’t know,” Robb Stark replied. “Perhaps there might be a reference to it in some record somewhere?”
His uncle nodded slowly. “Perhaps in Castle Black or Ned’s solar? Well… you’ve been busy.”
More boots sounded and then Ser Alliser Thorne strode in – and blinked at the sight of the First Ranger. “What are you doing here, First Ranger?”
“Good to see you as well Alliser!” He grinned at him until the sour other man finally unbent enough to smile back just a little. “I had a sudden feeling that I was needed here. Given what else has been happening of late, I thought I should listen to it. Sorry I was late to the party here.”
Something tickled at the back of Tyrion’s head. Late. That meant something. But what? Late. Then he remembered. Watch out for late wolves. “I was told… I was told to watch out for late wolves here,” he said, suddenly startled. “In that letter written by my ancestor, Tyrek Lannister.”
“What letter?” Benjen Stark asked, confused.
“A long story. A letter was found in Castle Black from one Tyrek Lannister, the last Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch to command from the Nightfort, addressed to me. It said I had things to find here – which I have. The ancestral weapons of the Casterleys. And that I had to help a man through a gate here. Oh, and I had to watch out for late wolves.”
“What gate? The main gate here is still mostly blocked.”
“We’ve found the Black Gate,” Ser Alliser replied gravely. “That’s why I came here. It’s in a bloody well for some reason, in the kitchens. You need to see it. Oddest thing I’ve ever seen.” He seemed to think about that for a long moment. “I never thought I’d say that.”
“Yes, well, life has been more than odd since the Call was sent out,” Tyrion said wryly as they trooped out of the door and down the corridor.
The well was a big one and an odd one. There were iron rungs on the side of one wall that allowed them to go down into it, something that gave Tyrion a bad case of the creeping horrors, enlivened a little by the excited whimpers that the direwolves gave as they were carried down. The light of the lanterns that someone had hung at the top of the well and again about ten rungs down were enough to see by – and also the glint of dark water far below. But the oddest thing of all was the doorway in the wall. It was open but Tormund Giantsbane was standing there, a lantern in one hand, staring hard at the wall of the well opposite the entrance. He made room for them all as they crowded in and then pointed at the wall. “There’s another door there. It’s bricked up, but there’s something there.”
Tyrion looked at the place the Wildling was pointing at and then blinked. Yes, there was indeed a bricked up entrance there. “Perhaps we should see what’s on the other side?”
“I’ll get a sledgehammer,” Giantsbane said with a slightly mad glint in his eye. “I like that sledgehammer that I saw up there. You can do some proper damage with that.” And then he vanished up the well, moving remarkable fast for such a big man.
Tyrion looked at the others, noted Mance Rayder’s wry shrug and then turned around. The Black Gate was made of white weirwood. And there was a face on it. It was old, pale, shrunken, and wrinkled, but it was a face. The creeping horrors were back. Alliser Thorne was next to it, as pale as a ghost, whilst Benjen Stark was almost as pale.
“This is a gate?” Thorne asked. “From what Maester Aemon said I expected something more… gate-like.”
“How does it work?” Robb Stark asked as he peered at it, obviously fascinated.
“Apparently only a member of the Night’s Watch can open it,” Thorne replied. He looked at Rayder sidewise. “I wonder if a former member could as well?”
“How about I don’t try at all?” Rayder replied. “You go ahead.”
Thorne looked at the gate, took a deep breath and stepped up to it. To Tyrion’s astonishment – and the astonishment of them all – the eye of the face on the gate opened, seemed to focus on Thorne and then said in a moaning voice: “Who are you?”
After a moment of what looked to be a great effort of pulling himself together, Thorne replied: “I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers. I am the shield that guards the realms of men.” And then the mouth of the face started to open, gaping wider and wider until there was nothing but the void. There was a passage on the other side.
Thorne and the First Ranger started down the passageway, along with the Starks and Rayder. Just before Tyrion followed them he heard the sound of feet on the rungs again and looked back to see a rather excited Tormund Giantsbane hefting a sledgehammer and then giving the wall opposite him the kind of look that Aemon the Conqueror might have given the old map of Westeros before the Conquest.
The passage was as cold as the Wall above, and it made Tyrion wish that he was wearing better boots as it was a bit slippery in places. And it emerged on the other side of the Wall, not far from a grove of trees. As he passed through there was an odd noise behind him and he turned to see the passageway close until it was nothing more than a faint face on the Wall.
The other side of the Wall was… well, rather like the other side. Nevertheless he still shuddered as he looked North. Now that he knew what was out there… well, it gave a new sense of dread. There was something black and terrible out there. He shivered a little. “You know Rayder, it’s still Summer and I would hate to live North of the Wall. Winter up here must be… horrible?”
“Beyond horrible for a southerner like you,” Rayder said wryly. “Cold like you wouldn’t believe, with a wind that can slice you to the bone, or that’s what it feels like.”
Tyrion shivered a little. He couldn’t put a finger on it, but he felt uneasy and he really didn’t know why. And the worst of it was that the feeling was getting slowly worse. He also felt as if he was missing something. “Something’s wrong,” he muttered. “Something’s about to happen, but I don’t know why or where or how. Why was I supposed to come here? Who needs to be let through the wall with my help?”
“Well,” Benjen Stark said with a sigh. “At least we know where the Black Gate is now. How so few knew about it escapes me.”
“Time, I expect,” Tyrion replied. “Nothing but time.” The feeling was still growing.
“Tyrion, what’s wrong?” asked Robb Stark.
“I don’t know. I just have a feeling that something somewhere is wrong. Perhaps we should return to the other side of the Wall.”
The others nodded to varying degrees and then they started to walk back to the Wall, where Benjen Stark repeated the words to open the gate. But then, as the passage opened again, they heard the long high wailing noise of a horn, far off. Benjen Stark and Alliser Thorne both stopped dead in their tracks and looked at each other, before turning and looking North, followed by Mance Rayder.
“Do you have any patrols out there?” Benjen Stark asked.
“No, we drew them all back in. The Halfhand didn’t want to take any chance that a patrol might clash with a party of Wildlings coming South to the Wall. Things were tense enough as it was.” Thorne frowned. “That was the horn of a man of the Night’s Watch though.”
The unease grew stronger in Tyrion. “This is the only place where a man can cross near here, right?”
“Yes, the gate here at the Nightfort is still blocked. First Ranger, if we hear it again you should answer it with your own horn.”
His right hand itched for a moment, but before he could speak Robb Stark stepped forwards. His face was set and he seemed almost to be sniffing the air. “You’re right. Something’s wrong. I think that that horn is the man you are supposed to help through the gate. I also think that we need to be very, very, careful. And I also think that you need Rocktooth. There was a reason why Tyrek Lannister was buried with it. Go – back down the passage and get it, as well as the others. Tell Theon to bring the dragonglass-tipped arrows.”
He ran. Whatever it was that Ned Stark had been teaching his sons, it was very effective and included the kind of voice of command that Father would give his eye teeth for. Down the passageway he ran, as fast as he could and he cursed his legs his little stumpy accursed legs. He almost slipped and fell several times as he ran and he made sure that he slowed as he reached the other end of the passage, as he had no intention of going for a bath.
Much to his surprise Tormund Giantsbane had hammered the bricked-up entrance open and there was more than a hint of brickdust in the air. There was a passageway that seemed to head upwards, or that was what he seemed to see. “Tormund?” There seemed to be a light up the passageway, a light that suddenly started to approach. It was Tormund Giantsbane, who seemed highly excited.
“I found a passage! With this hammer here!” The Wildling leader gestured with the sledgehammer. He was covered in all kinds of dust and his eyes were a bit unhinged. “It goes up! I think there’s another bricked up door at the end!”
Tyrion frowned. That actually seemed to make sense. Putting the Black Gate in the well seemed to be a very silly idea, unless someone had blocked it off and then forgotten about it. “Forget about that for a moment, we need to get the others. Something happening the other side of the Wall.”
The red-bearded Wildling frowned a lot and then gestured up the passageway with his thumb. “Faster to get them this way than climbing up. You climb up and get them, I’m going find out what’s at the other end of the passageway!” And then he turned and ran off, shouting what seemed to be an encouraging hammer song.
Tyrion shook his head and then sprang up the rungs, using every trick that he’d been taught for tumbling. When he emerged in the kitchen he orientated himself and then ran for the doors. As he did he seemed to hear a low but regular noise, as if someone was using a sledgehammer on a wall somewhere close.
The others were in the main keep. Theon Greyjoy and the Ygritte girl were discussing arrow-binding for some reason, watched by Val and the Greyjoy’s direwolf, whilst Uncle Gerion, Allarion and the others were watching Pod as he stitched something together that looked leather. As Tyrion skidded to a halt, panting, Pod looked up. “I finished the harness for Rocktooth, Lord Tyrion,” his squire said with a slight smile. “Scabbards for the knives too, there was some good leather here.”
“Did I hear a horn earlier?” The other man of the Nights Watch, Larkin, was frowning in the direction of the Wall. “Wait, there it is again.”
And then they heard another horn, this one on the other side of the Wall, or that was what it sounded like. Larkin stood up with an oath. “What’s happening?”
“We’re all needed on the other side of the Black Gate. Pod, give me my weapons please. Robb Stark sent me back to get you all. Theon Greyjoy, Robb Stark said that you need to bring the dragonglass-tipped arrows.”
The squidling went as white as a sheet, exchanged a horrified glance with Ygritte, who also looked strained, but then stood and picked up a quiver of arrows. Uncle Gerion exchanged a long look with his son, who looked worried, but then fastened his swordbelt around his waist and also stood. Brightroar was a reassuring presence, but nothing compared to what he felt as pod helped him with the harness that carried Rocktooth. The moment that he put it on it felt strangely right. The itch in his hand stopped for a start. The daggers went onto his belt and then he started out with the others for the kitchen.
Not that they got there. All of a sudden there was a crash and a section of wall gave way to one side, revealing a triumphant Tormund Giantsbane. He was in an even more dusty state, but he was grinning hugely and waving both his sledgehammer and his torch. “Not one but two doorways! And here I am! This must be the passageway that originally led to the Black Gate! Ha ha!” He looked at them and then seemed to realise what he looked like. “Bit dusty, but no rungs!”
Tyrion gaped at him – and then pointed at the passageway. “Down there!” Then he paused. “Wait – we need planks or beams to cross the well at the bottom.”
They managed it. The passageway was indeed filthy. Covered in the dust and accumulated filth of the centuries, if not the thousands of years, since it had last been used, but they made it to the bottom, bridged it and then crossed to the Black Gate, which was closed. Fortunately Larkin was there to say the words and after a long moment of astonishment from the others after seeing the gate open, they were hurrying though.
I have dreamt this, Tyrion thought desperately as he ran back down the passageway, I dreamt this days earlier, didn’t I?
As they emerged at the other side he could feel the tension. Benjen Stark had his sword in his right hand and a horn in the other, whilst all the others had drawn their swords. As the newcomers arrived then they too drew their weapons, whilst Robb Stark lowered Ice and turned to them. “There was a horn from the North, in the Haunted Forest. Once from far away and then again from closer. Uncle Benjen replied to it. Someone is coming. One blast is the sign of the approach of a member of the Night’s Watch.”
“What are the others?” Uncle Gerion asked, Brightroar in his hand.
“Two for approaching Wildlings,” Alliser Thorne barked. “Three for Others. No-one’s heard that last one for thousands of years. I think we might hear is soon on the Wall.”
They waited. Val was talking quietly with Rayder, who seemed to be giving her tips on the best way to wield a dragonglass knife, whilst Jon Stark was watching Ygritte and Theon as they strung their bows and readied their arrows.
And then the horn call came again, nearer this time and urgent. Benjen Stark quickly replied to it and then there was another pause. It was broken by Pod. “Lord Tyrion, are your knives… glowing?”
He looked at them and then blanched. They were indeed glowing, just enough to be noticed, but the glow seemed to be waxing. And then he made the connection. “The Warnings, they were called. Gods above, they warn.”
Alliser Thorne looked baffled. “Warn? Warn of what?”
The answer came as the horn sounded again to the North. First one blast, then a pause – and then another one, followed by another. And then another. Terror prickled his scalp for a moment as all the direwolves growled at the same time. “Others come! The Others must be chasing him!”
Benjen Stark cursed and then shrugged off his backpack and rummaged through it, before pulling out about ten small clay pots. “Oil, for wights,” he explained. “Torches! Keep those torches lit! We’ll need them.”
They waited again – and then Tyrion narrowed his eyes slightly. Birds were erupting from a part of the forest ahead of them. Someone was coming and he pulled out Rocktooth from its harness and weighed it in his hands. It was heavy but it felt right. Everything about it now felt, well, right.
More birds erupted upwards and then he could see something coming. It was an elk, a galloping elk, with a black-clad figure on its back. There was what appeared to be a bow in one hand of the rider and he seemed to be looking behind him, before turning his head and then spurring the elk towards the waiting group by the Black Gate.
“Coldhands!” Benjen Stark said and then shouted: “COLDHANDS! HERE!”
But the birds were still stirring in the forest and Tyrion knew with a sinking heart that whoever this Coldhands was he was not alone. The treeline shivered for a moment and then suddenly there were dozens of running figures there. He stared at them – and then he went white. Wights. They had to be wights. They were in rags or worse, bloodied or worse, maimed… or worse. Skin was white or in some cases green or even black and here and there he could see a ribcage or an armbone.
“Wights,” Jon Stark growled. “Stand ready!”
They waited – and then the bows in the hands of Theon and Ygritte sounded again with their deep thrum. The two were good and they had easy targets – the wights they were aiming from never even tried to dodge the incoming arrows – but not every arrow found its mark and there only two of them. Nevertheless, those arrows that found their mark killed the wights.
The elk was almost on them, and as it approached it slowed, its chest heaving with exertion. The rider seemed to be almost reeling in his saddle but when he saw Benjen Stark he raised a trembling hand and croaked: “Well-met brother! I told you that we would meet again.” And then he leant over too far and fell to the ground, before seeming to regather his strength and standing on shaking legs, before pulling out what seemed to be a piece of a spear from his side.
Tyrion eyed this with horror, before looking back at the oncoming wights. “They seem to want you rather badly.”
“They want me dead,” Coldhands rasped, before picking up his bow and then joining the other archers in sending arrow after arrow at the wights. “Brother, I have oil in my saddlebags as well.”
And then the wights were on them. Tormund Giantsbane roared as he hammered at their ranks, left and right with his sledgehammer, crushing skulls and breaking limbs with each sweep, but it was the swords in the hands of Robb Stark and Uncle Gerion that seemed to do the most damage. Every wight that they stabbed went limp and died – as did the wights facing Jon Stark. That sword he bore… was it Valyrian steel? The three direwolves snarled and darted back and forth at the feet of the Starks, lunging for every exposed tendon on a wight and tearing them out. Alliser Thorne and Larkin fought together, hacking off limbs with their own swords, whilst Allarion stabbed at any wight that tried to flank his father. As for Mance Rayder and Val, they both had a sword in one hand and a dragonglass dagger in the other, and they chose where to stab with great care as some of the wights had rusted armour on them. And then Benjen Stark started to throw his oil pots around, their wicks lit. He aimed at the wights still approaching and they went up like kindling.
Most men would have quailed and then run from such a slaughter, but these were not men or women, these were the dead and the dead felt no fear. They just kept coming, to be struck down or smashed to pieces or set on fire. And there were a lot of them – so much so that eventually two got past the flank and then ran at Tyrion. He gulped – and then Pod got the first one, hacking it to pieces with quite a bit of venom but also taking a bit too much time, because the other one was still coming. Tyrion hefted Rocktooth in both hands, eyed the oncoming wight – and then he stepped to one side quickly and swung the axe at the centre of the wight’s chest with all his strength.
He expected it to perhaps smash the wight back and perhaps gain enough time for a second swing. What he was not expecting was for the blade of Rocktooth to obliterate every rib the wight had, as if the bones were made of paper, before the wight literally fell to pieces in front of him, as if rot had suddenly sped up. “Fuck me,” he whispered as the pieces fell to the ground. “Now that I did not expect.”
“Tyrion,” Uncle Gerion shouted as he rammed Brightroar through the eye socket of a wight that was almost a skeleton, “What the Seven Hells was that?”
“Rocktooth is not fond of wights Uncle,” he called back with a slightly hysterical laugh. And then he shut up because another wight was running at him. This time he swung for the legs and before he knew it, it was raining pieces of wight.
“The Imp has fangs!” Tormund Giantsbane roared as he smashed a wight’s head so far down into its chest that the rotting blue eyes looked through its own ribs. “He needs a better name though!”
“Tyrion ‘Lionfang’ Lannister,” Robb Stark laughed as he cut down a wight with a great overhead blow. “Why not?”
Another wight came at Tyrion and he dealt with it in the same manner, before he noticed that Pod had gotten his sword stuck in the chest of a wight that was now scrabbling for the boy’s head with rotten hands. “Pod!”
“My Lord?”
“Duck!”
The lad threw himself back and down and Rocktooth cleaved the air where he had been standing and hit the head of the wight, which froze and then disintegrated, freeing Pod’s sword.
“We’re out of arrows,” Theon Greyjoy shouted as he threw down his bow and then drew his sword, followed by Ygritte – but then they looked about in vain for more wights.
“By the Old Gods,” Robb Stark panted as he looked about as well. “Was that the last of them?”
“No,” rasped Coldhands as he stood over the wights that he’d killed with his won sword after running out of arrows. “Beware – there are Others out there somewhere. I can feel it.” The man, or whatever he was, wasn’t out of breath at all.
“What now?” Thorne barked. “Back through the Gate?”
“I cannot pass through the Gate,” Coldhands muttered. “Not without help.”
“What kind of – wait. Tyrion, your daggers are glowing again.”
They were indeed, only this time it was with a colder, harsher light. They seemed to startle Coldhands, who peered at them and then at him as if he was only now seeing him properly. “By the Old Gods – are those the Warnings? And is that Rocktooth?”
“Yes to both questions,” Tyrion answered as he watched the treeline. “I am Tyrion Lannister. Wait – you’ve seen them before?”
“When I was a child,” Coldhands said almost sadly. “In the hands of a Lannister who did not think that they were good enough weapons for his House.”
“Yes, well, they’re more than good enough for me,” Tyrion muttered slightly dazedly. Then he paused. There seemed to be a bit more vapour in the air when he breathed. It was colder than it had been a few minutes ago. “It’s getting colder. Is that normal North of the Wall?”
“Others!” The call came from Alliser Thorne, who looked as if he did not believe what he was looking at. Tyrion turned his head a little. Oh. A figure had emerged from the trees, with frost spreading out from the ground wherever he trod. Its skin was almost a white-blue colour, its hair was pure white and its eyes were like small blue stars. It was dressed in a kind of old-fashioned looking grey armour that seemed to be a kind of leather with metal on it and he was holding a sword that looked odd, as if it was made of ice or crystal.
And it was not alone. Three more figures, similar to it in dress and appearance, joined it. They looked at the group by the gate and then they looked at Coldhands – and then they started walking towards the wall, spreading out as they came.
“Fire deters them,” Rayder said urgently, “Is there any more oil?”
“I used the last of it on the wights,” muttered Benjen Stark as he hefted his own sword. “Coldhands, what do they want?”
“Me,” rasped the hooded man, “They want me. They want me dead to be precise. They’ve long hunted me. We need fire and dragonglass – your swords are useless.”
“We have no more torches and that’s all the dragonglass we have,” Rayder muttered as he looked down at his dagger. “Damn it, we should have brought more.”
“Father,” said Allarion quietly, “We need him. But the danger is-”
“Worth the risk,” replied Uncle Gerion. “We have something they’ve never seen before – Valyrian steel. Let’s test a theory.” And with that he stepped forwards towards the nearest Other.
“Uncle, NO!” Tyrion shouted in anguish, but it was too late. The Other stared at Uncle Gerion as if he was nothing and then lifted his sword with frightening speed and slashed at his neck – only for his sword to meet Brightroar with a clash of metal on ice. It was a loud, discordant sound and it drew the eyes of everyone, including the Others, who stared with suddenly wide eyes.
“Test confirmed,” Uncle Gerion grinned, before pushing the Other back and then slashing at its eyes. The creature fell back a step, apparently astonished, before parrying another blow and then attacking itself. Gerion blocked the first blow and then the second, before shouting: “Don’t just stand there you Starks – attack!” And then he ducked under a great slash and plunged Brightroar into the chest of the Other – who imploded into a million shards of ice.
As Uncle Gerion stepped back, panting with effort, the two Stark brothers burst into action. “For the North!” they both bellowed, “For Winterfell!” Their swords hammered at the upraised blades of the next two Others, who seemed to still be astonished at what was going on.
“We need to kill them all,” Tyrion muttered, before raising his voice. “They must not escape – they don’t know about Valyrian steel!”
“Easier said than done,” Robb Stark replied as he hammered at the Other with Ice. “But yes – kill them all!”
“Where did Ned Stark’s bastard get a Valyrian steel blade?” Thorne muttered dazedly.
But that wasn’t what was bothering Tyrion. Robb Stark was engaging one of the Others, Jon Stark was fighting another, with Uncle Gerion coming to his aid, but there was another one out there and he was striding inexorably towards Coldhands.
Larkin was the closest to the creature and was falling back – but not fast enough. The blade it bore slashed out suddenly and then the man of the Night’s Watch was falling to the ground, his throat a bloody ruin.
The next closest was, naturally, Pod and Tyrion. “Get behind me Pod,” Tyrion shouted as he raised Rocktooth, “Get behind me NOW!”
The boy scurried behind him and Tyrion dug his boots in and watched the Other as it came. The skin was tight on its face, as if it was almost mummified and the eyes glittered with an inexorable purpose. To one side he heard a shout of triumph as something erupted into the air, and then another, and he knew that the other two Others were defeated and there was now just this one, but the Starks and Uncle Gerion were all the way over there and he was all the way over here, and his palms were sweaty and his heart was hammering at his chest and her knew that he was about to die, but he still lifted the axe with a snarl on his face. “Piss off, you blue bastard,” he shouted and then as the Other swung its sword he lifted Rocktooth.
Something seemed to chime deep within him for a long moment and then everything seemed to slow to a crawl. He could see Robb Stark running to one side, approaching with a glacial slowness as he swung Ice, but right now there was just Rocktooth and the icy blade of the Other. He pulled on the handle somehow as he twisted himself, willing himself to move faster – and then time seemed to speed up and then suddenly he felt Rocktooth judder to a halt. He looked up to see that the blade was buried in the belly of the Other, which was gaping down at him, and then it seemed to wail and then explode into a thousand fiery fragments that shot up and away from Tyrion.
There was a long silence, or that was what it felt like to Tyrion as the blood thundered in his ears, before he lowered the axe. “Bugger me,” he whispered. “Why did my ancestors hide this thing?” He suspected he knew why though – it worked on Others very well indeed, and no-one had seen them for thousands of years.
And then the silence was broken as various people started to talk. Tormund Giantsbane had his sledgehammer over his head and was bellowing with triumph, whilst Mance Rayder was embracing Alliser Thorne and Benjen Stark, all of whom were laughing with stressed relief. Theon Greyjoy was joking with the Starks, the two Wildling girls were staring at the Starks, Uncle Gerion was grinning at his rather exasperated son… and Coldhands was just standing there.
Tyrion walked up to the hooded man. “Why can’t you pass through the Black Gate?”
Coldhands seemed to consider this question for a long moment, before seeming to sigh. “Wights cannot pass the Wall of their own accord,” he said sadly. “And I… I am something that falls between human and wight.”
This broke the spell of laughter and relief. All turned to look at the hooded man, although Benjen Stark seemed to ne nodding in sudden understanding. “What are you?” Alliser Thorne barked.
“No,” replied Tyrion, “Who are you?”
“He’s a Stark,” replied the First Ranger. “Rickon Stark. The son of Edwyle Stark.” He looked at Coldhands. “You’ve been wandering beyond the Wall for a long time, Brother.”
Coldhands looked down at the ground for a long moment – and then he pulled his hood back and tugged his scarf off. Tyrion swallowed. This was not a wight – but he was not alive either. The hair was black, but touched with silver at the temples, but the face was thin and drawn, the skin white in places and black in others, especially at the jaw. He looked around at all of them in turn, his eyes flinching a little as he looked at the Stark boys.
“I need to get through the Wall to complete my mission,” Coldhands said slowly. “But I don’t know how.”
“What mission?” Thorne had a hand on the hilt of his sword.
“When the Wall was built, it was by men. By Bran the Builder and the First Men. But they did not understand the magic that was – is – in the earth. The soil. The trees. As the Wall…” he clenched his fists, “Solidified, the links between North and South were slowly cut. The Children of the Forest North of the Wall could not talk to their brethren in the South. So they prepared a great magic and they sent word to the Wall that they what needed to be done to fix it. I went North, to talk to their greatest leader, their Greenseer of Greenseers. He gave me a task to perform, I had to bear something South of the Wall. Magic.
“But the Others felt it, or knew somehow of it, and they stirred out of their long sleep to try and stop me. And they… found me. Almost killed me. I would have died if not for the Children of the Forest. They were able to stop me from turning. I do not breath, I have no pulse, but Brothers I am no wight. I am my own man, I do not hear their orders. And I have waited these long years.”
Thorne still had his hand on his sword. “Waited for what?”
“There was a prophesy. There would be a man with a golden mind, and a boy who died and fell through time. They’d help me. And something else. Swords of fire. That’s all I know.”
Tyrion peered at him. “I know that I am the man with the golden mind – I’m a Lannister. As for the boy who died and fell through time – I don’t know. But as for swords of fire – we have three swords made from Valyrian steel here. As I have long suspected that the Valyrians made their swords with dragonfire… perhaps we should test something. Uncle Gerion, could you hold Brightroar near Coldhands?”
His Uncle stared at him for moment, but then drew his sword and held it close to Coldhands – who shuddered in reaction. “I like that not,” the almost-wight said with a groan. “But I feel heat and fire from it.”
They all stared at him, before a sudden slight movement reminded them all that some of the wight parts were still twitching. “We must burn them,” Robb Stark said, before looking at Larkin’s body sadly. “He was killed by an Other. Will he rise again?”
“He will,” Rayder replied. “Ser Alliser, do you need my dragonglass knife?”
The bitter man looked as if he was about to spit to one side, but then seemed to restrain himself. “No,” he said as he walked over to the body and drew his sword. “I’ll deal with him meself. He was a good man.” A short savage stroke beheaded the body.
As the others collected fallen wood from the treeline – having first all stared at the Warnings, which were making him a very popular man – Tyrion stroked his chin and frowned at the sensation of a fledgling beard rasping against his fingers as he thought about the problem. As the first flames started to rise and the pieces of wight were thrown onto it – why did wights burn so easily? – he came to a decision.
“I think I have a solution to the matter of getting you through the Black Gate,” Tyrion muttered. “Uncle Gerion, Robb and Jon Stark, would you please draw your swords? Three swords, placed in a triangle around, erm, Rickon Stark here. And then perhaps we might be able to escort him, in a way, through the Black Gate. First Ranger, would you open it please?”
The Stark brothers looked at each other doubtfully for a moment, before turning to the… non-wight (was that the best term?) in front of them. “With your permission,” Robb Stark said, “We would not force you.”
“Oh, you’ll have to force me,” their ancestor replied, “But you have my permission.” He watched as one sword was held to one side, met with another sword and then finally Brightroar was added to complete the triangle. Coldhands winced visibly, pulling his arms close to his body, but then eventually nodded. “We can try this. Someone will need to get my elk though. He and I have been though much together and I would not see him abandoned North of the Wall, not before a Long Winter.”
It was Val who took the reins of the rather skittish elk, before soothing it by stroking its muzzle. The elk burbled and then shook its head a little but followed her as they all slowly walked to the no open Black Gate, where a solemn Benjen Stark was waiting.
Tyrion never forgot that passage through the wall. The man they were escorting let out a choked scream as they forced him through the gate and then slowly down the passageway, twisting in place at times and jerking. The closer he got to the middle of the passage – and the Wall – the more he jerked. As for the screaming… Tyrion wished he could stop his ears up, but he dared not. By the time that they reached the other side of the Black Gate everyone looked tired and strained, but at least Coldhands had stopped making noises. He just walked slowly, his eyes showing a pain and weakness that grew with every step.
“Bugger me,” Thorne said ahead of them, as the Valyrian steel blades were finally sheathed, “Where did this passageway come from?”
“I found it,” Tormund Giantsbane told him with a fierce grin. “Me and my sledgehammer here! There was a bricked-up doorway here, as I said, and then another going up, and then another up again.”
“Bricked… up?” Coldhands said slowly as he looked at the metal rungs to one side. “I don’t understand… there was always a… passage here.”
“It has been a long time since you were last here Brother,” Benjen Stark told him sadly. “The Nightfort was abandoned centuries ago because it could not be maintained. It is being restored now, but it’s not yet in a fit state.” He looked at him more closely. “What is wrong?”
“I am dying,” Coldhands whispered. “The passage through the Wall has weakened me... and the magic that protected me… cannot be felt here. It is the Wall. I need to get to… a Heart Tree. Quickly, Brother.”
The First Ranger grabbed the left arm of Coldhands and placed it around his shoulders and then supported him as he staggered over the planks that crossed the well and then up the passageway, the others following them. The elk just about fitted into the passageway, its low moans of concern for its rider echoing up from behind Tyrion as the direwolves ran on ahead.
As they reached the doorway at the end and negotiated the rubble, Coldhands looked about in dismay. “It’s worse than… I had ever thought,” he groaned. “I heard that it had been… abandoned, but to see it like this…”
“It will be restored, Brother,” Benjen Stark told him almost fiercely, before helping him to the Godswood not too far away. There they laid him at the base of the Heart Tree, so that he could look up and see the sky through the leaves, with Thorne’s rolled-up cloak under his head.
“I must do this,” Coldhands muttered as he pulled off his gloves. His hands were black and Tyrion winced a little as he looked at them. And then he stared. There was a red fire burning in the eyes of the prone man, and as he watched that red fire started to burn hotter and hotter. Little wisps of flame seemed to flicker down to his hands and after a long moment he realised that it was forming a ball of red fire. Brighter and brighter the fire grew until Tyrion could barely look at it as he raised a hand in front of his eyes. Brighter still and then it stopped. Tyrion heard Coldhands say, in a voice like a mountain speaking, “Bind the land again. Restore the links between North and South. The Greenseers must see each other again.”
And then the great red ball of fire sank into the Heart tree, or that was what he could see through his fingers and squinted eyes. As it vanished into the tree he saw to his astonishment that it had left no trace on the trunk. There was a long pause and then Coldhands – no, Rickon Stark – lowered his shaking hands. Tyrion was about to ask what that had been about when he noticed that the Heart tree was starting to glow, with a throb-throb that reminded him of a pulse. It did not get as bright as the ball of fire had been, but it was there and – suddenly he took a hesitant step backwards. The Wall. The Wall was also glowing red. The Wall was glowing. The others had noticed as well, from the shocked cries – and then it flared once and went back to its usual colour.
“What in the name of the Old Gods was that?” Robb Stark asked. “Is the Wall alright?”
“Fear not…” Rickon Stark quavered. “North will talk… to South again. My mission, for… the Children of the Forest, is… complete at last. At long last… the Green Men will be able to see where… they could not. As will… the Children.”
Something rose in Tyrion’s breast, an excitement he had seldom felt before. There were Children of the Forest out there, as Mance Rayder had said.
Coldhands was fading fast now though, as his gestures became weak and sluggish. “It will… take time… for the links though. Be… watchful. The Others will soon… know of this. It is… a great... blow… to them.” He reached out and grabbed the hand of Benjen stark, who was kneeling over him. “When I… die… cut my head off… and burn me, Brother. Ashes… take my… ashes to Winterfell. I would sleep… in the Crypts… there.”
Benjen Stark nodded, with unshed tears in his eyes, and his nephews nodded next to him. But oddly it was Ser Alliser Thorne who spoke next. “First Ranger, our Brother Rickon Stark has stood his watch, the longest watch of any man of the Night’s Watch. He has done his duty as few could. Is he relieved?”
“He stands relieved, Brother,” Benjen Stark said, and then they watched as Rickon Stark smiled a little and then went still, his eyes unseeing. “Robb?”
“Uncle Benjen?”
“May I borrow Ice for a moment?”
Robb Stark drew it without a word and handed it over. His uncle lifted it with both hands, stood and then nodded at the body on the ground. “Goodbye Brother.” The great sword came down with a thud. “Sleep well.”
Chapter Text
Ned
He stared down at the horn and frowned a little. There was something about it that made him… well, he wasn’t sure what the word was. ‘Uneasy’ was too strong. He just had the feeling that there was something… odd… about it. The runes were odd. They were old. And strange. They looked like an old variant of the tongue of the First Men. Maester Aemon had consulted a book in his library about it, but they were still largely unenlightened.
“Why was it buried? If it was important, why not leave it in the Overlook?” He ran a hand over his beard. “And what is it?”
“The Overlook was being forgotten,” Jeor Mormont grunted. “Perhaps it was a way of making sure that it would be preserved and could be found.”
Ned raised an eyebrow slightly. “From what Ser Jaremy and Tollet said, the Others were searching the First of the First Men for something. What if they were searching for this?”
“Then that brings it back to what is it?”
That was a good point and Ned snorted slightly. “Until we know what the runes say then all we can do is keep guessing. And they’re old runes. Maester Aemon thinks that there might be some books on old runes in the North in Winterfell. And perhaps in Surestone.” He scowled a little. “I shall enjoy trying that Riverlander bastard for murdering old Lord Surestone.”
“I still can’t believe that he’s dead,” Jeor muttered, shaking his head. “A good man. A gentle man. Unless you were fighting against him that is. He was deadly with that axe. Especially on a horse.”
“I remember him on the Trident,” Ned replied with a fond smile. “It was a good thing that Barristan Selmy was wounded when he was. It might have been very nasty for him, as Lord Surestone was ten yards away from him and on a rampage.”
“I remember when-” But whatever Jeor had been about to say was interrupted by the shouts of alarm from outside. They stared at each other and then they bolted for the door. Opening it they could see that everyone at Castle Black was staring at the Wall. Which was… glowing. Glowing red.
He gaped at the Wall as well, his mouth hanging open. It pulsed red, once more – and then it returned to its normal state. He watched it warily for a long moment and then turned to Jeor, who was still gaping in horror, although as he looked at the very much still intact Wall that horror was turning into relief. “What in the name of the Old Gods was that?”
“It affected the whole Wall, from what I could see,” Jeor muttered as the shocked inhabitants of Castle Black started to recover. Then he paused. “Rayder… he said that that Child of the Forest had told him that he had to help fix the Wall – the magic links between North of the Wall and South. Perhaps that was it?”
Ned paused and then nodded. “It might be that. We need to find out what’s happened at the Nightfort. We should have given Robb and his party a raven.”
“Didn’t think we’d need them to have it,” Jeor said as he kept staring at the Wall. “Ned… the colour the Wall turned… it was like the colour your eyes turned when the Old Gods possessed you.”
He absorbed that for a long moment. “That might be a good thing then.” He peered at the Wall again. “Seems intact.”
“I’ll go talk to the Builders.” The Lord Commander muttered, before heading down the stairs. He was passed by a rather excited Maester Aemon, who was holding a book.
“Well, that was an excitement indeed, Lord Stark!” the old man said jovially. “I heard one of my Brothers who was close to the Wall say that heard what almost sounded like a heartbeat within the Wall for a moment!”
“You aren’t alarmed?”
The old Maester paused in contemplation for a moment and then shook his head. “Oddly enough, no. The Wall still stands, intact. A Child of the Forest said that the Wall had a flaw and that it would be fixed. It’s logical that it was that happening.” Then he raised an eyebrow. “Of course it would be prudent to check.”
Ned led him back into Jeor’s Solar, where they both sat down. “Lord Stark, the message from Cotter Pyke and young Redwyne has been bothering me since it arrived this morning. I do not doubt a word of what they wrote – well, what Redwyne wrote, as Pyke lacks his letters – but something struck me as strange. They wrote of finding the remains of a dragon, with white bones. But dragonbone is not white, it is black. I grew up with the evidence in front of me and you must have seen it as well, when you reached the Red Keep when the city fell.”
Now that was a dark memory. The throne room had been the place where Father and Brandon had both been murdered. He’d seen the spots where they had died. Seeing the dead body of Aerys Targaryen had not been enough. Not for vengeance. But it had had to do. As for the lounging youth on the Iron Throne, with his bloodied sword and arrogant smile… well, he had disliked Jaime Lannister for a long time. And then there had been the dragon skulls. And Maester Aemon was right – the bones had been black and not white.
“Then what was the creature?”
Maester Aemon opened the book he was holding. “The description rang a faint bell in my mind and I looked up a reference I remember reading years ago. There was an account of a tale told by a man of the Night’s Watch who had been on a ranging far to the North. He saw the bones of a great creature by the mouth of a cave. White bones. He had acquaintances amidst the Wildlings – I really should start calling them Free Folk now should I not? – and they said that it was the remains of an ice wyrm, also known as an ice drake.”
Ned stared at him. “I thought that they were naught but legends!”
“Were it not for the dragon skulls in the Red Keep men might have said the same of dragons. We will know better once the bone samples that they took arrive here, along with the eggs.” His eyes darkened a little for a moment. “I have seen dragon eggs. I will be able to spot any differences.”
Ned nodded slowly, his mind racing. “But,” he said slowly, thinking it all through, “If the legends of ice drakes are true then what else might be out there? There are legends that the Others used to hunt men with ice spiders – creatures big enough that the Others rode them like we do with horses. What if they exist as well?”
Maester Aemon was as pale as Ned now felt. “That would, I fear, also be logical. We must consult the oldest of the books here again. And ask your new allies the Thenns if any member of the Free Folk has seen anything like that. Our enemies are mysterious enough and time is on their side, not ours. Every advantage that they have must be identified as soon as possible.”
Kevan
He peered at the ballistae carefully, and then at the face of the eager young puppy in charge of the defences of the part of Lannisport Harbour that he had been inspecting for the past day or so. Then he sighed a little. “Does it work?”
The eager young man beamed at him. “Yes, Ser Kevan!”
“You’ve… tested it?”
“Yes Ser Kevan! The principle is very sound! The rope is tied to the back of the bolt, so when the signal is given the ballistae bolt is loosed at the causeway over there, where a special area has been cleared.”
Kevan looked over at the causeway, which was actually the breakwater that protected the harbour from storms from the North. Yes, there was indeed a sort of bare-ish place there. The practicalities of hitting such a spot in a storm, or in an emergency still concerned him, but he could see the way that it was designed to work. “And then…?”
“The rope is detached from the bolt over there and taken to the winches and the capstan, where it is secured and then they pull their end and we pay out ours. The rope is tied to a bigger rope, which leads to a hawser, which leads to a chain and then that chain leads to the great chain boom of Lannisport, securing the harbour.”
“Ingenious.” He peered at the boy. “Does it work though?”
A slight grimace told him that there must have been teething troubles, but then a nod. “Yes, Ser Kevan, although we have to pay close attention to the direction and strength of the wind at times.”
“What happens if it falls short?”
“We have a man in a boat.”
Kevan nodded and then looked up at the watchtowers that sat on the cliffs to either side of the harbour. They were far taller than the old ones had been. Tywin had sworn that the Ironborn would never be allowed to repeat what they had done at the start of Greyjoy’s Madness, the name that he had long since given the insane rebellion. The memory of that night, as he and his brothers saw the glow of the burning fleet and the burning town in the distance. He’d had nightmares about that for years afterwards.
Well. Never again. The defences had been rebuilt and strengthened. The Ironborn would never be trusted again. And should they try to attack again then they would be thrown back into the sea. On fire. And with bushels of arrows in them.
He nodded again – and then something occurred to him. “Whose idea was this by the way?”
The young pup’s face stilled and then he inspected his boots carefully for a moment. “It, erm, it was suggested.”
“By whom?”
“Erm, some months back, there was a visitor from Casterly Rock who was headed North, erm, and he suggested a few things, erm, and-”
He forestalled the man with a raised hand. “It was my nephew Tyrion wasn’t it?”
The younger man nodded hesitantly, almost as if he was afraid of Kevan’s reaction. Instead Kevan smiled. “Good. Tyrion always does have good ideas. Well done.” And with that he mounted his horse and rode back into the port, his guards following closely behind him.
He loved Lannisport on days like today, with the sun shining and the wind blowing. The harbour was crowded with ships from all over the place, the Westerlands, the Reach, the North, Dorne, the Stormlands… There were even some Ironborn, although fewer than usual and all being carefully watched. Whatever was happening there, and the latest tales were of near civil war there, it meant that most Ironborn ships were headed for their home ports at the moment. Oh and there was the occasional ship from even further away, such as Braavos, Pentos and even Volantis.
He thought for a moment of poor, dead, Gerion and he sighed. Then he frowned. A ship was mooring at a nearby wharf, from the Reach by the look of it. And there was a man on the deck of that ship who looked very familiar. He was bald and had a grey beard and he was wearing a plain doublet, but the massive sword that was strapped to his back was… distinctive. He knew him.
Kevan turned his horse and nudged it forwards towards the ship. As he approached the now motionless vessel he watched as the crew bustled around with the gangplank. The man with the grey beard had spotted him and was watching him with folded arms. As soon as the gangplank was in place he strode off the ship and then walked towards Kevan.
“The last time we met was at Pyke.”
“It was,” Kevan replied as he dismounted and pulled off his riding gauntlets. “How have you been Randyll?”
The Lord of Horn Hill pulled off his own gloves and took his outstretched hand before grinning at him. “Well enough, Kevan, well enough.”
They shook hands, something that always tended to be a form of small-scale warfare with Randyll Tarly. “What are you doing here, you seldom leave The Reach?”
Tarly tucked his gloves into his belt with a sigh and then jerked his head at the wharf. “Walk with me.”
Kevan obliged and when they were in an area with few onlookers raised an eyebrow. “What’s amiss?”
This prompted a moment of genuine uncertainty from the old veteran, who seemed to be having trouble finding the right words. Finally he said: “How loud was the Call at Casterly Rock?”
Ah. Kevan pulled a face. “Confused. Tywin denies it. I am… more open-minded. Why?”
Tarly stared at him and then licked his lips with what looked like nervousness. “It struck Horn Hill like… like nothing else I can imagine. Like a bolt from the blue. And the dreams that followed it… well, I had dreams of the Field of Fire – and worse.”
He stared back at the other man. “What could be worse than the Field of Fire?”
Tarly passed a hand over his face. “Best not to ask,” he sighed. “Anyway, My eldest son, Samwell, had dreams that were just as bad.”
Kevan eyed the other man carefully. There had been odd tales of Samwell Tarly and his father’s efforts to make him more martial. “What happened?”
The Lord of Horn Hill looked about carefully. “Have you heard about Lord Willas Tyrell affectively taking over The Reach?”
He had indeed, an event that had prompted Tywin to grunt “Oh, woe, poor Mace,” not that he would admit to witnessing that, so he just nodded.
“It happened partly because Lord Willas holds Otherbane, the spear of the Gardener Kings. A weapon of the First Men. It was in Horn Hill, hidden there. Waiting for him. Young Samwell puzzled out the clues. I… I did not see them.” Tarly was red-faced and then shook his head. “T’was the oddest thing. He saw it, I did not.” He looked up. “And now I am headed for Winterfell.”
“Why Winterfell?”
A wintery smile crossed Tarly’s face. “The Others come. The Stark calls for aid. I am needed.” The smile vanished. “Lord Willas has sent me to talk with Lord Stark. We need more information about how to fight the Others. I have some small experience of fighting. It seemed fitting to ask me to go.”
Kevan nodded, even as he wanted to reel with shock. This… this confirmed quite a lot. The port was humming with talk of The Call, with talk of sending aid to the Wall. And now the least imaginative man that Keven knew, a man grounded in solid reality, was saying that it was all true. He almost wanted to throw up. Instead he rubbed a hand that he fought hard to stop from trembling over his jaw. “You are sure then?”
“I am.” The words were said with every certainty. “We’ve docked to take in supplies and then we sail North. Past Cape Kracken and then as far into Blazewater Bay as we can get, so that I can get to Moat Cailin and the Kingsroad. We heard that there’s unrest in the Iron Islands though?”
Kevan pulled a face. “You might say that. Latest news is that Balon Greyjoy has declared Lord Harlaw a traitor, or something close to that. There are reports of fighting. Nothing yet confirmed though.”
Tarly’s nostrils flared for a moment. “Then if necessary I will tell the captain to veer westwards to avoid the bloody Iron Islands. I must get to Winterfell though.”
He nodded in response, but he in turn knew something himself. He had to get back to Casterly Rock.
Jory
Being married was… different. His quarters were bigger now – no, their quarters. Annah had brought a light not just to his life but also to their joint quarters. For one thing he had more shirts that weren’t badly darned, something he’d never been that good at, and for another those shirts weren’t all white.
Then there the other things. He talked a lot more, to her at least. And he ached a lot more. Certain muscles hurt quite a bit after particularly… amorous… nights.
His uncle kept looking at him and then smirking a lot.
What he most admired about his wife was her fierce loyalty, to him and to young Lord Robert, who kept going from strength to strength. He was so changed from that pale little boy with the shadows under his eyes in King’s landing. He rode every day now, he was becoming adept with the bow and arrow and an unholy little terror with the sword – training dummies did not last long when he was around. But above all he wanted to know things.
And Annah had been delighted to see that he had made new friends. Young Bran Stark and Edric Storm made up the other two thirds of the Terrible Threesome, a name that was spreading throughout Winterfell.
“A crime, it was, to give him that poison,” Annah had told him once, when they were entwined one evening, still sweaty. “He’s a bright, happy lad without it. Lady Arryn committed a crime indeed.”
It had been a crime and Jory had noticed that Lady Stark seldom, if ever, talked about her sister anymore and when she did it was with a careful look about for Robert, followed by a sigh and then a deep frown.
He looked over at the training yard and suppressed a smile. The Terrible Threesome were there, being given a stern lecture by Domeric Bolton about how to use a sword and not almost chop off the head of the person standing next to you. Young Edric was looking a bit abashed about this and Jory knew that he had been swinging his warhammer a bit too freely of late as someone else had apparently commented that they thought that swords could be a bit showier than warhammers.
“Riders coming!” It was a distant shout from the main gates and he turned to look at them. There was a slight flurry on the ramparts and then his uncle appeared from a postern gate, walking quickly towards him.
“A party from the Riverlands, bearing the banners of House Tully,” Uncle Rodrik muttered as he looked about the courtyard. Then he saw a young servant. “You! Fetch Lady Stark! Tell her a party bearing Tully colours is coming, and look sharp about it!” The boy more than looked sharp, he ran.
As the party came through the gates Jory frowned. They were led by a pair of armsmen bearing the Tully banners, followed by a far older man with a white beard and the look of someone who would spit death himself in the eye when his time came and then try and kick him in the balls. All the armed men in the party were wearing the distinctive fishscale armour of the Riverlands – except for one.
The exception was a shortish man with dark hair who was wearing basic travelling leathers. He had dark hair and was sporting a truly impressive black eye around his right eye. His hands were bound to the pommel of the saddle of his horse, which was being led by one of the riders in front of him and his eyes kept darting about, directing angry hateful glances in all directions.
Oh and there were the waggons that entered after the party, waggon after waggon after waggon. There must have been almost 20 of them and Jory stared in wonder. What in the name of the Old Gods was this little lot?
Fortunately Lady Stark soon arrived – and although she stopped and stared at the group, it was not for the same reason as Jory. No, she stared at the old man who led the party and who had dismounted in a trice at her arrival and then bowed formally.
“Edmyn? Is that truly you?” Lady Stark asked with a smile.
“Lady Catelyn – I beg pardon, Lady Stark it is now. How have you been?” The older man smiled fondly at Lady Stark. “You are still missed at Riverrun.”
Lady Stark laughed and then walked up to the man and embraced him lightly. “All the better for seeing you, Edmyn. You are the one who first taught me how to use a dagger.”
The fond smile redoubled. “You learned fast.” Then the smile went away. “On the orders of your father and brother I have brought Ser Willem Bootle to Winterfell to meet justice.”
Ah, thought Jory, so that’s who the wretched man was. He looked at the prisoner, who was looking around in sullen fury, before finally bursting out: “I am Lord Surestone! Release me at once you…” He seemed to choke off his words as every man around him glared and placed a hand on his sword, including Jory, who let out a snarl. Lady Stark was not going be insulted whilst he drew breath.
“You are mistaken, Ser Willem,” Lady Stark replied calmly, showing that she was worth a thousand of the wretched man. “You were never the heir to Surestone.”
“I am the only male heir,” the man all but shrieked. “Surestone is mine to do with as I please!”
“No,” said a voice behind Jory, who turned to see Dacey Surestone standing there, his Annah next to her. “Surestone is mine. I am the heir to my father. He left Surestone to me, not to you. You were never his heir.”
Something happened to Bootle at that moment. As he looked at Lady Surestone all the blood seemed to flee his face. “You… you still live? I thought that…” And then he flushed and shut his mouth with an audible snap of his teeth.
“You thought what, Ser Willem?” Dacey Surestone’s eyes had narrowed and she glared at him so hard that Jory wondered why he had not burst into flame. “Was it you who caused me to be trapped at that inn? Was it you who told the innkeeper to try and turn me into a whore? Did you give him other orders?”
The wretched man worked his jaw for a moment, his eyes flitting from person to person as he looked about desperately. “I should have been his heir,” he said at last. “You are naught but a bookish girl.”
Lady Surestone looked at him with utter contempt. “Do you know why my father made me his heir instead of you? You were never worthy enough.” Everyone looked at her for a moment and for that moment she seemed to be the tallest person in the courtyard.
Edmyn cleared his throat and bowed to her. “Lady Surestone? I am Edmyn, in service to Riverrun. Those waggons contain what this man stole from your home.” He glared at Bootle, who flinched from his gaze. “He was trying to find a man called Collyns, whom he owed a great deal of coin to. Collyns was hung months ago for being a thief in the service of Petyr Baelish.”
Lady Stark sighed. “Ah,” she said eventually. “You made the wrong kind of acquaintances, Ser Willem. How much coin? Is that why you needed to loot my cousin’s keep, the one you pretended that you were heir to, because you were desperate? You avoid my gaze, Ser.” She looked at Edmyn. “Has he tried to flee?”
“Oh, several times.” The Riverlander sniffed contemptuously. “He never got far though. Last time I had to smack him one, My Lady.”
“Good.” Lady Stark looked around for Uncle Rodrik, who was standing to one side. “Ser Rodrick? We need this man confined to await his trial once Lord Stark returns from Castle Black.” She looked at Bootle again, who again flinched as if he had been struck. “Guard him well. He will face his worst nightmare – justice.”
Robb
They planned to leave the Nightfort as soon as they could. The captured Wildlings were left in the charge of a grim-faced group of Builders from Castle Black who were given very specific orders from Ser Alliser Thorne that they were to be used as workers for a week and then sent South with whoever Mance Rayder sent from Castle Black.
Two things had happened before they left. The first thing had been the cremation of Coldhands, once known as Rickon Stark. That had been a solemn moment, with the surviving members of the Night’s Watch standing in front of the funeral pyre with their swords bared in salute. Robb, Jon and Theon had joined them, as had the Wildlings. “We called him the Wanderer,” Rayder said quietly. “We never knew why he was wandering, we just knew he was out there and that he was patiently waiting for someone or something. And now he is at peace.”
The second thing happened as the remains of the pyre cooled and were being raked through for bones by Uncle Benjen and Ser Alliser. Gerion Lannister, with his son next to him, had called Tyrion and himself to one side.
“I need to talk to you,” the one-eyed Lannister said quietly. “Tyrion, have you been dreaming recently? Not ordinary dreams – dreams of things that later come true?”
Tyrion Lannister stared at his uncle as he went a little pale. “Perhaps,” he said reluctantly. “Before we helped Coldhands I had a dream a night or two before. I was running down a passage with something important in my hands and I knew that I had to be somewhere. And some months ago I had a dream of a future that must never come to pass.”
His uncle returned the stare. “How bad was it?”
“I was leading men South from the Westerlands to The Reach, all that remained of the strength of the Westerlands. Casterly Rock had fallen to the Others, who were also besieging Winterfell. King Robert had vanished somewhere in the Riverlands. It was…. it was bad.”
Gerion Lannister nodded slowly and then looked at his son, who was also pale, and who nodded ever so slightly. “Greenseers,” Gerion said eventually. “It runs in the blood. My son has the Greensight. And I have a touch of it too. Not much, not compared to Allarion, but enough to make me aware that things are happening here in the North that are… important.”
Robb and Tyrion both stared at the two others, who both looked back levelly. Eventually it was Tyrion who broke the silence. “You hinted that you had been drawn here to the Nightfort. Was it because you dreamt of that fight?”
“I dreamt that us not arriving here in time would mean the difference between narrow victory and bloody defeat,” Allarion said quietly. “But if that meant in terms of the fight here or the larger fight ahead I cannot say. I do not know. Interpreting the dreams can be… hard.”
“The son of a friend of my father is a Greenseer,” Robb muttered. “He might be able to advise on such things. Any more dreams you can tell us about?”
Father and son swapped another gaze. “I dreamt of an empty lion whose fate depended on him talking to a weirtree that walked,” Allarion Lannister said eventually. “I dreamt of storms that grew and stones that shone. I dreamt of a wolf that seemed to be made of water, which snarled at a rotted hand emerging from ice. And I dreamt of a bloodied wolf before a door to a hole in the world.”
Tyrion Lannister’s eyebrows had been going up and down a lot at all of this. “More puzzles, more riddles,” he muttered eventually. “We must work these out.” He looked at the remains of the pyre, where the last of the bones had been reclaimed from the ashes and which were now interred in a small box. “Back to Castle Black at once I think. Even if we have to ride through the night. Thorne’s right, the Lord Commander will have to be told of all of this. And Lord Stark.”
As Tyrion Lannister stumped off, with Allarion next to him, the latter’s father held up a hand for a moment. “I need to talk to your father,” Gerion Lannister muttered quietly. “This is important. Robb Stark, I am not my brother. I am not obsessed with power, I am merely driven with wanting to remain alive, my family above all. And I had a dream that my son did not, one that you will understand better than anyone. I dreamt of a man within a younger man, a man who… well, I dreamt of twin towers that fired crossbow quarrels at a young wolf, who was then killed by a flayed man, before falling through the years. Your face was there. Do not worry, I will keep your secret. I must talk to your father though.”
Shock roiled through him for a long moment and he had to stiffen his spine so as not to look about to make sure that no-one was eavesdropping. “Oh, you may be assured of that,” he said just as quietly.
Gerion Lannister nodded at him and then strode off. Robb smoothed his face and then walked over to his own horse, which was being held by Jon – and who took one look at his face and frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“I’ll tell you on the road,” Robb replied. “Let me know if you start dreaming though.”
“Dreaming?”
“There are Greenseers riding amongst us. Come on – there’s a lot to tell Father.”
“Aye, and that’s a bloody understatement,” Jon replied as they both heaved themselves into their saddles. “Plus Alliser Thorne keeps giving me funny looks because of my sword.”
Robb sighed a little as the others also mounted. “Something else to talk about on the road.” He looked to one side where Val was seated on her horse and staring fixedly at the gates. He had a sudden feeling that life was going to be complicated soon.
“Ride!” Uncle Benjen roared and they all obeyed, trotting out of the gates and then riding South, before turning towards the road to Castle Black.
Balon
The room was silent apart from the crackling of the fire and the distant sound of the waves. He stared at the messages scattered across the top of his desk and then sighed and passed a hand over his face, willing the fingers to be still and not shake.
Aeron was sitting by the fire, staring into the flames, his long hair shrouding his face. The bloody man was brooding yet again. It was about all he did these days.
These days… he had to admit that he did not have as much control over the Iron Islands as he might have liked. The fighting and dissension was spreading – even the Greenlanders had heard that something was wrong. There had been a message that morning from Baratheon, or rather from his Hand, Stannis fucking Baratheon, telling him to ‘cease this conflict between you and your lords and restore peace to the Iron Islands’.
He’d been trying to do just that, didn’t the fools know? But that fool Victarion had bungled things badly, so much so that almost his entire force had been lost. A handful of ships had returned, all with wounded men. The survivors had spoken of the cunning of that thrice-damned man Harlaw. The Reader was more than just a reader, he could fight as well.
And now… now he didn’t know what to do. He was Lord of the Iron Islands in name only at times. He had control of Pyke, Saltcliffe and Blacktyde. Harlaw and his band of rebels controlled Harlaw, Great Wyk and Old Wyk. As for Orkmont, well the place was apparently on a knife edge, feverish with unrest but caught between the two sides.
He had to face facts. This was more than a rebellion now, he was fighting a civil war. House Greyjoy’s rule over the Iron Islands was now in peril – peril almost bad as what had happened at the end of the War.
“You must send more men,” Aeron said suddenly, still staring into the flames. “Harlaw must be stopped.”
“There are few left to send,” Balon replied bitterly. “We need to keep what remains of the Iron Fleet here, to protect Pyke from attack. I can call on support from Saltcliffe and Blacktyde, but they will be reluctant to send their full strength – they will be vulnerable.”
“They should obey your orders! You are Lord of the Iron Islands!”
He smiled bitterly. “I am the Lord in name only at the moment. We face an impasse at the moment.”
A door opened to one side and he turned quickly to snarl at whoever had dared to enter – only to stop, shocked into stillness.
“Well hello there brother! And Damphair too, what a surprise!” Euron. It was Euron. He was standing there, bold as brass, dressed in dark leathers. A patch covered one eye and a smirk was plastered to his face. “Have you missed me, brothers?”
After a moment Balon swallowed his shock. “You. What are you doing here?”
Euron smirked a little harder and then sauntered – swaggered even – over to the table, where he sat in a chair, leant back and stuck both feet on the table. “Why,” he said with a wave of his hands, “I am here to support my Lord brother against the vile rebels. How could I stay away?”
Aeron eyed him darkly. “You were exiled. On pain of death.” He looked at Balon. “Kill him.”
Their brother laughed. “Ah, is Victarion still upset about his wife? Such a shame he was captured on Harlaw.”
“He killed her.” He stared at Euron who did not react at all to that news. “But you already knew that. Aeron’s right, I should order you killed. How did you even get in here?”
This got him a pained look, “Balon, this is castle where I grew up. I know every nook and cranny in this place and certainly all the secret ways. It would be embarrassing if I couldn’t get here unseen. Except for the guard whose throat I slit that is.” The smirk intensified. “Besides, you can’t kill me. I am the man who will win this war for you, this war that you have bungled so very badly.”
It was hard, but he repressed the snarl and the need to rip out his brother’s throat with a spoon. “And how do you plan to win this conflict?”
There was something about the smirk that Balon now found rather uncomfortable. It was the smirk of a man who knew something that he did not. “I know how badly this war of yours is going. I know about Harlaw and the Stonebrows. If you to win this war then you have to kill them. You’ve tried and you’ve failed. You need to get them to come to you.”
He glared at the man. “And how do you suggest that happen? They will never come here unless they have won!”
Euron looked at him with a gaze that combined pity, derision and no small amount of contempt. “Then you call a parley. They need the Iron Islands to be united so that they can meet the need of the Call – don’t bristle like that Damphair, only an idiot would deny that it went out – so should you call for a parley to discuss peace then they will eventually listen.”
“Are you insane? If I break guests rights then even the lowliest house on the Iron Islands would never trust me again.”
Euron’s face rippled slightly with emotion at the use of the word ‘insane’, but he seemed to pull himself together and then smirk again. “It’s very simple. You call a parley with the Reader and the Stonebrows. You promise guest’s rights. You meet them on, say the North shore of this island, for talks and then…” Euron smirked viciously. “Well, you can’t be blamed if your exiled and notorious brother, who just happens to also be dashing and brilliant, returns, gets the wrong end of the stick and through a tragic misunderstanding kills the rebels.”
There was a long silence as Balon thought all of this through. “You would kill them and then claim it was all a mistake?”
“Aye. You might have granted guest’s rights, but who could have known that I would choose that moment to return? The blame would all be on me. Until you purged their followers that is and resumed your rightful rule over all the Iron Islands.” The smirk returned.
“And what would you get out of this?” Aeron asked the question that was already on Balon’s mind. “You never suggest anything without it benefitting you in some manner.”
“Oh, so cynical, brother,” Euron chided the Drowned Man. “Can’t I help my own family for the glory of the Drowned God?”
“The glory of the Drowned God? You dare speak of the Drowned God in such a fashion? You are not a pious man!”
Euron sprang to his feet with a scornful laugh. “Oh, Damphair, you always were a poor, blind, fool. You never did see the real world, the true world. I have seen things that would have driven lesser men like you raving mad. I have seen wonders and terrors and marvels and monsters! You think that I deny the Drowned God?” He took a step closer to his brother, who had also stood up. “I know what he is far better than you ever will. And… other things. Oh, so many other things.” Something else passed over his face, a rich medley of fleeting emotions that included horror, wonder and madness. Whatever it was, Aeron shrank back from that face, his eyes suddenly very wide.
There was a long moment of tension and then Euron wiped the look from his face – and then the smirk was back as he turned again to Balon. “Think over my idea brother. Think it over…” He walked over to the door. “I’ll be back in three days.” And then he was gone, sauntering out of the door as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
Balon and Aeron stared at the door as it closed and then slowly sat back down again. “You can’t trust him,” his brother said after a while, as he seemed to collect himself. “That man’s mad. He’s always been mad.”
He stared into the flames of the fire. “Mayhaps.”
“You’re not considering this are you?”
Balon pulled a face. “I’m thinking about it. It might work.”
“And what does he get out of it?”
“Oh, I know what he wants. He wants to be my heir. After all, Asha has betrayed me and from all reports Theon is a Stark in all but name now. The Ironborn will never follow him.”
Aeron stared at him as if he was mad. “Euron can never be allowed to be your heir! The man would lead us to death and destruction!”
“He’ll never be my heir. Asha may have betrayed me, but I still have hopes for her.” He leant back in his chair, deep in thought. “This will take some careful planning.”
His brother stared at him again, but then seemed to shake himself and then resume his own brooding, the room silent again apart from the crackle of the fire and the boom of the surf. Yes, both careful thought and planning indeed.
Aemon
He gripped the wooden railing of the balcony outside his quarters and looked out at the courtyard below. Castle Black had truly come alive again. There were times when he could close his eyes and imagine that just for a moment the years had rolled back and that the gate might open at any time to admit Bloodraven. The castle bustled with people as supplies and men and yes even women rolled in. Help for the Wall. Help for the Night’s Watch. Help against the Others.
There were also times when he wanted to reach back in time, grab the heads of his ancestors and bash them against each other until common bloody sense entered their thick skulls. Few of them had ever seen the Wall. More had scorned it – and the Night’s Watch. They’d foolishly viewed the latter as the private army of the Starks, something that had never been true.
He had often wondered what might have happened if someone like Aegon the Conqueror had ever seen the Wall. Yes, his ancestor had been to Winterfell, but he never saw the Wall. Surely the sight of it would have triggered something – men would not have built such a thing without a reason and men could not have constructed it without magic. And a man or a woman on a dragon would and should have seen that. Felt that.
Ah, magic. He had often wondered about that. Why did it ebb and flow? Did it even ebb to the point that some of his brothers at the citadel so insisted? Why had the dragons vanished? Surely if the dragons had died off at Dragonstone and the Dragonpit (or whatever was left of the latter) because of the ebbing of magic, then why had the Wall not suffered damage – or the Others never woken up? And the Others had been awake and murdering their way to the North of the Wall long before Daenerys had hatched her dragons.
It had all brought up most unwelcome memories of Aegon and the day that he had heard of his brother’s death at Summerhall. He had his own suspicions about that.
He sighed and then turned and entered his quarters. So much to do and so little time. He felt as if time was running against them now, some instinct deep within him was calling out in warning and he had no idea why.
It was then that he saw it. There was a canvas package on his desk, about the width of two hands and the height of a hand. There was a piece of parchment next to it. He peered about his quarters carefully. No-one was there. Only then did he approach his desk. There was a name written on the parchment. ‘Aemon Targaryen’.
Well, this was a poser. He started to reach out for it, before pausing and then pulling out the gloves that were folded into his belt. He slipped the gloves on – no sense taking any chances, not with the hairs on the back of his neck standing on edge – and then picked up the parchment and unfolded it.
There was a message inside it. ‘I was asked by a man who was a friend to a man who I owed a favour to if I could bring the package you see here to the blind Maester of Castle Black and then read it to him. As the Old Gods have restored your sight my help is not needed, so I must remain in the shadows. If you have an answer to the package then leave it here two days from now. I will ensure that it will find its way to the girl who sent it to you.’ And the note was unsigned.
Interesting. The lettering was neat and had a certain Essosi style to it.
He picked the package, noted the stitching and then pulled out his knife and carefully cut through it. There was a letter within. He unfolded it carefully. Ah. The handwriting was small and precise. That of a girl perhaps – and a well-educated one at that.
‘My dear great-grand uncle. I must apologise for never having previously written to you. My brother told me that little could be expected of you due to your age. My brother, as you might have heard by now, was wrong about many things.
‘I need your advice. I need counsel about so very many things and I apologise if this letter rambles or is confused in places. I have been told by a former councillor to my father that this letter will find its way to you unread by any other. I hope that it does.
‘By now you may have heard that I have three dragons. The tale of how I got them is a dark one but it is true. My brother killed a servant of the Magister of Pentos who was host to us both, before Viserys tried to kill me and another servant. The Magister interrupted my brother but both then died in a fire that they accidentally started. I was trapped in a room to one side and… I do not remember what then happened, just that when I was found in the embers of the room I had three tiny dragons on me. One of the Magisters said that my eyes flashed with silver light, but that must have been a trick of the light.’
Aemon felt himself pale at this, remembering a passage from a history of his family, but then gathered himself and started to read again.
‘I am on my own in Pentos now, the last of family with the exception of you. I have three dragons and I am now the heir to the Iron Throne, but I am all but a prisoner here in the city. I am the ‘guest’ of the Magisters, but I know the truth of the matter. The cage is a gilded one, but it is still a cage, both for me and my dragons.
‘I know what the Magisters want of me. They stress that they just want to see my dragons grow fully and safely and that I should be protected as well. The truth is that they look at my dragons and instead see weapons of war. They hunger for war against Braavos, and then against any other city that they want to burn and then conquer and they will use my dragons to do it.
‘Already they are bringing me old tomes on dragon husbandry, some of them so old that they predate the Doom. That at least is a good thing, because I feel as if I am far out of my depth on such things. Did our ancestors have such books? If they did then where are they now?
‘I have been told of another matter by that old councillor to my father, a rather odd man called Varys. A more concerning one. I have been told that the existence of my dragons is known to the other cities – and that they are already preparing for war.
‘I do not want to be the reason behind any war. I do not know what to do. Should I stay in Pentos or try to flee – but if I flee then to where? The other cities will seek to use me and my dragons the same way that Pentos dreams of using me. But where else? Andalos is abandoned and the Dothraki Sea increasingly empty. As for Westeros I know that Robert Baratheon wished my brother dead and probably wants the same for me, and that the actions of my father and my brothers have diminished the standing of our House greatly, weakening any support there.
‘If you can advise me in any way I would be most grateful. You are the last living member of my family and I have no-one else to turn to for advice.
‘I send my love and respect,
‘Daenerys Targaryen.’
He stood there for a long moment, staring down at the letter. He almost wanted to cry. There was a desperation in that letter, a need for advice and help and knowledge. And then he slowly nodded. Lord Stark needed to see this.
He found the Lord of Winterfell talking quietly with the Magnar of the Thenns. Both had similar frowns of intent as they spoke in the language of the First Men, a language that Ned Stark was now apparently highly adept. They both noticed him arrive, with the Thenn nodding to him, before bowing to Lord Stark and then taking his leave. “Can I help you Maester Aemon?”
Aemon looked about carefully and then handed the letter over. “It was in my chambers – I just found it. Its contents are most singular, Lord Stark.”
Ned Stark took the letter with a frown and read it. He had to give the man his due, his sole reaction was to briefly flicker an eyebrow up and down for an instant. “I wonder who delivered this here?”
“I wondered the same thing. I must reply to my great grand niece though. She is alone in a pit of vipers and I am now the only family that she knows of.” He looked at Lord Stark. “Three dragons would be a great help here at the Wall, if it could be arranged.”
“Easier said than done,” Lord Stark rumbled as he pulled on his top lip. “I see your point though. Robert would never agree to it however. He is… somewhat obdurate about members of your family. That said, I agree that you should advise her. She sounds desperate.”
Aemon nodded slowly. “I will advise her to wait, but to watch the horizon for threats. The other Free Cities might well move against Pentos before her dragons have fully grown. I like it not that King Robert’s Master of Whispers has been advising her as well.”
“Aye, that worries me too. Robb told me that Varys is not a man to be trusted.”
Men shouted at the gates and they both turned as those gates opened to reveal a party of men – headed by Ser Alliser Thorne and Benjen Stark, followed by Robb and Jon Stark, the Greyjoy boy and others.
A smile stole over Ned Stark’s face as his shoulders relaxed just a little from released tension. “Write your letter, Maester Aemon. My party will be away at dawn, bound for Castle Black.”
“Father!” Robb Stark called as he dismounted. “Maester Aemon! We have quite a tale to tell you!”
“It seems that the writing of that letter will have to be put off.” He looked at the party. Mance Rayder was there, as were most of those who had left, but who were the others? And why did Tyrion Lannister now have an axe carried in a leather scabbard over one shoulder?
Gendry
Acting as the blacksmith to the King’s party was actually making him both well known and well hidden. It was an odd combination. He was known as ‘His grace’s natural son’, true, but also as ‘that blacksmith who swings his hammer bloody well’.
He knew that they were going a bit slower than his father might have liked and that they had actually paused for a day or so. They were a few days away from the Kingsroad, but just up ahead the bridge over the small tributary to the White Knife was in poor condition from too much usage over the past few months and urgent repairs were being made to it.
Fair enough. It also meant that a lot of messages were coming in to be dealt with by his father and his uncle. He knew that. The business of the realm never ended and he shuddered at how much had to be dealt with ever day. The pause also meant that he had a chance to work on a few things himself – and to spy out the lay of the land.
A hard place, the North. He liked it. There was no side on most people, little flummery. They were staying in another minor keep tonight, one owned by a vassal of the Cerwyns. It was a quiet place, made lively by the Court, and he had done his usual thing of seeking out the blacksmith within it and volunteering to worth in the smithy. Today he had repaired two daggers, a sword, a spear and five hoes.
A lot of people were farming in the North. A lot. And there were those who were moving North to help and support them. The lordling they were staying with, one Lord Idrys, had recently celebrated the marriage of his oldest son to the daughter of a lordling from the Riverlands. He seemed to small something in the air, a feeling of… liveliness? Action? The land seemed to be coming alive.
Perhaps it was all in his head and he was imagining it.
He hammered on the blade of the sickle that was now in front of him and drove out the silly thoughts that were crowding it. Just work the metal. Work the blade. Shape it. Fashion it.
As he placed the sickle in the right quenching bucket for the right amount of time before finally pulling it out he realised that he had company. A small blond boy was standing at the doorway. He was trembling with nerves, but the moment that he saw that he had been noticed he swallowed visibly and then stepped forwards. “You are… you’re the blacksmith?” the last word was said in a near-squeak.
He nodded. “I am. How may I help you Prince Tommen?”
The boy blanched even further, as if that was possible, before rallying. “Cousin Shireen said that you could be trusted?”
He peered at the boy. “I can be. What’s wrong?”
A piece of metal was held up in a trembling hand. “It’s my stirrup,” Prince Tommen all but whispered. “I broke it. It’s all my fault. Father wants us to move fast and I was trying to, but when I dismounted it broke and-”
Gendry stopped the desperate flow of words by reaching out and gently taking it from him, before smiling and then peering at it. It had once been high quality but long usage had worn it out. “Not your fault, it’s old and worn. How long have you had it for?”
Prince Tommen looked at him, confused. “Um… years?”
He nodded. “Not your fault, my Prince. You simply wore it out without meaning to. If you need to learn more about your tack ask a groom. Now, don’t worry about this, I can fix it easily.”
Tommen eyed him nervously. “Easily?”
“Oh yes,” he said as he looked through his tools and then started to choose a replacement piece of metal for the broken part. “It won’t take long. You can watch if you like.”
This seemed to take the Prince by surprise, judging by the way that he peered at Gendry. Then he looked at his feet. “Erm, would Joffrey ever know about this?”
Gendry eyed him. “No, why would he need to?”
There was a pause as Prince Tommen looked shifty. “He finds things out.”
Gendry knew that he was not a perceptive person, but he seemed to see something very clearly at that point. Tommen did not like the little blond shit. “I won’t tell him. I just mend things. Let me mend this. Best stand over there though, this place can be dangerous for someone who doesn’t know the risks.”
As he fixed the piece of riding tackle he talked through exactly what he was doing, so that the Prince knew what was happening. Tommen sat on a stool, safe in one corner, watching and occasionally asking a question. As time passed he seemed to relax and look less worried. When it was over and the stirrup was fixed he handed it over to his half-brother. “It’s cool enough now. Just reattach it to the saddle. Look at the other one too, just in case that’s worn as well.”
The Prince took the stirrup and nodded slowly. Then he looked up at him. “Thank you,” he all but whispered, before slipping out. Just as he passed through the door Gendry heard him whisper: “Why couldn’t he be my brother?”
Damn it, did the lad hate Joffrey that much? Perhaps he did. Poor boy. Shireen had told him about how much Joffrey seemed to bully his brother and sister.
He sighed as he pulled out the helmet again. All it needed was a bit more work on the neckguard and as he laboured over it he thought about his life. Everything had changed in some very strange ways. He was in danger, that much he knew at least. His very existence was a threat to someone, but he didn’t know how or why. All he did know was that he needed to check everything about his own riding tackle every morning.
Perhaps Winterfell would see an end to the need to constantly look over his shoulder?
Well. He looked down at the helmet. It was ready. He felt as if a host of butterflies were loose in his stomach, but he’d told his father that once it was made he would give it to him.
First things first though, he had to shut the forge up and put the tools away. The risk of fire was too great to risk it though. It took time but he was satisfied when he closed the door and looked about cautiously. No sense taking risks.
He didn’t exactly skulk across the courtyard – he would never really know how to without looking like an idiot – but he did look about more than he would have normally. A man was shouting somewhere at the main gateway, but apart from that it was quiet. Judging by the hour he knew who would be guarding his father and as he strode down the corridor he saw the welcoming sight of Ser Barristan Selmy standing there.
The old knight smiled a little as he saw Gendry and then nodded a little. “Is it ready?”
“Aye. Is… is His Grace free?”
“He’s reading some reports that came in from White Harbour. Wait here a moment lad.” And with that he knocked lightly on the door, waited for the bark of ‘Come!’ and then slipped in. There was a rumble of voices and then he returned. “In you go.”
As he shuffled in, Ser Barristan just behind him, he could see that his father was standing by the fireplace, where a small fire was burning. He was wearing a shirt and breeches, both of which seemed to not fit him as well as they should and he was scowling at a message in one hand. Stormbreaker was propped up in one corner of the room and there was also a set of iron weights on the table. Father was driving himself hard, everyone said the same thing, trying to return to the fitness of the past.
“Gendry!” Father said as he finally looked up. “Ser Barristan said that you wanted to see me. What’s amiss?”
“Nothing’s amiss,” he muttered as he strode forwards – and then he brought out the helmet. “It’s ready. Your Grace. I mean, Father. YourGracefather.” He was babbling, because by all the Gods he was nervous.
His father reached out slowly and took the helmet from his trembling grasp. “Oh my.” A finger traced the lines that he had so carefully etched on to it. It was hard to make a helmet that looked like a stag’s face without giving it a muzzle that restricted some aspects of sight, but he had managed it. Long hours he’d spent on it, as well as puzzling over the horns. Too much metal would make it too heavy, so he’d combined metal and actual antlers. It was practical but also a symbol of the Stag King. “Gendry… this is magnificent.”
He tilted his head from one side to another. “I hope it fits. The padding was a trial at times, I didn’t want it chafing and-”
His father cut him off by putting it on and then adjusting the straps, before closing the visor and then twisting his head from side to side. Blue eyes twinkled at him through the eyeslits. “What do you think Ser Barristan?”
“Formidable, your Grace. And practical.”
“Aye.” His father pulled it off, restored his tousled hair with a swipe of the hand and then grinned at him. “Thank you, Gendry. A worthy gift.”
He stared at his feet. “Given time I could make it better, make you a better one that is, but I-”
“Lad, it’s magnificent. You’re young, anything after this will be a bonus.” He placed a large hand on his shoulder. “I know that it hasn’t been an easy trip for you. Stannis and Ser Jorah have told me of matters.”
He seemed to be about to add something when a fist thudded against the door. “Your Grace,” drawled the voice of the Kingslayer, “The Lord Hand is here with a man of the Night’s Watch. They wish to speak with you.”
For a moment he wanted to run away. The Kingslayer was languid, cynical, sarcastic and above all dangerous. Everything about him seemed to proclaim that to Gendry, from the way he laid a hand nonchalantly on his sword, to the way that he looked at Gendry as if he was dog shit on the bottom of his boot.
“Enter,” Father boomed, gesturing to Gendry to step back a little as he placed the helmet on the table.
The Kingslayer opened the door and then waited for Stannis and a tall man dressed in black to enter. The stranger was travel stained and held a satchel in his hand. He bowed respectfully to Father and then looked at Stannis.
“A messenger from Castle Black,” his uncle said, looking strained if such a thing was possible. “He has a delivery from Lord Commander Mormont. Robert… Your Grace, it’s unsettling to say the least.”
The Kingslayer, who had closed the door behind him, smirked. “Is it a snark, or perhaps a grumpkin?”
The man of the Night’s Watch turned and glared at him. “A lesser Lannister,” he grunted, before placing the satchel on the table and reaching within it. “Your Grace, I am Galbert Snow of the Night’s Watch,” he said hoarsely, “Lord Commander sent this to you. It shows what we are facing. You must prepare yourself.” And with that he placed a cloth-covered shape in front of Father.
Father stared at the man in front of him and then at the shape. “What’s that?”
Galbert Snow took a step back. “I would not have anyone say that it is any kind of trick. We found it North of the Wall. View it, but don’t try and touch it. Your Grace… dark things walk under the Sun North of the Wall.”
Dread pooled in Gendry’s stomach, like icy porridge, and he stared at the cloth and whatever was beneath it. His father felt it too. “You’ve seen it already Stannis?”
“Aye, I have.” Stannis swallowed awkwardly and then seemed to collect himself. “You must too.”
His father reached out and pulled the cloth off. Under it was a small cage that contained a severed head. The head of a man not long dead. Gendry winced a little, before pausing. Something didn’t feel right about this. He just had no idea what.
And then the eyes of the head opened, blue and bright and terrible and the mouth opened and closed as it tried to bite the air. Muscles moved and bunched at the jaw and temples and the forehead wrinkled as whatever this foul thing was tried to will itself to attack them.
Ser Barristan let out a curse of such intensity that he was surprised, whilst Gendry found himself flinching backwards. As for the Kingslayer he narrowed his eyes and laid a hand on his sword, before seeming to pause and then just stare at it. As for Father… yes, he jerked back briefly with surprise, before collecting himself and then leaning forwards to examine the dreadful thing carefully. “This is the head of a wight?”
“Aye, Your Grace,” Snow said hoarsely. “It is. They’ve been seen. They’ve been cut to pieces. We’re sending examples South, to show what we face.”
“Then the Call was sent true. The Others have returned.”
“They have Your Grace.”
The Kingslayer scoffed. “But the Others are just a legend, surely? What is this, really? A trick? Where are the wires?”
Snow whirled around and curled a lip at the Kingslayer. “You know nothing of this. It’s no trick, it’s what we face. It’s why we need help.” He turned to Father. “They’re coming, Your Grace.”
Father stared at the severed head, which was still glaring around as much as it was able to. “The old enemy, as Ned once said to me when he talked about the old legends.”
A silence fell, one that Gendry finally had to fill. “That cage,” he said in a rush. “What’s it made from? I don’t recognise the metal.”
“You have a good eye lad,” Snow replied. “We don’t know. It was found in a place called the Overlook by the First Ranger, Benjen Stark, along with other such cages. All we know is that the First Men made them somehow. They slow the rot down, so that proof of what we face can be taken South.”
“Do you have more of them then?” Stannis barked.
“We have, my Lord Hand,” the man of the Night’s Watch nodded. “And yet more were found, or so I heard when I sailed South. More have or will be going South. To all the major lords and also King’s Landing.”
This got a belly-rumbling laugh from Father. “Gods, I’d like to see what Pycelle or Varys say about something like this. Probably piss themselves and then deny that it happened.”
It was only then that Gendry noticed something that everyone else had not. Stormbreaker was humming slightly and the wight was snarling at it.
Chapter Text
Apologies for the delay on this.
Willas
He scratched his head, stared at the map and then leant back. He just couldn’t put his finger on what was wrong. The Reach was the most fertile part of Westeros, but it just wasn’t quite as fertile as it once had been, once you looked at the oldest of records.
The fall in production was a small one, but a cumulative one. And it seemed to follow a long, very slow pattern. He just wasn’t sure why or when. He sighed. Was this it? Was this the way that he had to ‘Make the Garden bloom again’?
Prophecy, or whatever this was, gave him the creeping horrors at times. Why couldn’t life ever be simple? Well, perhaps young Sam Tarly would be able to find the same pattern and then perhaps even some answers.
Perhaps even an idea about just what the right question was.
He grunted in exasperation and then looked at the list of things to do. One thing was to go to King’s Landing and have a word with Jon Arryn about just what in the Seven Hells was going on. Or, if he was back by then, the King. Or his Hand. There was not the slightest chance of them coming to him, so he would have to go to them.
A pile of letters to one side caught his attention for a moment as a slight draft stirred them and he sighed a little. Procrastination would only take him so far. The healing of his leg had had just that one drawback so far.
Boots thumped on flagstones in the corridor and after a moment he realised that he was being observed. Looking up he smiled as soon as he saw the man in the doorway. “Garlan!” He stood up and strode over, noticing how his younger brother watched him walk with a wry astonishment.
“Strange to see you walk without a cane – or without a limp!” Garlan grinned as they embraced. “I wanted to return to Highgarden as soon as I heard, but your raven was very clear that I had to continue my task of inspecting the sea defences.”
“And how are they?” Willas asked as they returned to his desk and sat on opposite sides of it. “The last word from the Iron Islands is that Balon Greyjoy was at daggers drawn with The Reader. With the Iron Islands a tinderbox of unrest it’s only a matter of time before some minor idiot takes it on himself to go a-reaving off our coastline.”
Garlan nodded sombrely. “The defences at the Shield Islands are adequate, but can be easily strengthened. Lord Chester bent my ear several times about the need to take the Ironborn more seriously.” He fell silent for a long moment. “The Islands and the coast are all abuzz with word of the Call. Many people are speaking of sending help to Ned Stark and the Wall. Willas… I am glad that you have taken over command of the Reach here. I dearly love Father but… well, many have alluded to him being, erm, rather…”
“Boastful for the wrong reasons?” Willas nodded slowly. “The more I delve into what needs to be done to keep The Reach running, the more I discover that Father was never as good at it as he said he was.”
“And he’s now on a long hunting trip? I heard some strange tales about it.”
“He is.” He paused and then pointed at Otherbane. “It rejected him.”
His words made Garlan stare quizzically at him. “What?”
“It’s Otherbane. The spear of the Gardener Kings. The Tarlys had it, without really knowing about it, and when Father tried to take it off him it… rejected him. It burnt his hand a little. And that was when he went off on his hunting trip.”
His brother stared at the spear, then at Willas, before staring back at the spear again. “How can a spear… reject someone?”
Willas shrugged. “I don’t know. Magic of some kind. The Call was heard, I found that statue of Garth Greenhand, my leg was healed – why should we not think that we should see magic with this.” He fell silent for a long moment as he looked at it. “It was the weapon of the Gardener Kings for centuries, Garlan. The Florents and the Hightowers looked for it after the Field of Fire. And now it’s mine. I don’t mind telling you that I’m… well, I have a feeling that something is coming.”
“You’re not the only one,” Garlan muttered. “I feel the same. And there’s something odd happening in Oldtown. Lord Hightower is apparently being even more reclusive then he normally is. Something odd is going on there, at the base of that tower of his. Oldtown is buzzing that something’s wrong and that the Maesters have been consulted about whatever it is. In addition…” Now it was Garlan’s turn to pause. “In addition there has been talk of the Starry Sept becoming more… active.”
Willas eyed his brother carefully. “’Active’? How ‘active’?”
“Taking more of part in spiritual matters was the way that one septon described it. Another more cynical one said that the Faith Militant is raising its head a little and that it needs a leader who can… benefit from its increased profile.”
He stared at his brother owlishly. “Absolute rubbish,” he sighed. “That said, the latest news is that the Faith Militant has been squashed flat in the Crownlands and the Riverlands, so it’s only logical that the zealots would try and make mischief in The Reach as well. So, the Septon of the Starry Sept is going to try and do something is he? Where?”
“Rumour has it that he’s seeking a cause to champion.”
He suddenly had a slight headache, something that often happened when religious matters became complicated. “It’s still Septon Alyston there, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“He’s still a pompous little imbecile puffed up with his own importance, isn’t he?”
“A perfect description. About as subtle as a peacock, and as cunning as a battering ram. I’m surprised he hasn’t written to you yet.”
“The letter is probably on its way. My thanks for the warning, I’ll treat it as it deserves. Welcome back. Is Leonette with you?”
“She’ll be here in a few hours or so.” He turned a little pink. “We need to consult a maester. We think… we think that she might be with child.”
Now this was excellent news and he beamed at his brother. “Wonderful! I hope that it is true! Let me know the moment that the master confirms it. And then we need to work on something else.” He gestured at the pile of letters. “Behold!”
Garlan peered at the letters, confused. “What are they?”
“Well, you know, it’s the strangest thing. The moment that word spread that my leg was healed and later that I hold Otherbane, the Lords of the Reach suddenly remembered that I exist and started sending in marriage proposals. I have daughters and sisters of lords in every size, age and shape being dangled before me. Grandmother keeps me in stitches with her comments about some of the offers.”
Laughter rang through the room as his brother threw his head back with mirth. “Oh, this should be entertaining! Shall we discuss them over dinner?”
“We shall indeed. Grandmother will be, as will Margaery. Loras too.”
Garlan winced a little. “Ah, Loras. Is he still demanding to go back to King’s Landing?”
He nodded, sobering a little. “He is. I still say no. That plan that he and Father were concocting with Renly Baratheon… folly.”
A sombre nod greeted his words, followed by a sideways look. “Loras has always been… close to Renly and-”
He raised a hand to silence Garlan with a weary gesture. “I know. The fact is that we need to secure House Tyrell on a more secure foundation. Many are eyeing Otherbane and muttering that we are not the Gardeners and that our claim to Highgarden is not as strong as theirs. Therefore I need to marry, and soon. So does Loras. As for Margaery, we need to find her an adequate match. Given her age and what has been happening of late I plan to write to Ned Stark and offer her as wife to his oldest son, Robert.”
Garlan’s eyebrows rose for a moment, before falling as he thought this through. “Clever,” he said eventually. “It would ally The Reach strongly to the North at a time when this Call is reshaping so much.”
“Not bad,” said a voice to one side and they looked over to see that Grandmother had somehow noiselessly appeared at one of the windows. She looked at them both, sniffed hard and then nodded. “Yes, you’ll do. You’re both already thinking more clearly than your idiot father.” And with that she hobbled off.
Willas sent his brother a wry smile. “We still have so much to learn from her.”
Cat
She missed Ned. He’d been away for weeks now and she missed him fiercely. She was already starting to feel some of the familiar sensations around being pregnant and that was starting to make things a little worse.
That said, she was also enjoying the way that life had changed recently. Dacey Surestone had taken Sansa under her wing a little and was educating her about the history of the North. Her daughter seemed to be learning a great deal, or at least that was what she surmised by the expression on Sansa’s face at times.
Ned had been right, their daughter had had a lot of nonsense in her head. She blamed herself as well as Septa Mordane. Both had meant well but both had reinforced Sansa’s… naivety. There were times when Arya had more realism in her head than Sansa, but that balance was now shifting. Thank the Gods for Dacey Surestone and, in a terrible way, Robb’s memories of the future that would now never be.
For one thing Lady would not now be killed by Ned near the Trident. She shuddered a little at that. The direwolf was growing like a weed and followed Sansa everywhere, watching with tilted head and intent eyes. Sansa adored her, as did Domeric, whom the direwolf also liked.
Thinking of the direwolves made her think of Arya and her warging abilities, which made her shudder. However… she had made a promise to her daughter and she would keep that promise. Arya could keep at it and even advise Bran. She didn’t know what Ned would think of it all when he came back and she prayed that he would be back soon.
Winterfell was changing a little, or so it seemed. Parties of men and woman were on the move, passing North or returning South. The Wall was on the lips of most, along with the need to send help to the Stark in Winterfell. Party after party came and went from all over Westeros.
There was always more arriving, sometimes for the oddest of reasons. One such example had been the small group of miners from the Westerlands who had arrived ten days previously and who were now prospecting for metals in the hills to the North of Winterfell. One had said that he had a nose for iron and silver and a message had come back from him saying that he just might have found some potential veins to be worked.
The North waxed. But for the most terrible of reasons. A storm was coming.
She sighed – and then she caught sight of Jory Cassel walking arm in arm with his wife, smiling at each other and then at the running forms of the Terrible Threesome. The Cassels looked over them with a great deal of long-suffering amusement. That said, they also kept them in check.
A horn blew, high and pure and far off and she turned to the main gate with a frown. It couldn’t be the King, not yet, nor could it be Ned and the others. Voices shouted at the gate and then she saw Jory’s uncle stride towards her, a frown on his face.
“A party bearing banners, my Lady. Many banners, from all the houses of the North. House Stark amongst them.”
She felt her eyebrows go up at this – and then down again. Ah. Damn it, she had hoped that Ned would be back for this by now. “Admit them Ser Rodrik, if you would. And send Bran to me.”
Brown eyes met hers for a moment and then he bent his head in a deep nod. “Aye, my Lady.”
As the gates opened fully she stood there, as straight as a poker, awaiting the arrival of the Leaders of the Company of the Rose. After a moment Bran ran up to her, with Edric and Robert next to him, along with Bran’s direwolf. All three boys looked curiously at her.
“Bran, the leaders of the Company of the Rose have arrived. As you are the Stark in Winterfell you need to be here to greet them.” She looked him over and repressed a sigh. His knees were dusty and there was dirt smudged on his nose, but he didn’t look quite as bad as the other two, who were belatedly brushing themselves off. She looked at the gates, applied her handkerchief to her son quickly and then straightened again.
The men and women who rode through the gates had the looks of people who had been kissed by the Sun. They also looked as if they were all repressing their emotions as severely as they were capable of. Eyes flickered about the courtyard, almost as if they were still astonished that they were here.
They were led by a man who bore the look of Ned a little. The hair colour was there, and the chin and nose. The intense look was there as well, although the slight shake to his hands as he dismounted spoke of his true feelings.
A group of the men and women formed up behind the man, who then strode forwards and stopped before Cat and the children. And then they all went down on one knee.
“Lady Stark, Lord Brandon, I am Edric Stark, leader of what was once the Company of the Rose. I know that Lord Stark is at Castle Black, but we are here to pledge our swords to Winterfell and the North, because we heard The Call. Long years have we been in exile, but the Call has brought us back across the Narrow Sea. We have heard it, we are here.”
She looked at the faces that were all now fixed on her, those intent faces, before stepping forwards. “Lord Edric, the word of your coming came some days ago. You will have to wait a while to talk to Lord Stark in order to have word on what he will ask of you, but I can say this now – welcome back from the long exile that your families have been on for so many years. Thank you for answering the Call to Winterfell. There is much to do.”
The men and women before her bowed their heads and then they stood. Some were now openly in tears and she averted her eyes for a moment, until Bran turned to her and hissed: “Mother, have you seen their banners?”
“No, why?”
He jerked his head at a knot of banners. “Redstarks, Dustins and Ryders. Does Father know?”
She stared and then repressed some words that everyone would probably be shocked that she knew. Oh, this would be a pretty mess for Ned to untangle.
Kevan
Tywin was standing at the window staring. At the Stone Garden, he thought, perhaps. It was hard to tell from his standpoint and he did not want to say anything to interrupt his brother.
The arrival – and later departure – of Randyll Tarly had been the event that had caused this latest crisis. The last time that he had seen Tywin like this had been after the news of the deaths of Rickard and Brandon Stark, the moment that Tywin had seen the last shreds of his loyalty to his old friend Aerys Targaryen stretch and fray and snap. He’d spent hours staring out of the window then, deep in thought, and he was doing exactly the same thing now.
Whatever Tywin was staring at now, it had caused a massive frown to spread over his face. Kevan winced and then took a quiet step into the room. Ah. The Green Man could be seen in the distance, tending the Heart Tree. Something was odd about that tree. No-one had ever seen the Green Man working on it, but a face seemed to be appearing on its trunk.
“Randyll Tarly is not the kind of man to act on a whim,” Tywin said eventually. “Nor is he a man who believes in snarks and grumpkins. Or so I thought. He’s a man of practicality, but he brought the weapon of the Gardener Kings to Willas Tyrell, which enabled him to all but depose his fool of a father. And then Tarly sailed for Winterfell with orders to find out how to fight legends. Myths.”
Unable to work out if he should just nod or say ‘yes’ out loud, Kevan eventually settled for saying: “Aye.”
The word bought him another silence, an interminable one that stretched out and out. “And yet there is a myth in the Stone Garden,” Kevan eventually said, greatly daring. “Tending the Heart Tree.”
“He’s not a myth, he’s a man.”
“He’s a Green Man. When was the last time they left the Isle of Faces and walked the Seven Kingdoms?”
Yet another silence. Tywin’s face was smooth now, the frown gone, but he could almost hear his brother’s mind working. Again, he wanted to say something, but he dared not. He sensed that it would not be welcome, but also he sensed that something else was happening here, that everything was balanced suddenly on the blade of a sword. The slightest thing could tip things one way or the other.
He knew that there was a growing tide of worry in the Westerlands. The Westerlings, who were one of the most ancient houses in the region, were said to be sending Raynald Westerling to the North, and the Farmans were said to be sending aid to the Wall. And everyone was watching Casterly Rock.
On and on that silence stretched. Finally Kevan’s patience snapped. “Tywin, I can go to Winterfell on your behalf. Tyrion’s reports are all very well, but if you do not trust him enough to make a decision on sending help to Stark and the Night’s Watch then send me and-”
“No.” Tywin bit the word off as if it pained him. And then just before Kevan exploded he added: “We will both go to Winterfell. I will have the truth of this.”
The balance had shifted.
Ned
His orders had gone out and now it was time to ride. They had a long way to go and not a lot of time and he hoped that everything would go as he hoped, no, planned, when he met Robert.
But before they left Castle Black there had been two important meetings. The first had come when Ser Alliser Thorne had barged into his room, closed the door very firmly and then folded his arms and glared at him. “Your bastard has a Valyrian steel sword. Why?”
He stared coolly at the man. “I did not give him that sword, another did.”
“Who?”
“Why not ask him?”
“Because he’s not the Lord of the North, he’s just a boy. Where did he get the sword from? Who is his mother? Who is he?”
Ned had thought long and hard for a moment. “And what business is it of yours?”
“He has a Valyrian steel sword that kills Others and their wights. And your brother once told me that he thought there was a chance that the boy might join the Night’s Watch.”
Ned had looked at him. “And what do you care of my son?”
Thorne had then looked intensely uncomfortable. “I am the Master at Arms of Castle Black. It’s my job to train the men here, to make sure that they survive what’s coming here – and we both know what’s fucking coming here. That boy can fight – by all the Gods, can he fight. Will he join the Watch?”
A pause had fallen. “You dislike him because he’s my son, don’t you?”
“I shouldn’t but… Seven Hells you helped send me into exile here at the Wall, because I was a Loyalist. But thanks to you the Night’s Watch is finally getting the help that we’ve been begging for for years, the castles on the Wall are being restored, we know what’s coming, we know that whatever happens we’re not alone…” Thorne’s face had twisted into some strange expression that combined anger with gratefulness.
Ned had looked at him and then sighed and made his decision. “Only three other people here at the Wall know what I am about to tell you,” he had said in a very low voice. “And I am only telling you so that you stop asking about that bloody sword. Maester Aemon gave it to him, and Aemon in turn had it from Brynden Rivers, before he vanished.”
Given that the sword could only have been Dark Sister, Thorne had turned a very funny colour at that news, before Ned continued: “You were a Loyalist. This is something that must be kept a secret. I am not Jon’s father, I am his uncle. His mother was my sister. Now – think all of that through.”
Thorne had sank into the nearest chair, his face as white as a sheet and his hands trembling. “Then… then… he is… I mean some might say that…”
“He is in danger of being murdered by a great many people if his true parentage ever comes out.”
“Does… does he know?”
“Aye. Aye, he does. Wants nothing more than a normal life. Wants to live, marry, have a holdfast and found a cadet branch of the Starks that is loyal to Winterfell. He does not want… that poisoned chair of metal. And should, by some evil chance, a day come that he has to flee to the Wall and take the Black because it’s that or death, there must be those who know why. Aemon knows, as do Benjen and the Lord Commander.”
Thorne had thought all of that through, before running a shaking hand through his hair and then laughing softly. “Gods above. What am I to do with my hate now, Lord Stark? Hatred of you and Baratheon has been the only thing at times to keep my heart warm enough to live up here. And now I hear that you kept alive the grandson of your worst enemy. You’re more honourable than most men I know of.” His eyes had become hunted for a moment – and had then relaxed a little. “Very well, I know why this has to be kept a secret. Keep him alive, Lord Stark. That boy can fight.” And then he had left.
The second meeting had been with Gerion Lannister, a man whom everyone had thought had been dead for years. The arrival of Tywin Lannister’s brother, along with his son, had been a shock – especially after he had taken Ned to one side into a room and very firmly shut the door.
“I am not my brother,” he had said at once. “I am not as ruthless, nor am I as prideful and inflexible. I listen. I have to, I lost an eye and almost died because I let my obsession with Brightroar get the better of my good judgement. And I have some Greensight. Not as much as my son, but enough to know that your eldest son is the boy who died and fell through time – do not worry, the secret is safe with me! I know that the Old Gods have spoken and I know that strange things are on the wind. I have faced them and killed them for a start. I know what’s coming. And I am not my brother. You can rely on me and my son. Tyrion too – he’s a lot cleverer than his father ever could be.
“Oh and that young apprentice Maester, the one that keeps vanishing into the background? Her real name is Sarella. She’s one of the Sand Snakes, the daughters of Oberyn Martell. I think that her father sent her up here to find out what’s going on. Make of that what you will – not that I told you of that.”
If he had any more meetings like that then his hair was going to start standing on end with shock.
The gates creaked open to the South and he looked back at the disparate company behind him. Robb, Jon and Theon were behind a picked handful of Stark guards, with the Lannisters in a knot to one side. Then there was Mance Rayder and his good-sister, along with two guards from the Free Folk that included that red-headed girl, the Magnar of the Thenns (who he needed Robert to talk to), some Thenn guards, Jeor Mormont (who also needed to talk to Robert) and finally ‘Alleras’. He needed to talk to the latter at some point.
He stood up on his stirrups and gestured at the road ahead. “RIDE!”
Bloody hell, this was going to be fastest he’d travelled since after the Trident.
Sarella
When she returned to Sunspear, or more likely the Water Gardens, she would have to have a little word with her father and her uncle about Ned Stark and how fast he could move. She’d wondered a bit about the ravens that had been coming and going from Castle Black. As they thundered down the road South she realised with a start that Lord Stark was going to drive them on a brutal pace.
They galloped a for a long time and just as she was starting to think that they were going to exhaust the horses she saw the first waystation ahead, or that was what Lord Stark called it. As they each transferred from a blowing horse to a fresh one she realised that it was going to be a long day of hard riding ahead.
It was. They swapped horse for horse, they rode and rode, Lord Stark with his direwolf loping effortlessly by his side. Every now and then she would vanish into the woods to each side and return with a bloodied muzzle, so she was keeping herself well fed.
The humans in the party fell upon their meal at noon with gusto, amid much muttering at the pace, but none complained when Lord Stark kept up the same pace in the afternoon. Waystation to waystation, mile after mile Southwards.
Ned Stark was a man that Father would have to respect. He moved at a pace that would make even Father worry.
And on they went. As they rode he heard snatches of conversation from the others. The Gift, they said and then later the New Gift, was truly coming back to life. Fields were being tilled, cottages inhabited, mills repaired, firewood collected.
The North prepared.
They slept that night in an old holdfast just South of the Southern border of the New Gift, and as she slumped into her blankets she made a note to observe the others very carefully when she awoke. She needed to. When the call to wake came in the morning she ached in all kinds of places, but she made a point of watching the men and how they moved. Men were men and men complained about their balls a lot after a lot of riding. They walked a bit differently too and she made sure that she moved and grunted and grumbled the same way.
Gerion Lannister of course eyed her movements with a small smile, whilst Allarion Lannister… well he was not looking at her at all, or trying not to.
Not that she cared.
No.
Well, maybe. He had nice eyes. Not that she could stare at him. Others might think oddly of her, thinking as they did that she was a he.
The second day was just as hard as the first, waystation to waystation, blown horse to fresh horse, galloping endlessly. The third day found them in the woods North of the Long Lake and she realised dazedly that they were moving at a truly brutal pace. She was in pain now, a lot of jolted pain through every limb, every muscle.
Fortunately at the top of the Long Lake they embarked onto a ship, which meant that they could rest. Tyrion Lannister had a liniment that was in great demand and she could tell that the Wildlings were especially exhausted. There couldn’t be many horses, real horses, North of the Wall and she could tell that the poor bastards were not used to such riding. She also noted that Robb and Jon Stark were quite solicitous to the women, even if they were aware of the odd roll of the eyes from them – and, when the Starks’ backs were turned, the burning gazes.
Father would have laughed his head off at everything.
As they sailed South everyone relaxed and slept a lot, even the direwolves. She napped briefly and then she woke up and started to sketch what she had seen on some parchments. This was important, she had to draw what she had seen. The Wall. The Black Gate. Wights. And… the Others.
That had been a fight that she had felt for quite time afterwards. Never had she felt such shame at being unable to fight as hard as she knew she could, because she didn’t have anything apart from her daggers. Lovely weapons, well balanced and easy to use. Also useless against wights. And the Others. All she could do was stand there and then hamstring any passing limbs.
For a Sand Snake it had been humiliating.
She had started with some charcoal sketches and then inked over the final ones. The Nightfort. The Wall. One of the wights. And the Other that had come closest to her.
It still haunted her, that creature. The wights – well, she’d seen dead bodies before. A moving dead body had been horrible, but she could live with that. The Other though… The way that it moved had been inhuman, the way that it had looked at her and the others, as if they were nothing but flyspecks.
Father needed to see these. Father needed to understand what was coming. She stared at the sketch. Was it good enough? Would Father believe her tale, of all that she had seen? Would Uncle Doran? She sighed and then stared at the trees that were on the banks of the lake in the distance. The ship was moving faster than it had earlier, thanks to Gerion Lannister having a word with the captain and then resetting the sails a little.
“Not bad,” said a voice behind her and she jumped a little before repressing a curse. “Quite a good likeness.” It was Lord Stark himself, who sat down next to her. “Gerion Lannister had a word with me back at the Wall. About who you really are.”
Ah, shit. She had been afraid of that. “I am Sarella Sand,” she replied in a low voice. “Daughter of the Red Viper. Please keep it to yourself Lord Stark, at least until Winterfell.”
He nodded, before leaning a little closer. “Why are you here in the North?”
“My father sent me. Lord Dayne came to see my uncle at the Water Gardens, where he met my father as well. He said that he was headed North, to Kings Landing first to get his son, and then Winterfell, to answer the Call. He knew that he was dying, but he had to go and… and he bore the sword Dawn.”
Lord Stark stared at him in some shock for a moment, before closing his eyes for a long moment. “Now that’s a sword I know all too well. I remember Lord Dayne vaguely from the tourney at Harrenhall, but he was not at Starfall when I left Dawn with his sister.” He seemed to think deeply. “Did he say if his son was the new Sword of the Morning?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps. Father just said that things were moving that he did not understand. The Stony Dornish are sending what they can to the Wall, but they cannot explain why, or at least Father did not understand. Combined with the fact that the Glass Candles in the Citadel can be lit again… well, I ended up on the fastest ship I could find.”
Lord Stark absorbed this and then nodded slightly. “All help is appreciated. Now that you have seen what lies beyond the Wall what will your father do? Dorne and the North are not exactly close after the Rebellion.”
She sighed. “Father bears no ill-will to you or the North. In fact he respects you for doing what you did for your sister and your murdered family. He understands the importance of family. But he and my uncle need to know what lies behind this all, why the Stony Dornish are coming North, what the Call is. I was sent to the North to find out information. That is all.”
The Warden of the North stared at her and then again at the sketches. “Then these are important. Talk to Mance Rayder, he’s a fine sketcher, or so I am told. The more you can tell Sunspear the better. And at Winterfell you can talk to quite a few people.”
“King Robert will be there?”
“Aye, he will. Lord Stannis, his Hand, as well.”
And with that Lord Stark stood, nodded and strode off to the other side of the boat, where he sat next to the huge form of his sleeping Direwolf and then fall asleep himself.
They sailed on, through the night and most of the day, until they reached the southernmost part of the lake, where a jetty was waiting and what looked like the start of a large village constructed from stone and wood. There were fresh horses there and she didn’t have to supress a wince as she mounted, along with the others, and then started down the road that had been laid through the Wolfswood. Straight West they galloped, heading for the Kingsroad, changing horses at way points again and again. Day merged into day, sleep taken at waypoints or holdfasts along their path, the sleep of exhaustion and not a little pain. The Direwolves seemed to be holding out the best, with the three Starks and the Greyjoy boy taking care of theirs, but there were drawn faces on all the men and women by then.
“One day,” she heard Mance Rayder sigh to the other Wildlings, “We’ll all be proud to look back on this trip and say that we were there on Ned Stark’s Great Ride, South from Castle Black. By then we’ll have forgotten the bloody pain it cost us all.” And then he’d frowned and started humming snatches, and it was then, she suspected that he’d started to make up a song about it all.
On they rode, with Tyrion Lannister’s liniment all but running out, until eventually they crested a rise on the Kingsroad and saw, on the horizon, the tips of the towers of Winterfell.
“At last,” Lord Stark said with what was half a sigh and half a laugh, before spurring his horse on again. “Winterfell!”
Brynden
The Twins loomed ahead of their party and he suppressed a sigh. He remembered Walder bloody Frey all too well. Hoster had called him the Late Lord Frey because of his tardiness before the Ruby Ford and all knew that the old bastard had never forgiven his brother for the all-too-true taunt.
And now they were approaching the place where he squatted, like an ancient weasel on a bulky chair. At least the party was not flying Tully colours – that would get them admitted, albeit reluctantly but with an audience with Walder Frey sneering at them all. Instead they rode behind the banner of a white tree with red leaves on a green background, the banner of the Green Men.
It was a banner that had not been seen for many years and it seemed to cause no small amount of confusion as they waited in the rain by the gate by the Southern side of the Twins. He’d raised his hood like they all had and as the rain dripped off the brim in front of his face he hoped that it would hide his identity.
After what felt like an age the gates finally creaked open and they rode in to discover a small group of men waiting for them. Some were guards, but he recognised the leading man. Ser Stevron Frey looked older and little more careworn than the last time he had seen him, but the heir to the Twins was still straight of back and sharp of eye, because he recognised him at once.
“Ser Brynden?” He looked over the party in some confusion. “I did not know that you were with this party. The guards did not recognise the strange banner.”
“We are travelling to the North, from the Isle of Faces,” he replied. The Green Man was hanging back in the party, seeming to look around with a combination of interest and what might have been sadness. “The Green Men are abroad again.” A gesture at the men and women around him got some short sharp nods directed to Ser Stevron.
This information caused the eyes of the eldest son of Walder Frey to widen for a moment, before flickering slightly with thought. “Ah… Green Men? From the Isle of Faces? There are strange tales about that place.”
“There will be more tales. The Green Men have answered the Call.”
A man in the distinctive leather cap that the Freys seemed to favour had emerged from a side door and was approaching to one side. “Lord Frey wants to see them,” he barked at Ser Stevron, who stiffened a little and then fixed the other man with a look of carefully hidden contempt. “He wants to know who rides under such an unknown banner.”
Ser Stevron smiled a slightly pained smile. “It seems that you will have to talk to my lord father.”
Brynden nodded shortly and then dismounted, leading the others. As they secured their horses in the stables he jerked his head at Brienne. “Stay close to me in there,” he muttered. “It’s going to be unpleasant.”
She frowned, confused. “You expect treachery?”
“No,” he replied in a low voice pitched at her ear only, “I expect discourtesy. Walder Frey is close to his ninetieth year and is unpleasant, sarcastic, rude and prickly to any slight, real or imagined, to his family. You are a woman in armour. He will cast aspersions like petals on the wind. Be prepared.”
Brienne stiffened a little. “I shall,” she replied. “Thank you for the warning.” He looked at her and then nodded.
The Great Hall of the Twins was just as he remembered it to be, large, dark, gloomy and full of weasels. At the head of the room was a table and at that table, sitting in a huge chair with tower carvings, was Walder Frey, who looked as if he was about to drop dead from old age. There was a goblet of wine in one hand and his eyes darted from side to side, as if he expected assassins to sneak out from the shadows. The moment that he laid eyes on Brynden he sat up and glared at him.
“The Blackfish! What are you doing, riding under such a strange banner?”
“Father,” Ser Stevron started to say, “They claim to be from-”
“Did I give you permission to speak? I asked the Blackfish over there!”
“As Ser Stevron was about to tell you, we are riding from the Isle of Faces. Under the banner of the Green Men.”
There was a muttering from the assemblage of weasels, but Walder Frey just sat there, his pale face working slightly as he looked at the Blackfish and the others – and then he threw back his face and let out a toothless bray of laughter. “Ah,” he said eventually, “Blackfish, you do amuse me. Does Lord Tully know that his renegade brother has gone mad? Green Men abroad indeed… naught but lies and legends. They do not leave their island.”
It was fortunate that the other Green Men had been warned by him earlier, as otherwise they would have bristled a great deal. As it was, Lord Frey was glared at quite a bit. Not that he cared.
“The Green Men are neither lie nor legend, Lord Frey,” said a voice behind him, as The Green Man stepped forwards. Something flashed through the air – a coin, no, a token that landed heavily on the table in front of Walder Frey. “The token for our passage. As was agreed many years ago.”
The Lord of the Crossing reached out with a slightly palsied hand and picked it up. The moment he saw what was on it he paled and then thrust it away from him. “No,” he said after a long moment. “That’s… that’s not possible. That token… my father told me about it… but no. The Green Men do not leave their island.” And with that he shoved the token away.
Brynden sighed and sensed that Brienne was stirring irritably next to him. This drew the attention of Walder Frey, who openly looked her up and down before smirking obscenely at him. “Ah Blackfish, finally settled down have you? Look at her, ugly as a fishwife! You should have come to me instead, I could have found a granddaughter of mine. If you like them… young that is.”
The horrible old man cackled at his own words, with some of his progeny joining in, whilst others, such as Ser Stevron, closed their eyes and winced. Brynden grabbed his temper by the scruff of its neck and stuffed it back inside him, but something must have shown on his face given the fact that Walder Frey paled a little. As for Brienne she tilted her head back a little and looked down her nose at the Lord of the Crossing as if he was nothing more than slug.
“So this is what House Frey has become. In thrall to a laughing dotard who thinks that he’s being funny by being discourteous to his guests.” The Green Man took a long step forwards and it might have been Brynden’s imagination but for a long moment the candles and the fires seemed to burn lower. “Your father would have been ashamed of you.”
Walder Frey squinted at the Green Man. “And who in the Seven Hells are you, hmmm? You’re old and tall and you claim you knew my father?” He spat wetly to one side. “I see that the Blackfish has gathered a company of fools around him. And who are you?”
“The Green Man.”
The old man at the table gaped for a second, before laughing wheezily. “Liar. They don’t leave their fool island. Who are you really?”
Large hands pulled the hood up, so that the antlers came into view. “The Green Man. Yes, I knew your father. I remember the first time I laid eyes on you. I wasn’t impressed. I think that I wanted to throw you down the nearest well. It was at the marriage of your sister to Lord Ambrose Butterwell at Whitewalls.”
A silence fell. Walder Frey was staring at the Green Man, staring at him as if he did not know who or what he was. “Impossible,” he quavered. “That was more than 80 years ago.”
“I am the Green Man,” came the implacable reply. “The years touch me a bit differently from you. I remember you. Snotty nosed, rude and dirty.” He sniffed in disgust. “Nothing really changes, does it?”
Walder Frey was almost cowering in his chair. “Who are you?”
The hood came back down. “I was once Ser Duncan the Tall.”
There was an astounded silence, and then a combination of muttering, laughter and shocked comments filled the air. Stevron Frey was staring at the Green Man with a look that combined shock with hope for some reason.
“Impossible,” Walder Frey mumbled. “You’re dead. Dead since Summerhall. Died in the fire there. Dead.”
“I was bunt, but I lived.” The Green Man unrolled his sleeve and showed the horrific burns on his arm. Silence fell again. Walder Frey swallowed thickly and then, just as he seemed to be rallying a bit there was a hammering at the doors to one side and a guard slipped in, escorting a man dressed in black. Brynden blinked. He knew that man.
“My Lord,” quavered the guard, “Your pardon, but this man of the Night’s Watch arrived on the North side of the Twins. He demands to speak to you at once.”
“Damn it!” Walder Frey roared weakly. “Night’s Watch do not demand anything of me! What do you want, black crow? Men? Coin? Food? You’ll have nothing from me, not with this Call nonsense roiling the smallfolk!”
Brynden glanced at the bloody man dismissively and then stepped forwards. “Yoren isn’t it? I’ve seen you at the Bloody Gate many times.”
The man in black smiled and nodded at him before stepping almost formally up to the table. “Lord Frey, I am Yoren of the Night’s Watch. I am sorry for disturbing you at this moment, but I was charged by the Lord Commander with showing as many lords as possible… this.” And with that he placed a cloth covered square on the table, before backing away. “Proof, my Lord. Proof of what we at the Wall will be facing. The head of a wight.”
A susurration again. The word ‘lie’ was in the air. But all eyes were on Walder Frey. He was sitting in his chair, a shrunken husk of a man whose eyes were darting between the Green Man, Brynden and Yoren. With one shaking hand he then reached out and pulled the cloth. Under it was a cage. And in that cage was a severed head. A head with rolling eyes and a mouth that opened and closed and hissed.
This time there was horror in the susurration, as men and women shrieked and pulled away from the cage. Yoren watched this calmly, whilst Brynden noticed that Brienne merely blinked. The Green Men did not react at all, which was interesting.
As for Walder Frey… he had gone as white as a sheet. And then blood seemed to flush into his face. His mouth opened and closed for a moment – and then one side of his face went slack and there was a sudden stench of urine as the man pissed himself, before his eyes rolled back in his skull and he collapsed bonelessly in his chair.
As various Freys screamed and leapt towards the chair Brynden suppressed a smile.
What a tragedy.
Cat
The desk in Ned's solar never seemed to be free of paper and parchment. She looked at the heaps wryly and then sighed a little.
There was always so much to do in Winterfell and with Ned away and Brandon just a boy it fell to her to arrange matters as much as she could. Sansa, bless her, was trying to learn - she would be a lady herself in a few years - and Luwin was a tower of strength, but she missed Ned fiercely as she dealt with the hundred and one things a day that had to be taken care of in a citadel the size of Winterfell, especially with all the work that was being done on Wintertown nearby.
Winter was coming. Everyone around her seemed to know it now and she had a steady stream of people coming to her with progress reports of food being sown, others harvested, yet others pickled, or salted, or preserved in some manner.
And then there was the work on the Broken Tower. Once it was mended they'd obviously have to find another name for it, but Ned's orders were being followed to the letter. The structure was sound, the rotted timbers in the upper courses had been removed, the stonework redone in places and the scaffolding erected. It wasn't finished of course, and the workers would be busy on other matters when the King arrived. Too noisy otherwise.
According to the last messages the King was about two days away. Ned was on his way back and was also about two days away by her best guess. It all felt horribly tight, as if the world was pressing in around her, as if there was a flood of events bearing down on Winterfell. It worried her and she also knew that it worried Luwin.
She sighed again as she looked back that the pile of work in front of her - and then she heard the sound of running boots in the corridor outside, followed by the frantic tattoo of knocks on the door. Startled she stood. "Enter!"
The door was flung open to reveal a panting Jory Cassel. "My... my lady... the watchtowers report.... riders approaching. Stark.... banners. 'Tis Lord Stark they... report."
Her heart leapt within her breast and she beamed at him before sweeping out, the wheezing man following her. As she all but ran down the corridor she saw Sansa and Domeric round a corner, Septa Mordane in tow, and she waved at them. "Sansa, your Father is approaching!"
Her daughter stopped, startled, and then she and her betrothed ran to join her, Lady running ahead of them and a huffing Septa Mordane behind.
As her little party emerged into the great courtyard she could see that Ser Rodrik Cassel was busy getting an honour guard in place, with many glares and not a few barked commands. He looked up as she approached and bowed quickly, before going back to making sure that the Lord of The North received a proper welcome back.
The Terrible Threesome had emerged from a corridor somewhere, Summer gambolling ahead of them, whilst Arya and Nymeria had also appeared. Arya's dress had mud on it from somewhere and she was wearing a helmet for some bizarre reason. She rolled her eyes at Luwin, who was nearest, and then man grinned briefly before taking it off her daughter.
The gates were open and her heart was pounding as they all waited. Ned must have flown down from Castle Black and she wondered what it had cost him.
And then there was the sound of horsemen and she watched as the party came through the man gates, mounted on blowing horses. Frostfyre preceded them and she smiled as the other direwolves bounded up to their mother as she guided them into a corner and then licked each in turn.
As Ned dismounted she blinked. He looked so tired - tired and thinner than he'd been for some time. Her husband had been driving himself hard, she could tell that at a glance. She wanted to run into his arms - but she had appearances to keep up so instead she strode forwards. "My Lord, Winterfell is yours."
Ned smiled that special little smile that he reserved only for her and then nodded at her, before taking both her hands in his and kissing them. "Thank you my Lady." And then he embraced her. She melted into his arms, almost in tears. "Gods, I'm tired," he whispered in her ear. "We made good time though."
As she stepped out of his arms and looked at the rest of Ned's party she smiled at the sight of Robb. He looked tired as well, as did Jon and Theon, but they were all healthy apart from that. Tyrion Lannister looked as if he was about to fall over, as did many of the others and Ned called out orders for them all to be taken care of.
"We have some interesting guests," Ned muttered quietly to her. "But first, are you well? Is the babe well?"
"I am well and it seems to be thriving. Luwin's pleased with me," she replied. "But - what guests? I can see Mance Rayder again, and I remember Jeor Mormont, but who are the others?"
"I will introduce you."
"Good - and then I need to tell you about the guests we have here."
Ned groaned quietly. "Important ones? Robert cannot be here already, he would be roaring at me and slapping my back by now."
"Important enough." She sniffed. "It might be best if you bathed first though."
"Oh aye. I do smell, Cat, and my arse is one giant bruise. Come, let me introduce to the rest of the party and then you'd best come with me to make sure that I don't fall asleep in the bath."
Ned
He was tired. Gods in the trees, was he tired, but there was too much to do. At least he now smelt a lot better and he'd been able to nap for an hour or two. Not nearly as much as he would like to, but just enough to take the edge off his weariness.
Robb, Jon and Theon had also bathed but were now asleep, and the word from the guest quarters was that so were all the others, except for Tyrion Lannister for some reason.
But he himself had too much to do and he was now sitting in his solar, staring at all the papers. Cat had done an excellent job, but there was so much that only he could do.
The door creaked open and Cat entered, closing the door very firmly behind her. "Edric Stark is coming, as you requested," she said as she sat down in front of him. "There's something you need to know first about Arya and Bran." She twisted her fingers together for a long moment. "I discovered something about them when you were gone. Something that I had a hard time accepting at first. Ned... our daughter and our son are... are wargs."
He stared at her. "Say that again? They're what?"
"Wargs, Ned. Arya discovered it first she said. She was having odd dreams, where she was in Nymeria, but then she realised that they were more than mere dreams, that she really was 'in' her direwolf." She looked about the room, distressed. "I... I did not believe her at first when she told me. It slipped out when I was talking with her about taking her lessons with Septa Mordane more seriously, but she said that as the Long Night was coming, there wasn't much point in needlework if wights and the Others were coming - and then she said that she needed other knowledge and that she was a warg.
"I did not believe her at first, not truly, which upset her, but once she showed me... then I believed."
He sat there, absorbing that knowledge with wide eyes. "She... she showed you?"
"She did. Her eyes turned as white as milk right there in front of me and Nymeria obeyed every order I gave her - including tapping out the answers to sums with her paw. Arya truly is a warg. And so is Bran. They both need teaching in this thing and there is nothing that I or Luwin can suggest."
After a long moment Ned leant back in his chair as he thought very hard and very fast. "By the Old Gods. I knew that Arya wanted to be a warg, but 'tis another matter to become one. That said, why should it not be true, after all the things that we have seen over these many months?" He pondered again. "I'll ask Rayder if any of his men are, or know of, wargs. The Wildlings have often surprised me with what they know of the Old Ways. And if Arya is indeed a warg... well, that is something we can use."
Cat sighed a little but nodded - before pulling out the red ledger that he had seen before. "When you talk to Edric Stark you need to have this I think."
"Oh?" He asked as he took it. "Why?"
"Bran noticed what we did not - it has a rose embossed on the cover."
So it did. "You think that there is a connection to the Company of the Rose?"
"Given the list of what appear to be contracts inside, yes. And Ned - the last pages of writing are in your father's hand, or so Luwin told me."
He leafed through the book to those pages and studied the script, before feeling his face pale. Yes, the entries were indeed in his father's hand. "Damn it, how did I not notice that before?"
"You were looking for information on the Others, not strange entries about contracts."
Ned nodded and then placed it to one side. "So much to do. I'll deal with the Company of the Rose first and then see Bootle. We'll try him in the Great Hall I think. We'll do it properly, so that Dacey will see her father avenged."
"I'll make the preparations," Cat said as she stood up. "Oh, and Lord Dayne wishes to speak with you."
"I know," Ned groaned. "I know he's just a boy, or near enough, but every time I see that damn sword I remember the Tower of Joy."
"Ned, when he and Lord Dondarrion pledged their help, that sword glowed. There's something odd about it."
He stared at her carefully. "It did what?"
"It glowed. I take it that it didn't do that when you fought Arthur Dayne?"
"No," he muttered, thinking back to that terrible day. "But the way that that bloody man was all but gurning as he fought me, there was something going on with it. It seemed fine when I strapped it to one of the horses afterwards. Anyway - I'll ask him about it when I see him."
A fist thumped on the door and he stood as Cat bustled to the door and opened it to reveal a dark haired man who looked a little younger than Ned. He was dressed in dark grey clothes and he held a book with the red cover that looked surprisingly familiar. He also looked a bit nervous.
"Edric Stark, Ned," said Cat, before leaving.
His cousin hovered near the door for a moment before stepping into the room at his gesture to approach, closing the door behind him. There was a long moment as the two men sized each other up.
"You look a bit like my grandfather," Ned said eventually, breaking the silence.
"And you like my great-uncle," came the reply, before the other man seemed to recollect where he was. "Your pardon Lord Stark. I am Edric Stark, once leader of the Company of the Rose. He drew himself up almost formally and then bowed and held out the book. "The Company is disbanded, in answer to the Call. We have done out duty as was commanded long ago and have returned to the North. Command us."
Ned paused, before taking the book. "Cousin, welcome back - but what do I even call you? Edric? Lord Edric?" He hefted the book for a moment. "Are these your records? I must tell you now that as the second son of my father there is much that I was not told about you and the Company."
A noise escaped Edric's mouth, something like a cross between a sigh and a groan. "I feared as much. Hells, my father feared as much." He sank into a chair, ran a hand over his face and then looked up at him. "How much do you know about the Company of the Rose?"
"Just that you were founded by exiles - those that refused to bend the knee to the Targaryens," Ned replied as he sat down himself and placed Edric's book next to the one from the secret room.
"Yes," Edric replied wryly, "And... no. We were indeed founded by those who refused to bend the knee. The thing is that they were ordered to by Torrhen Stark, our ancestor."
Ned stared at him. "What?"
"When Torrhen Stark came South to support the others kings in opposing Aegon the Conqueror, he was horrified by what had happened at the Field of Fire, the Last Storm and Harrenhall. So he halted his army at the Trident, as everyone knows, before meeting Aegon and bending the knee. What people don't know is that before he bent the knee he went to the Isle of Faces and consulted with the Green Men, or rather the Green Man, the leader on the Island."
"I didn't know that," Ned said with a frown.
"Few do," Edric replied. "It's a secret passed on from father to son amongst the Starks alone, when they come of age." He fell silent. "Or so I hoped. Lord Rickard never told you?"
"He never had a chance to do so," Ned said grimly.
"As my father and I feared then. Very well - the Green Man of the time was a Tully and he told our ancestor what he had told his nephew, the new Lord of the Riverlands. There were three things that they both had to know, only he added some more details for Torrhen Stark. All three things were secrets that had to be kept. The first was that any promises of new swords made from Valyrian steel were worthless, because the secret of making the steel died at the Doom. The second was that the Targaryens were just lesser dragonlords, not greater ones, so that eventually the dragonlore of the Targaryens would fade and the dragons would be lost, which was a shame because a time would come when they would be needed again.
"The third secret was that there was another piece of Valyrian knowledge that would fade with time - how to wed brother to sister and not have children that were deformed or lunatics. Because when that happened then Westeros would have mad kings - and that they would not be kind to Northmen."
He remembered the moment that Jon Arryn had called him to his solar, pale and strained, to pass on the news that Father and Brandon were not just dead but had died in such cruel circumstances. Remembered all the tales of the Mad King, cackling and gibbering on his bloody throne. "Those were three secrets that were all true then," he said hoarsely. "All too true. But what does that have to do with..." He stopped talking as the pieces fell into place in his head. "Torrhen Stark created the Company of the Rose to protect Northern nobles?"
"He did. He ordered the main families of the North to send their second or third sons to Essos, to join the sellsword company that he was organising and funding there in great secrecy. So that no matter what happened in Westeros, the Lords of the North would always have kin that would replace them in the event of disaster. Such a mad king ordering the deaths of a lordly family on a whim.
"And all though these past almost 300 years we were there. Waiting, in reserve. Brokering quiet marriages with noble families of the North. Keeping ties to the North. Taking on assignments, like all sellsword companies, but never great and terrible ones. We were not the Gold Company, who supported the Blackfyres. Instead we were just the Company of the Rose. Stolid and dependable. We would take on missions and inform Winterfell through secret ways. The final arbiter of if we should do anything or not was always the Stark In Winterfell." He pointed at the books. "You'll find the hand of many a past Stark in those books, on both sides of the Narrow Sea. We earned quite a bit of gold over the years, all safely tucked away in the Iron Bank. There is an account owned by the Starks, and that money is yours. And then there are those owned by each family in the Company. Or there were. We have brought that money that we had over with us."
Ned stared at the books and then at his cousin, stunned. "How many families?"
"I made a list." He pulled it out and handed it over to Ned. "You'll find some names on it that have long since died out here."
Blinking with surprise Ned quickly passed his eyes over the list. "By the Old Gods," he muttered after a long moment. "Redstarks? Ryders? Dustins?"
"Aye to all of them. There's even some Boltons - we heard that the family over here was reduced to just two trueborn members."
Ned could feel his mind whirring like a Mryish toy. He had always felt a certain amount of shame at the fact that the North had not prospered as much as other areas of the realm, that there were extinct houses here and there. And now... "This will complicate some matters. And also mean that there will be lords reclaiming ruined holdfasts. We will cope with anything that arises from that." He shook his head. "You have done well, cousin."
Edric hung his head for a moment. "Don't thank me, thank my forefathers. We came damn close to disaster a time or two. Last time was when word came of the death of your father. Lord Rickard once went to Pentos, when you were young, I believe? He met my father there. They became good friends. When word came of his death, and your brother, and especially the nature of those deaths... well, it was touch and go if the Company would remain in Essos or break apart and return to the North to lay our swords at your feet. My father was tempted himself, but talked himself hoarse persuading people that they could not go."
Ned thought about this and then nodded himself. "Ah - it was proof of why the Company had been set up?"
A bitter smile crossed the face of his cousin. "Exact proof, as it were. It demonstrated why we were in Essos. I followed your progress with great attention. You have no idea how relieved I was when you triumphed. It shook the Company, Robert's Rebellion."
This made a frown cross Ned's face. "Wait - when Robert's Rebellion was over and the Targaryens were thrown down, why did you not return then?"
"Two reasons. Firstly Robert Baratheon has Targaryen blood and we did not know him. Secondly - no word to return came from you. Winterfell was silent and we did not know what to do."
"You could not send word?"
"We send word via the secret channels. You did not reply."
"I never knew of those secret channels."
"I know that now. My father suspected that you had not been told of us. But we could not openly send word. That eunuch that reported for the Mad King was now reporting to Robert Baratheon and we could not take the risk of muddying the waters by attracting his attention, especially as he had odd ties to people close to the Gold Company. The oath we all took, whenever a man or woman of the Company came of age, still stood. Not to return until we had word from Winterfell."
"But I did not send word and you are here now. Why?"
"The Call. That always had precedence. Should the Call ever be sent, should the Others ever awaken, that extinguished one oath and replaced it with another - to return."
"Well... return you have. Will you keep the name Stark or found a cadet branch?"
"I have sons and daughters. I was thinking about the name Rosestark and a holdfast somewhere."
Ned stood, walked around the desk and clasped hands with the other man. "Then let me be the first to greet you as Lord Rosestark of the North. Welcome home cousin. Welcome home."
Tyrion
He was several miles beyond tired and he wanted nothing more than to slump into a bed and fall asleep. The past few days had been beyond unpleasant, an unending series of painful jolts as they galloped South. Yes, Ned Stark was a formidable man indeed. Even Father would have been impressed by the speed of their party. Uncle Gerion certainly had been.
Much as he wanted to fall asleep though, there was something more important that he had to do. That meant, of course, jumbling his thoughts back into order every now and then then, but… He paused as he realised that he was walking with his eyes shut. That was bad, very bad. A bad idea. He pinched the base of his thumb for a moment to wake up again and then walked on.
Liniment. He needed more limiment. Wait. Liniment. Yes.
He found Dacey Surestone sitting in the Godswood, sitting before the Heart Tree. She looked… very intent. Focussed. The leaves were whispering slightly in the branches above her and he stopped dead in his tracks for a long moment, before walking slowly towards her. As he approached she looked up and blinked a little, before smiling. “Tyrion. I heard that you were back.”
“I am.” He sat down very carefully on what was hopefully a soft patch of grass. “I’m a bit achy.”
She blinked at him again. “I’d be amazed if you weren’t,” she said dryly. “How many miles have you ridden?”
That was a good question. He paused. “I’m not entirely sure. A lot. Over far too few days. Parts of me hurt that I didn’t even know existed. I ran out of liniment I’m afraid – other people begged me for it.”
She peered closely at him. “Tyrion, are you alright?”
“I’m a bit weary. Actually I’m very tired, but that’s besides the point. I saw many carts by the main walls with the sigil of House Surestone. Has anything happened?”
Her nostrils flared for a long moment. “Willem Bootle is in a cell here.”
“Ah.” He said the word carefully. “When is he being tried?”
“Later today or early tomorrow. Ned’s got a lot to do.”
“Such as?”
“The leaders of the Company of the Rose are here. Lord Dondarrion and Dayne have arrived, the latter bearing a glowing sword. And the King is due to arrive the day after tomorrow.”
He thought that all through. “Yes, I see your point. The Wall was quite eventful as well.”
She peered at him again. “So I see. You have acquired the beginning of a beard, an axe and two daggers.”
Tyrion suppressed a giggle. “Oh, the beard was to stop my face catching a cold. The axe and the daggers were left to me by an ancestor of mine, one Tyrek Lannister. The daggers are called the Warnings. They glow at the approach of wights and Others. The axe is called Rocktooth and it kills wights and Others. Quite spectacularly too, I might add.”
Peering did not seem to be enough for Dacey Surestone, because suddenly she was boggling. “Wights?” She said the word in a strained voice. “Others? You have seen them both?”
“Oh yes.” His eyes were fluttering quite hard right now. Gods, but he was tired. “Seen them and helped kill them. There were a lot of wights and four Others. They were trying to get to Rickon Stark, a member of the Night’s Watch who was half turned by an Other centuries ago, but who was saved by the Children of the Forest. He was carrying magic within him to help mend the Wall, so that South could talk to North and North to South. We protected Rickon Stark – Coldhands he renamed himself, quite apt actually – and killed them. I used Rocktooth on a few wights and an Other. Robb Stark got one, Jon Stark got one and so did Uncle Gerion. Valyrian steel is quite effective. Then we got Coldhands through the Wall via a magic gate and he fixed it and died.”
There was a long moment of silence – and then Dacey shuffled over to sit next to him. “I think,” she said eventually, “That you are going to have to tell me exactly what happened. Only later, when you are less exhausted and more coherent.”
“What a good idea,” he said faintly, his eyelids fluttering so hard that there was more darkness than light in his vision. “I think a nap might be in order.” And then he slumped down against her. The last thing he knew before he fell asleep was that his head was on her lap and that her hand was stroking his hair as the wind gently rustled the leaves above them. Home. He was home. And then sleep took him.
Chapter Text
Arya
Men were moving benches about in the Great Hall and she sat on a low wall, with Nymeria sitting gravely at her feet, and watched.
She’d been so happy to see Father again, but also a bit nervous. What would Mother tell him about her warging? Everything had changed just that little bit in the wake of that talk of theirs. She’d had to do a little less embroidery, which meant that she had a little more time to practice warging.
And it was important, that practicing. She loved Nymeria fiercely and the last thing that she wanted to do was ever hurt her, so she had to be careful. Warging could be hard if she was tired and some of the tales from Old Nan about people who warged in but could never warg out again were… well, they were a bit scary. Plus she had to teach Bran, who was a fast learner.
She wondered sometimes if any more of her brothers or Sansa were wargs. Or Uncle Benjen, or even Father? It was a bit hard to ask Robb or Jon at the moment as they were asleep. She wasn’t sure why, they’d just been riding home with Father. Now, she could imagine Father as a warg. Father could do anything. And Frostfyre was… well she knew when she was warging into Nymeria. She’d warged into her direwolf an hour earlier, only to be stared at and then licked by the adult direwolf in a slightly amused and slightly bemused manner. Frostfyre knew.
Grey Wind and Ghost padded past, sniffing Nymeria and she looked around in time to see a yawning Robb and Jon stroll into view, followed by an equally tired Theon. They were all thinner than they had been and she knew that Mother was going to fuss and insist that they all eat something. She was glad that Mother was treating Jon better these days,
“Come on, Trouble,” Robb said affectionately. “Father wants us all in the Great Hall.”
She frowned. “What for?”
The smile vanished. “Bootle’s being tried.”
This time she blinked. “I thought that wasn’t until tomorrow?”
Jon shook his head. “Today. The King’s coming and Father wants this out of the way.” He looked her up and down. “Well,” he said eventually, “You’re not too bad. Has Lady Stark seen you?”
“Lady Stark,” said a forbidding voice behind them all, “Has been looking for you Arya.” Septa Mordane inspected her with a hint of despair. “Oh dear. Come on, quickly. A clean dress and a comb through your hair will have to do.”
Protesting did no good, despite her very well thought out and well-reasoned arguments, and she even had to rub a flannel of warm water over her face, before being escorted, clean and sullen, to the Great Hall.
The room was full and as she squeezed onto the end of a bench next to Bran she looked about. Domeric Bolton was sitting on a nearby bench, looking solemn. “He’s there to record the proceedings for his father,” she heard Sansa tell Robb. “Lord Surestone was well-loved.”
She was also fascinated to see that the Imp had family next to him, one being the uncle that everyone had thought was dead and the other being his cousin. They all looked a bit tired.
Doors boomed open to one side and everyone stood. Startled she too scrambled to her feet and then watched as father walked into the room, flanked by the Old Bear and oddly enough Lord Dondarrion, with Frostfyre padding after them. Father was holding the Fist of Winter in both hands and as they reached the table with the three chairs behind it he took the central chair and then placed the ancient weapon in front of him with a formality that made her shiver for a moment. The other two men took their places on either side of him, whilst Frostfyre sat to one side.
“Bring in the prisoner,” Father said in a voice that she had never heard from him before – low and hard and intent.
More doors opened and the sullen figure of Ser Willem Bootle was escorted into the Great Hall, guarded by Jory Cassel and his uncle. The prisoner was pale as he entered and even paler as he finally reached the chair that had been reserved for him.
“This trial is convened,” Father said as the doors shut with a boom and everyone sat down again. “I, Lord Eddard Stark, the Stark in Winterfell, will preside over it, the trial being witnessed by the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, Jeor Mormont, and the Lord of Blackhaven, Lord Beric Dondarrion.” He looked at Bootle, who quailed a little. “Ser Willem Bootle stands accused of the crimes of murder and usurpation, in that he did murder Lord Torgen Surestone – and then did usurp his title, falsely claiming to be his heir.”
A lot of people muttered angrily about that and she looked about the Great Hall, trying to catch what people were saying. She’d never seen the sea but it must have sounded like that, noise going backwards and forwards, hard to hear. Father paused and then when silence fell again he looked at the accused man. “How do you plead?”
Bootle stood shakily, took a deep breath and then looked about the room, raising his chin in a way that made him look like a cockerel with a neck problem. “I am innocent! I am Lord Surestone, as I was his heir!”
There was a shocked pause and then a lot of people started to shout and all but snarl. The noise washed over her, but she had eyes only for the three men at the table. Father’s eyes had narrowed dangerously, the Old Bear was sniffing contemptuously and Lord Dondarrion looked as if a bad smell had passed under his nose.
It was then that she noticed that Dacey had arrived, and that the Imp was now sitting next to her. There was something odd going on between those two, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.
Father raised a hand and the muttering stopped. Then he stood. “Maester Luwin, please bring forth Lord Torgen Surestone’s will.”
The old Maester stepped forwards, a scroll in his hand that had two seals on it. “This was deposited under the care of Lord Stark last year, my Lords,” he said as he passed the scroll to Lord Dondarrion.
The Lightning Lord inspected the seals carefully. “They have not been tampered with,” he said gravely, before handing it over to the Old Bear, who also looked at the seals.
“The seals have not been tampered with,” the old man agreed, before catching Father’s nod and cracking the seals and opening the scroll. He read quickly, handed it over to Lord Dondarrion, who also read it and then handed it to Father.
Father read it as well and then handed it back to Maester Luwin. “Lord Surestone named his daughter and only child Dacey Surestone as his heir, as witnessed by me,” Father announced. “Maester Luwin?”
The old Maester unrolled the scroll. “It is as Lord Stark said,” he proclaimed grimly. “Dacey Surestone was the heir to Surestone, not Ser Willem.”
“Word came to us last year from Ser Edmure Tully, my goodbrother, that Ser Willem was a neer-do-well, that he was perennially short of coin, that he had alienated his neighbours and was not trusted in the Riverlands. He would never have been a fit heir to Surestone. But then he was never the heir. There must always be a Surestone in Surestone and he was related to the late Lord Surestone’s wife, not Lord Surestone himself. No matter what this…” Father curled a lip as he looked at him. “Man thought, he was never the heir. Dacey Surestone is.”
Bootle had been swelling with either rage or gas with every word and now he erupted. “Lies!” he all but squealed. “Lies! I am the Lord of Surestone! That girl cannot inherit, she is nothing but a girl and I-”
“SILENCE!!!” Father’s voice cracked out like a whip and silenced everyone in the room at once. Bootle blanched and leant back from Father’s wrath. “The will is clear. Lord Surestone told me that his only child was his heir. Told me to my face and then wrote it in his will. Are you calling me a liar?”
The Great Hall was silence as Bootle’s face twisted and his mouth hung open. After a long moment he shook his head fearfully.
“Now as to the matter of the death of Lord Surestone,” Maester Luwin said quietly but firmly to one side. “It was blamed on a stroke my Lord. But on the arrest of Ser Willem a search of his possessions was made by one Edmyn Hunter, in service to Ser Edmure Tully.”
“Step forth Edmyn Hunter,” Father rumbled. The white-bearded man who had arrived with Bootle stepped forwards, dressed in the fishscale leather armour that always fascinated Arya. “What was found when you searched Bootle’s possessions?”
“My Lord,” Hunter said with a respectful bob of the head to Father, “We found a journal which mentioned that Ser Willem was deep in debt to a man called Collyns, who was in turn in the employ of the traitor Petyr Baelish. We also found this jar.” He gestured to one side and another Riverlander walked up with a stone jar that had once been sealed with wax around the edge of the lid. “The prisoner seemed rather concerned that we had it.” He said the last words dryly, before directing a look of contempt at Bootle, who was in turn looking around for the nearest door with a look of abject terror.
Father thanked the Riverlanders, telling them that his own thanks would go with them back to Riverrun and House Tully, before turning to Maester Luwin again. “Do you know what is in this jar Maester Luwin?”
“I do my Lord. It contains a powder that I have tested. It is a poison from Essos, called Hearts Forlorn. It dissolves easily in liquid, such as wine, and if drunk kills by mimicking an apoplexy, such as that which apparently killed Lord Surestone. It is a most cruel poison.”
Dacey was white as a sheet and the Imp was holding her hand now, whilst the crowd in the Great Hall was muttering and growling with fury. Father stared at Bootle again and then raised a hand to quiet the crowd. “You stand accused of murder, Ser Willem. What say you to this?”
“I did not kill him,” Bootle gabbled. “I swear it.”
“The stone jar?”
Bootle licked his lips, which were almost bloodless set amidst his pale, strained, face. He seemed to be sweating a great deal. “Not mine,” he said hoarsely. “Planted by my enemies!”
Arya scoffed. He lied like Rickon did – very badly.
A bench scraped and then a bald man stood up. He was that odd, earless man who had arrived with father and who was wearing leather garments with bronze adornments. After Father nodded at him he straightened and then spoke in the Old Tongue, something that Arya sort of understood. “My Lord of Stark-name, this man of the South would swear that he is innocent, would he? Have him swear on the Great Fist. Legend has it that an ill oath sworn on it is quickly shown to be a lie.”
There was widespread muttering at this, as many people translated for others, and then after a long moment Father nodded slowly. “Very well. Guards, bring the prisoner forwards to this table.”
Bootle’s boots scuffed and scraped on the flagstones as he was all but dragged before Father and the other two men. Arya watched in fascination as something seemed to prickle her on the back of her neck.
“You’d swear your innocence would you?” Father smiled thinly and then grabbed Bootle’s hands and placed them forcibly on the Fist of Winter. “Then here’s your chance. Swear that you did not murder my cousin, Lord Surestone.”
The Great Hall was totally silent as Bootle looked down at his trembling hands which Father was still pressing down onto the ancient mace. He licked his lips nervously, his lower lip also trembling for a moment. And then he looked up, visibly gathering his tattered wits about him. “I am not afraid of your legends and your heathen symbols,” he hissed. “I swear that I did not murder Lord Surestone. I swear that I am innocent.”
There was a long moment of tension and then Bootle seemed to relax a little. “Is that it? Bec-” Thunder rolled far overhead and then there was a sudden flash of light within the hall, followed by a great boom that shook her to her very bones. All the direwolves threw their heads back and howled for a long moment – and then Bootle let out a choked half-scream as red fire seemed to engulf him for an instant – and then he flew backwards from the table and smashed into the ground, smoking slightly, his arms stiff in front of him. She knew at once that he was dead.
“Perhaps you should have been afraid, then,” Father rumbled – and then the Hall erupted with noise.
Oberyn
Doran was riding one of his favourite horses, a brown mare that remarkably calm given its lineage. His brother was getting fit again in stages, starting with riding, along with a little swordwork. He was still listening to the Maester whose advice had lessened the pain in his feet from the gout and although he kept good-naturedly complaining about it to Obreyn, he knew that his brother was intent on keeping to it.
He sensed someone approaching and he turned his head a little. Arianne was standing there, dressed in riding leathers and looking a bit wide-eyed at the sight of her father out of that damned wheeled chair.
“Quentyn said that Father was better, but I never thought that he’d be riding again,” she breathed, before looking at him. “Your master friend deserves my thanks.”
He nodded, but then noticed that she still had a frown on her face. “What is it?”
“Uncle Oberyn, what’s going on?”
He sat down on a nearby bench and waved a languid hand. “Many things are going on. Can you be more specific?”
This bought him a glare. “This!” She waved a hand at her father. “Father changes what he eats to get rid of his gout, because he wants to be healthy again. You start talking to the Citadel again and researching the legends of the Stony Dornish. Uncle Oberyn, what is happening? Are we going to war?”
He stroked his chin. “A good question, niece. Perhaps, but not a war that we are familiar with. You have heard about what happened to Lord Dayne?”
“I did. His son is the new Lord Dayne and also the Sword of the Morning.”
“Other members of the Stony Dornish are going North. Even Anders Yronwood has sent men North to the Wall.”
Arianne narrowed her eyes. “Anders Yronwood is an ambitious whoreson. Why is he sending men to the North?”
“You just dislike him because he thinks that Quentyn should be the heir to Sunspear, not you. And Yronwood is just doing what other Stony Dornish are doing. Including House Fowler.”
Arianne sat down next to him. “Why?”
“The Call.”
His niece eyed him carefully. “Some of the Salty and Sandy Dornish doubt that the Call even happened.”
“I know.” He smiled slightly. “They are wrong. Something very, very old has woken up, something that dates back to the First Men. Something that your father and I do not yet properly understand.”
Shoes scuffed to one side and a servant approached and bowed. “My Prince, a letter for you.”
He took it and then sat up. Sarella’s hand. He inspected the wax seal carefully, found it unbroken and then cracked it open, before reading it quickly. As he read he frowned. “Interesting,” he muttered eventually. Then he turned the page, read what was there, stopped dead, re-read it and then found his eyebrows shooting upwards. “Ah. That’s… extremely… erm.”
“Now that’s a sight I never thought I’d see, my brother rendered speechless.” Doran had dismounted and was walking towards them, wiping the sweat from his neck with a damp cloth. “What’s amiss?”
“Sarella has written from White Harbour. She has changed her plans – she’s going to the Wall.”
Doran raised an eyebrow. “Interesting. Why?”
“She says that the Call has been heard by many people and that Ned Stark was meeting his main lords at Castle Black. Her trip to the Wall instead of Winterfell makes sense therefore. But there’s another reason for her going to the Wall. She writes that she’s on the same ship as Gerion Lannister.”
There was a pause as Doran and Arianne both stared at her. “Gerion Lannister?” Doran asked in disbelief. “I thought that he was dead, lost seeking Valyria years ago. Is Sarella sure?”
He re-read the letter. “She says that he has lost an eye and gained a son, but that she is sure that it is him.”
“And he is headed for the Wall. Interesting.” Doran stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Then we must await her next letter. And let the Stoney Dornish know.” He looked at his daughter. “You look unconvinced, Arianne.”
She shrugged. “I did not hear the Call, Father. We have some Stony Dornish blood, but not enough for me to have heard it. But it did happen and we need to react. The Stony Dornish are heading North in response to it. It’s affecting all our neighbours. When a decision is made in King’s Landing about this, we will need to be ready.”
“And do what?”
Doran exchanged a long glance with him. “If need be re-engage with Westeros,” Doran said eventually. “This Call both complicates matters and simplifies them. The Game of Thrones is temporarily postponed, but what has replaced it? Where do the Starks stand in all of this? How old is this… whatever it is, how dire is the threat, what will we need to do and when do we need to it?”
“We need to know what’s going on,” Oberyn said restlessly. His feet twitched for a moment. It might be time to talk to a few people here and there. And he knew a man who had a very fast ship. Oh and if old certainties were being eroded like sand on a beach before wind and tide, perhaps he needed to finally marry Ellaria?
Ned
Dacey was going to have to go through all the waggons and carts and assess just what that repulsive little thief had taken from Surestone and if any of it had been sold to pay off his debts. Fortunately his main creditor had already been very dead by the time that he had returned to the Riverlands. Even so, he didn’t want to risk Dacey losing any particularly prized heirlooms.
So, he had given orders for Luwin and Dacey to create an inventory of the waggons and also for a small party to return to Surestone in order to reopen it, as he had no doubt that Bootle had had no intention of ever returning to it, other than to steal any remaining objects from it, damn the man.
Well, at least the ashes of Ser Willem Bootle would go back to the Riverlands in the possession of Edmure’s men. He’d have to work out what to do with them.
He winced slightly as he thought about the manner of the man’s death. He had not expected that at all – something slower perhaps, but not justice that quickly. He was going to have to go through all the records again for any references to the Fist. He already respected it, but he needed to understand it fully.
As he sat down in his solar and stared at the books in front of him he sighed. Robert was due tomorrow and he was not yet fully recovered from his trip South from Castle Black. That had been a trip that would stay with him for some time, especially given the bruises. He was impressed that those amongst his party who had not been that familiar with riding had made it. Tyrion Lannister had especially impressed him. The man hadn’t let his physical limitations stop him, he’d just grimly kept riding. He rubbed his chin. If the man did announce his interest in Dacey then he’d have to take it very seriously, especially as she seemed to like him.
Knuckles rapped hesitantly on the door and he looked up. Lord Dayne was standing there in the doorway, looking at him. “Lord Stark, may I speak with you?”
Ah. He stood formally and waved the boy in. As the Dornishman entered and then closed the door behind him he looked him over and did his best not to wince. He looked very much like his uncle and also his aunt – he had the purple eyes of the Daynes. Then Ned frowned a little. Perhaps the boy – because he was barely a man yet – was ill, because he was pale and sweating, even shaking a little.
“How may I help you Lord Dayne?” He asked the question as he gestured at a chair.
Lord Dayne sat in the chair and it was then that Ned noticed that his knuckles were white as they gripped the arms. He was also leaning forwards, as it was not easy to sit with the greatsword that was slung on his back. Ah.
“I see that you bear Dawn,” he said politely. The time he’d seen that sword it had been in the hands of a sorrowing Ashara Dayne at Starfall and he forced himself not to think of her. “You must be the new Sword of the Morning then?”
“I am,” Edric Dayne muttered, suddenly ashen-faced. Then he seemed to recall where he was. “Your pardon, Lord Stark. I am here to lay my sword at your feet.” He stood and then drew his sword. The pale blade was just as he remembered it from his nightmares, but it seemed to be brighter as its wielder knelt and did as he had said. The tip of the sword was not far from Ned’s feet and he winced again as the memory of that sword as it nicked his shoulder all that time ago.
Then he paused. The sword was shining. Cat had said that the sword had glowed when it had been as Bran’s feet, but this was something else. He winced for a moment as the light grew – and then it faded.
“You have our fealty, Lord Stark,” said Edric Dayne hoarsely. “Command us.”
Ned paused. ‘Us’? Then he nodded. “Sheathe your sword, Lord Dayne. You have answered the Call and I thank you for it. You will have to forgive me. The last time I saw that sword was at Starfall.”
The boy nodded as he returned the sword to its scabbard and then carefully propped it against the wall. “Aye, my father said that he owed you a great debt for returning it to Starfall.” He paused and then sank back in his chair. “He died in King’s Landing getting Dawn to me. He knew that I was the new Sword of the Morning. Normally there is a meeting of House Dayne to decide it, but my father…” His voice trailed away. The sheen of sweat was still there on his face and his fingers still trembled. “Before he died he bade me go to the Godswood in Kings Landing and pray. It’s an odd place, that Godswood. It lacks a weirwood tree – instead the heart tree is an oak. At dusk, when I prayed there… I heard things. Voices.” Ned didn’t think that it was possible, but if anything the lad somehow became even paler. “I was raised in the Faith of the seven, but… I think I heard…. I mean, I think…”
“You heard the Old Gods?” Ned nodded. “I have heard them too. There’s no shame in admitting that you were frightened by it.”
The lad closed his eyes for a long moment, before nodding. “Thank you,” he said quietly. Then he looked at Ned again. “I was told to pray again at the Godswood here in Winterfell. I would like to ask your permission to do so.”
Ned regarded him gravely before inclining his head again. “You may do so. Is that all you had to ask?”
Lord Dayne looked at him, his face working for a moment. “No,” he said eventually. “There was something else.” The sheen was back again, as was the trembling, before he wiped his face and then stilled his hands with what Ned recognised as an almighty stiffening of his will. “Before he died my father told me something. Something that I must now tell you. He said that he was not my father. Yes, he raised me as if he was my father, but that… that my mother could not bear children. The woman I thought of as my mother that is. I’m… sorry if this is confusing, I barely know where to begin.”
He stared at the lad worriedly. “I’m sorry, but what business is your family history to me?”
“Because my mother was really Lady Ashara Dayne,” the lad finally blurted out. He looked at the door in a half panic, before lowering his voice to the point where Ned could barely hear him. “And my father… you are my father, Lord Stark.”
He sat there and tried to think this through. Ashara was his real mother? And he was his father? Impossible. “I’m sorry,” he said eventually, “But that cannot be. If Ashara Dayne was your real mother then yes, I can see that – you have her eyes. But I cannot be your father. I knew your mother and yes, I loved her dearly. But… we never laid together.”
Edric Dayne reached into his tunic and pulled out a letter. “You met my mother for the first time at Harrenhall I believe,” he said quietly. “The second time was at Starfall, when you returned Dawn and my uncle Arthur’s bones. This letter… my father, or the man I thought was my father, wrote it. He said that when you arrived you were… tired beyond words. You were wounded, you were grieving for your sister, your father, your brother and the friends you had lost in the war. He said that you were reeling in your saddle and that your companion, Lord Reed, was worried about you.
“That night you were tended to by a Maester, you ate and drank deeply, you… you wept for those you had lost and you had to be all but carried to bed.” He wiped his eyes for a moment. “You were… comforted by my mother. She spent the night with you.”
Ned froze in shock. He barely remembered anything of his trip to Starfall. The Maester there had sewn him up well, with a liberal dose of the juice of the poppy, and then he had indeed had wine and… He froze. Surely that had been a dream. For all those years he had always thought that it had been a dream. Ashara’s eyes, her tears of sympathy, the feel of her skin against his, those burning kisses, all a dream.
It had been a dream.
Hadn’t it?
The lad held the letter out with a trembling hand and, in a daze, he took it. It was written in a hand that wavered more than a bit, but it was signed by Lord Alster Dayne. And… it confirmed the lad’s tale.
“Lord Stark. If you hold this in your hand then I am dead and young Ned is with you. He is a good lad and you must forgive him if he is stunned by the revelation that I am not his father. The truth is that you are. Young Ned was conceived the night that you stayed at Starfall. My sister, Ashara, told me all afterwards. She did not mean to lay with you, it was a moment of passion and grief, at the end of a war that had done grievous damage to House Dayne and in truth come close to tearing us apart as a family.
“My brother, Arthur, wrote to me before his death. It was an anguished, rambling letter, filled with regrets. He said that he was driven by his oath, but that he had done things that he regretted. He said that he no longer deserved to wield Dawn. Lord Reed, recounting your battle, told me that he struck my brother just after he had wounded you and that Arthur seemed to be fighting with Dawn in that moment, that Arthur seemed to freeze as he tried to keep hold of Dawn. In that moment, I think that Dawn rejected Arthur. He had made it injure you – and Dawn is tied to both our houses in ways that I cannot explain.
“When you brought Dawn and Arthur’s bones back to us I think that a connection was made, one that I do not understand. I do know that it had one material impact – Ned. My own wife could not bear children, so we took him in as our own and loved him greatly. He will be the Sword of the Morning, as Dawn will answer to him far better than it could to anyone else.
“I ask your pardon if my thoughts ramble as I write this letter – I am dying. I hope to see Ned in King’s Landing before I die and pass on Dawn. But you must know this of Ashara – she loved you dearly and the little time she had with you was very precious to her. She knew the realities that you both faced afterwards – you were now the Lord of the North, married to the daughter of a Lord Paramount. I do not think that she quite realised how tired and heartsick and, yes, drunk, you were that night. She always loved you. When she took her own life she was tired herself of existing in this world. She knew that her son was now being brought us as mine own. And she had experienced such losses. She had always been close to Elia Martell, and she was gone, as well as to Arthur, and he was gone too. Ned’s birth had been a painful one, and she never truly recovered.
“You need to know that young Ned is your son, but you cannot acknowledge him as such. He is the last of the direct line of Daynes – should he die then his cousin inherits the title and Gerold Dayne, also known as the Darkstar, is not a fit man to wield Dawn. I do not think that it would accept him, but he does not deserve to lay even a finger on it. I have taken Ned as my heir. The world knows him as my son. You know the truth that the world must not know. Forgive me, but we have no choice on this matter.”
Ned lowered the letter and looked at Edric Dayne, who was looking at him with haunted eyes. As he peered at him he realised that his bastard son may have had his mother’s eyes, but that he had Ned’s mother’s hair and also his grandfather’s nose and chin. He stood, the lad standing at the same time – and then he took him in his arms and embraced him. “You are my son,” he whispered and he could feel the lad sob briefly as he mourned what he had lost and what he had gained. “I cannot admit it in public, but you are my son.”
Jaime
A long time ago, in Casterly Rock, a Maester once tried to teach him the names of the stars that were emblazoned above his head. He peered at them and tried to prod his tired mind into life. That was… yes, the Ice Dragon. The Shadowcat was up there and the Ghost and the Galley. And the Crook. He didn’t know them all. Tyrion did. He’d ask his brother when they reached Winterfell.
It had been far too long since he had seen his little brother. Far too long. He’d been surprised when he had heard that Father had sent him to Winterfell, on a quest to find out more about all this talk about legends. Well, Father had probably wanted to get Tyrion away from him. Father and Cersei were as one in their dislike of Tyrion, for reasons he would never understand. Tyrion had been a baby. Mother’s death had never been his fault.
Fault… wishes… He wanted to laugh at the stars for a moment. When was the last time that he had been his own master, truly? Lord Tywin Lannister’s heir, then made a Kingsguard to a man he had grown to realise had been a madman, then Kingsguard to a man who was all impulses… and now what? The Fat King was now almost the Demon of the Trident again.
On the road North Robert Baratheon had been riding around and staring at some of the hills in a rather odd manner, muttering about defensible crags and how the land had been fought over in the distant past. He had wanted to scoff, but then he had heard the conversations between the Baratheon Brothers and Ser Barristan. Selmy had taken everything they said very seriously.
Jaime, on the other hand, had wanted to roll his eyes. Crags? Broken stone paths? Bare places? Legends?
He paused for a moment, his half-smile vanishing. Legends. The head in the cage still bothered him. The man of the Night’s Watch had gone South with it, but not before the entire party had seen it. Most had been very disturbed by it.
So had he – at first. But then Cersei had talked about how it had to be a trick – severed heads did not move, or gnash. It had to be a trick of some sort. Everyone knew that the Night’s Watch was always desperate for men and supplies. The head must have been a clever trick to get both. A Myrish trinket perhaps with mechanisms that pulled on wires within it?
Maybe. Perhaps. What would Tyrion think of it? Had his brother already seen it, or something like it? What would Tyrion say about it?
He stared at the stars again. Baratheon’s bastard had also been fascinated and worried by the head. He was a quiet little half-stag, good at swinging a hammer over an anvil at least. He knew enough to fade into the background at times, but Jaime knew that Tommen had been to see him over some piece of broken stirrup or something. Tommen liked the bastard. Cersei did not. In fact Cersei wanted the bastard dead, or just gone. She made him uneasy sometimes, speaking and acting without thinking things through.
Ha, it ran in the family. There were times when he felt as if all he ever did was run from one place to another, forced by other people into situations not of his own choosing. Father wanted so much from him, Cersei wanted so much from him – he knew what her dreams were like – and his sworn brothers wanted so much from him. Duty came in so many forms. When was the last time he had done something for himself? Truly?
He sighed and turned back to the inn that was close to being overwhelmed with the King’s party, before pausing. There were torches on the road to the South. A lot of them. Far off, but coming closer, like a storm of fireflies. He strode off to the guards who were standing by the road, also staring South. Ser Barristan Selmy was with them and as Jaime approached he looked at him. “Riders, Ser Jaime. And a lot of them.”
“So I see,” Jaime replied. “Headed for the inn perhaps? If so there’s too many of them to stay here. There must be hundreds on the road.”
They waited and they watched as the torches approached and the riders slowed. Someone noticed them and then a pair of riders approached, with others escorting them behind them. Jaime frowned. He could see enough of their armour to realise that they were from the Vale, and heavy horse at that. Then he looked at the two leading riders – and blinked at the tabards. A red castle on a white field within a red embattled border and black iron studs on a bronze field, bordered with runes.
“Lord Redfort, Lord Royce,” Ser Barristan said with a nod of the head. “Well-met.” There were two riders behind them, a man with the look of a Royce and a girl who seemed familiar for some reason.
“Ser Barristan,” Yohn Royce boomed as he dismounted. “So, the word on the road is true. His Grace is travelling to Winterfell.”
“I am,” came a voice from the darkness to one side and Jaime blinked with surprise. His former fatness could move remarkably quietly for such a large man. “To meet with Lord Stark.”
The Valemen kneeled in the road, before rising at the wave of the King’s hand. Baratheon peered at the man hard, his face set with a frown. “Why hide your armour under all that cloth, Bronze Yohn?”
There was just enough light to see that yes, the burly man had indeed covered his armour in cloth wrapping or something like that.
Lord Royce smiled slightly and then pushed some of the cloth back. Under it was one of the runes that he had always had all over his armour. And it was glowing. “The Others come, the Stark has called for aid and we are needed, your Grace. Old things are waking up and both you and Lord Stark need to know things. Because in the words of House Royce, ‘We Remember’.”
Ned
He took dinner in his solar. He didn’t do it often, but he was tired and the day had been a stressful one. And he needed to think, in those long hours after dinner, as Winterfell started to go to sleep.
He had a son that he had never known about. And he was even called Ned. He wasn’t sure if he should laugh or cry at this new turn in the road of his life. He had ‘son’ that he couldn’t ever acknowledge was really his nephew and a real son who he could never even admit even existed.
There was a knock on the door and he looked up. Cat was standing there in the doorway, looking at him with a look of concern. “Are you well Ned?”
He pulled a slight face, before standing up and beckoning her in. “You’d best close the door and take a seat,” he told her heavily. “This needs to remain between just the two of us.”
She frowned, but closed the door and then walked to the nearest chair. “Ned, what’s wrong?”
“Lord Dayne came to speak with me. He laid Dawn at my feet and said that he had heard the Call. He pledged his fealty to me.” He ran a hand over his chin. “Cat, the sword glowed, just you said. I’ve seen it before but it never glowed before. Glowed and then – it shone for an instant.”
She nodded. “Aye, it glowed before Bran.” She looked at him carefully. “Ned, what else happened? You have been out of sorts for hours.”
His wife knew him all too well at times. He sighed. “Cat, I told you months ago that I would hold no more secrets from you. Well, this is something that I only found out today. Edric Dayne is not the son of Alster Dayne and his wife, because she was barren and could bear him no children. His real mother was Ashara Dayne.”
Spots of red appeared in Cat’s cheeks. “I remember her,” she said levelly. “I met her once.”
“I met her at Harrenhall,” Ned sighed. “At the Great Tourney. And again at Starfall, where Howland reed and I took ship for King’s Landing. I bore Dawn and Arthur Dayne’s bones back to Starfall and their Maester tended to my wound – it needed more that Howland could provide. I barely remember anything about my time there. I was so tired, stricken with grief after losing Lyanna and my friends. The Maester used the juice of the poppy on me before he stitched the wound, and there was wine because the war was over but the mourning was deep for all of us.
“Apparently Ashara Dayne visited me that night. All I remember is thinking afterwards that it had all been a dream, because I barely knew where I was.”
The red spots on his wife’s cheeks were still there as her nostrils flared. “Ned,” she said in a voice that seemed to be tightly controlled. “Are you saying that Edric Dayne is… is…”
“He says he is my son,” Ned said heavily. “A son I never knew I had. I am sorry, Cat, I am sorry. I… I barely remember anything of Starfall.”
Cat seemed to be struggling to control herself. “So you are saying that you have a bastard son that no-one knows about, apart from him and us?”
“Yes.”
A silence. And then, oddly, Cat started to laugh. It was a strained laugh, that subsided into hiccupping giggling, but it was a laugh. He stared at her, his eyebrows going up. Finally she recovered enough to look at him. “You must admit Ned, that this is the exact opposite to the situation with Jon?”
He thought about it and then felt a tired smile lift his mouth for a moment. “Aye, I agree. Like Jon we can never tell anyone the truth. He is Lord Dayne now. He asked for nothing from me, other than that I should know the truth. He seems to be a good lad. It must have been hard for him to hear that the man he thought was his father… wasn’t.” He sighed. “Cat, I am so sorry about this. I really had no idea about this. Ashara was… wilful at times. She had just lost her brother and… well, I have no words. She is long dead now. All I can do is apologise.”
Cat closed her eyes and sighed. “I am not happy at all, Ned, but you truly never knew about him and I cannot blame him or you for the actions of his mother. You know that I have always distrusted bastards as being a threat to the trueborn heirs, but as the world thinks that Ned Dayne is a trueborn heir himself, of House Dayne…” She opened her eyes and smiled slightly at him. “I am not happy Ned, but I cannot find it in me to blame you over-much, or him. I have a lot of thinking to do. In the meantime the King will arrive tomorrow. And we have too much to do for me to worry about young Ned. I just wish that he had been given another name.”
“I know,” he said softly as he looked at his wife and once again blessed the Old Gods for his luck. Cat had changed in these past months. So had he, if he had to admit it. “Tell how the work has gone on the Broken Tower.”
“As you had planned. It’s ready.”
“Then we just await Robert tomorrow.” He stood up and held his hand out to Cat, who took it as she too stood up. He kissed each hand and then held her close. “You are my wife. You have my heart. No-one else. Just you.”
She softened into his embrace and he rested his chin against her hair. Tomorrow it began.
Asha
The word came for her to see her Uncle just after dawn. She’d finally been able to get a good night’s sleep – too many bad dreams of dead men and women, of charred ashes, of voices wailing on the wind – but she just nodded at the messenger before dressing in a hurry and walking down the corridors that let to his Solar.
Nuncle Rodrik was sitting at his desk, his new wife at his side. Both were looking at the message in front of them with almost identical scowls of thought. They both looked up as Asha entered, and The Reader smiled slightly and pushed the message across the desk at her. “You should read that. It’s from Pyke.”
She felt a frown of her own forming on her face as she reached out and picked it up, before reading it. Then she re-read it. And then she read it again.
“Father offers us a truce?” She sat down and stared at the message again. “A truce and a meeting on Pyke – not in the castle, but the open air?” Leaning back in the chair she thought long and hard. “It’s a trap.”
Her Nuncle swapped a look with his wife. “I told you that she’d see it as fast as I did,” Alyse said. “And she’s right.”
“I know that you’re both right,” he replied. “Of course it’s a trap. The question is, what do we do with the fact that we know it’s a trap?”
“You could refuse to go?”
He pulled a face. “We need to make an effort, somehow. We are all Ironborn. We must all live together on these islands. Your father has to realise that he has made terrible mistakes, but we are fighting to live and not to overthrow him. What the future holds I do not know, nor how we can make peace but…” He paused, deep in thought.
Asha traded a trouble gaze with Alyse and was about to ask what was wrong when her Nuncle suddenly smiled. “Asha, when can the Black Wind next sail?”
“On the next tide – I always keep her provisioned and ready to sail.”
“As I thought. Get your crew together. I am sending you to Winterfell.”
Her eyebrows flew up as she stood. “Why – oh, wait. Baratheon is head for there, isn’t he?”
“Aye, he and his Hand, Stannis Baratheon.” He pulled a face. “I don’t like it, not after the death of my sons at Fair Isle, but the Baratheons demand peace in these islands and appealing to them directly is one way to forestall whatever your father’s plans are for this ‘truce’ meeting. And if we do attend it with a representative of Robert Baratheon there…”
“That will tear the sails of whatever Father has planned.” She stood and looked at the door. “I’ll sail on the next tide for Blazewater Bay and then Saltspear. I’ll have to buy a horse on the road, but I’ll try and make best speed for Winterfell.”
“Aye, and I’ll try and buy time. Send word when you can.”
She nodded at them both and then headed for the door at a half-run. Well, at least she was going to be amid quite the host of people there. From what she had heard, Winterfell was going to be crowded.
Jory
He seemed to be walking around in a daze half the time. Happiness did that to a man, he knew that now. Especially as he was going to be a father. Annah had missed her moon’s blood. She was with child.
He was still coming to terms with that. Maester Luwin had told them that morning that he was indeed going to be a father. Annah had already had to tell him that she was not made from glass and Uncle Rodrik had slapped his back in congratulation so hard that he suspected that there would be a bruise. The man had hands like hams.
Speaking of Uncle Rodrik, he could see him in the courtyard below the gatehouse, where he was having an intense conversation with Lord Dondarrion and Lord Dayne. The two southerners were popular in Winterfell, both polite and well-spoken, but it was also important to remember that they were both also very formidable warriors. Lord Dayne’s sword was especially interesting, given its history and Mikken had been a frequent visitor to the practice yards in an effort to see the sword. Starmetal, he said it was. The rarest of the rarest kind of metal at that and even there was something odd about it.
The Stormlander and his Dornish squire were practicing their swordwork now, using practice swords, with Uncle Rodrik watching them and barking instructions about their footwork. To one side stood Thoros of Myr. The Red Priest was no mean warrior himself, as Jory could attest to. Pyke and the blazing sword were still burnt into his mind.
There were others in the yards, practicing with various weapons. Theon Grejoy was teaching the Terrible Threesome archery in one corner, whilst Lord Stark was talking with his eldest two sons about swordwork in another, whilst Lady Arya watched from a wooden platform to one side.
He wondered if Annah was going to have a boy or a girl. Did it matter? It would be good to continue the Cassel name, but with a second Long Night coming… well, all he wanted was a living child and a living wife after the birth of that child.
And then Cregan on the topmost tower shouted down to him that he could see movement on the road, on the horizon, a great column of men on horses. Jory raced to the postern door and then up the stairs inside the tower to where Cregan was standing. The guard pointed and Jory pulled out the Myrish spyglass that Lord Rosestark had gifted the garrison of Winterfell the previous day. Whoever was Captain of the Guard for the day was told, in no uncertain terms, not to drop it. It was too valuable. Focussing it carefully on the road that came down from the Kingsroad he waited and searched and… yes. There they were. A long column of men, which what looked like some women, trotting down the road, banners flying at the head, some with stags and some with lions.
“Aye,” he muttered, “That’s the King.” And with that, obeying Lord Stark’s orders, he pulled out a horn and blew a long, low note on it, as hard as he could. There was a startled moment of silence in the courtyard below and then everyone was scurrying around like a flock of birds. He turned to take one last stare North and then he clattered down the stairs.
Robb
He had to confess that he was nervous as he washed his face quickly and then stared into the mirror. Certainly his hand shook more than a little as he rubbed his chin and he forced it to stop. He could not be nervous, not on this day.
He turned and started to dress himself. There was a little time until the King arrived but he forced himself to dress quickly, pulling the shirt on, lacing it, and then tucking it into his trousers. The leather jerkin next, the belt and then the boots. He grabbed his cloak – too warm in the walls of Winterfell to put it on yet – took Ice from its stand, clicked his tongue at Grey Wind, who had been watching all of this with a fascinated tilt of the head, and then walked out of his room and down the corridor.
As he emerged into the courtyard and pulled his cloak on he had to admit to a flood of emotion. He remembered the King’s arrival in that hideous future that would not be, and there were some parts that were alike and more that were unalike – but he still felt nervous.
Father was standing there again, but this time with the Fist of Winter thrust into a loop of leather attached to his belt, so that its head was just below his armpit. Mother was next to him, chivvying people with looks and gestures as they thundered past her, and Frostfyre was a silent presence to his left, with Rickon and Fleetfoot at her feet.
He took his place next to Father, Grey Wind at his feet and then watched as the others lined up to his right. Sansa had Domeric behind her, whilst Bran stood next to Robert Arryn and Edric Storm, which didn’t surprise him. And then there was Jon. That was a big change from the last time, Jon’s legitimisation, and it was right to have him there, with Ghost at his feet.
But as the others took their places – Jory and his wife, Rodrik Cassel, Theon and Mist, Lords Rosestark, Dayne and Dondarrion and so many others, he noticed a few absences. The Lannisters were missing. He knew why – Gerion Lannister wanted to keep the news of his return quiet for the time being, whilst Tyrion Lannister said that he was too busy and that he wanted to avoid his sister for as long as possible, and that besides the courtyard would be too crowded for him to see things clearly.
The other absence was more personal. Where was Arya? Father was thinking the same thing, judging by his scowl – and then his errant sister ran up, Nymeria at her feet. Arya was once again wearing a helmet and he smothered a grin as Father shook his head, took the helmet off and handed it to a grinning Rodrik Cassel.
He hid a wince. That had happened in that other time as well. Hopefully that would be the only thing that would happen again There was a lot riding on this.
He looked ahead and schooled his features. He could hear the rumble of horses on the road now and as he looked at the gateway the first outriders rode through, holding Baratheon banners that snapped in the wind, followed by riders bearing Lannister banners. And then the trickle of riders became a stream and then a river as the courtyard started to fill up. Perhaps Tyrion Lannister had been right.
And then a figure in a white cloak and the helmet of a Kingsguard appeared, followed by another one and he readied himself. What would the King be like this time, now that things were moving? Reports said that he had changed and was more active.
Just how active was revealed by the hulking figure that rode through the gateway. Oh, this was not the fat king of his memories. Robert Baratheon was still a large man, but this time his chest seemed to be wider than his gut. He was different in other ways – his hair was cut short and he was clean-shaven and there was something about his posture that was different. Last time he’d sat on his horse as if he was tired of everything. This time he seemed to blaze with an internal fire and there was the hilt of an old and very large sword visible over one shoulder. Was that Stormbreaker?
Robb swapped an astonished glance with Father, before going back to looking at the flood of riders, some of whom were pulling off their helmets. Yes, there were already differences. He was sure that one man was Ser Barristan Selmy, whilst another was Stannis Baratheon.
But then there were the others, the hated faces. He set his face and squashed the hatred. Jaime Lannister, as languid and dismissive of all he saw as ever. And Joffrey, with the Hound behind him. The Prince looked the same arrogant little shit that he had been before, looking about the courtyard with a smug smile, as if he thought that this was barely better than a peasant’s hovel. Then he caught sight of Sansa and preened, sending her a look that he obviously thought was an attempt to charm her. Robb eyed his sister out of the corner of his eye. She seemed not to have noticed the look. Good.
Other faces caught his eye as an open carriage rolled in. Ah. Cersei Lannister, as cold and false as always, a look of the utmost indifference on her face, with her other children next to her.
And then he sensed Domeric stiffen to one side and just about caught his delighted smile and then mutter of “Sansa, that’s Lord Redfort, from the Vale! And Lord Royce next to him!”
He looked at the two men carefully and then nodded. More major lords. In answer to the Call perhaps? They hadn’t been there that first time.
But then he saw the King bring his horse to a halt and then dismount remarkable quickly for such a large man – no stairs this time. As he did so Father knelt, with everyone following his lead.
Robert Baratheon strode towards them, looming over them all as he came to a halt. And then he gestured with his right hand, an upwards wave of the fingers. Father stood again, everyone again following him, and looked at his friend. The King looked him up and down and then stopped at the Fist of Winter. “Nice stick,” he said eventually. “Almost as good as my old warhammer.”
Father tilted his head slightly and then looked at the sword on the king’s back. “Nice knife,” he said in the same almost dismissive tone of voice as the King. “Almost as good as my old sword.”
There was a long moment of silence and then the King threw his head back, roared with laughter and then embraced Father, who was laughing just as hard. “Gods, Ned, I’ve missed you old friend,” the King said as they broke apart. “Nine years! Where have you been for nine years!”
“Guarding the North for you, your Grace,” Father replied.
The smile slipped from the King’s face. “Aye, and now I know what from. We met a man of the Night’s Watch on the road. He had the head of a wight in a cage. We need to talk of that, and this Call.” He looked at Frostfyre. “And your direwolves – I never thought I’d ever see the like of them. Your mace too. Quite the natter we need to have! After I meet your family of course.”
He could tell that Father was a bit bemused, but in a good way, before he nodded and the King turned to Mother. “Cat!” he boomed, embracing her with one arm whilst using the other to ruffle the head of an indignant Rickon who was visibly thinking of biting it. “As lovely as ever!” Then he paused and took a half step back. “Cat, you’re positively radiant. Glowing even. Are you…?”
Mother nodded with a blush and the King boomed with laughter and slapped Father on the back so hard that he almost fell over. “Ned, you old dog! You always wanted a big family. Oh. Sorry Ned, don’t know my own strength. Anyway – best wishes for the babe, Cat.”
And then suddenly the King was in front of him. He swept him from head to toes with a remarkably shrewd look. Last time his blue eyes had been bleary and a bit bloodshot. This time they were clear and seemed to miss little. “So, you’re Robb, my namesake. I see that Ned’s given you Ice?”
“Aye, your Grace,” he replied with nod.
The King tilted his head again as he assessed him and Robb felt a slight shiver of something indefinable as he was the subject to such prolonged scrutiny. “I know the North is a hard place, but your eyes are older than your face,” he rumbled eventually, before stepping over to Sansa. “Sansa, yes? My, you are the very image of your mother when she was your age.”
Sansa bowed her head and the King moved to Arya. “And who would you be?”
“Arya!” She eyed him up and down. “Your Grace.” The last two words emerged in a rush and were obviously prompted by her remembering her manners at the last minute.
The King bent down a little and looked at her. “Gods, you’re a fierce one. Can you ride?” A nod. “Use a bow?” A nod. “Use a sword?” A half-nod, followed by Arya freezing and looking in Father’s direction. The King roared with laughter and straightened up again. “Gods,” he said again, this time with a note of sadness in his voice, “Lyanna come again.” He stepped over to Bran and looked at him. “Brandon, yes?”
Bran beamed at him. “Yes, your Grace, and these are my friends, Robert and Edric.”
The King smiled as he looked at them – and then he blinked. “Robert – Robert Arryn?”
Lord Arryn’s son bowed formally. “Your Grace.”
For some reason the King seemed to be genuinely thrown. “Gods, lad, you’re… I mean that… you’ve grown.”
Robert Arryn beamed at him. “Thank you, your Grace!”
The King nodded at him and then greeted his bastard son with a boisterous smile and a careful pat on his face. Then he turned to Father again. “Let’s go to your solar Ned. We need talk at once. Stannis too.” And with that the two of them strode off, joined by Stannis Baratheon and with Ser Barristan Selmy following.
Robb watched them go with a slight sigh. “And now it begins,” he muttered. “Fury meets Winter.”
Chapter Text
Apologies, I probably should have updated this a bit more often. Here's a mega-chapter to make up for it.
Jaime
He watched the King stride off with the Toothgrinder and Stark the Stern and repressed a small worm of… well, he wasn’t sure what. Worry? No. Unease? Perhaps. He sighed. Well, at least their long journey was over. Winterfell. It was bigger than he had expected and a little less muddy. Oh and quite crowded at the moment.
As the crowd broke up and the Kings party started to get organised in unpacking their things he looked about. Lady Stark was talking politely to Cersei, who was being cold and polite back at her. Oh dear. His sister disliked their hostess. Well, perhaps she would start to like her a bit after Joffrey was betrothed to Sansa. He thought about this and then smothered a guffaw. No. No-one would ever be good enough for Joffrey in Cersei’s eyes.
And with that he looked around. Someone was missing. Where was Tyrion? He stared around the scurrying crowd but failed to see the short but toweringly sardonic figure of his brother. And then he saw a familiar face – no, pair of faces.
“Jory Cassel is it not,” he drawled as he walked up to the man and the oddly familiar woman. “Are you well?”
“I am, Ser Jaime,” Cassel replied. “Be welcome to Winterfell.”
He looked about the place and smiled politely. The identity of the woman was still eluding him, until she turned to looked at Robert Arryn – the boy who was so different now! – and then something clicked in his mind. “I remember you now – you work for Jon Arryn, as his son’s nursemaid, do you not?”
She looked at him and then nodded gracefully. She seemed different – more alive somehow, less inclined to fade into the background. The last time he had seen her she had been wearing a shapeless dress, but now she was resplendent in a dark brown dress that fitted really rather well and… well, she was standing rather close to Cassel. Was the man bedding her?
“I am indeed his nursemaid, Ser Jaime,” she replied, before sighing as the boy in question shrieked with laughter at something that Edric Storm said. “Although at the moment he needs me reminding him to mind his manners rather than any nursing.”
Jaime smothered a smile with his hand, as Cassel openly smiled, before turning to him. “You must pardon how close we stand to each other Ser Jaime, but Annah and I are now married.”
His eyebrows flew up. Ah, so they were officially bedding each other. He smiled and nodded in acknowledgement. “Congratulations to the pair of you and the very best wishes for the future. Now, I wonder if you could tell me if you know where my brother is? Easily recognisable fellow, uses very long words at times.”
Cassel nodded. “Aye, Ser Jaime. Last I heard he was in the library in the main keep.”
“Of course,” he sighed. “I should have looked there first.” That or the nearest brothel, he didn’t say out loud. “Where is it exactly?”
Robert Arryn, Edric Storm and Bran Stark hurtled past, all gabbling something about horses and Annah Cassel sighed, nodded her head at Jaime, kissed her husband on the cheek and then picked up her skirts and ran after the trio at a surprisingly fast speed.
“I can show you, Ser Jaime,” Jory Cassel said with a small smile and then looked at the retreating figures to one side. “Those three are something of a handful.”
“So I see,” Jaime replied. “Robert Arryn appears totally changed from the last time I saw him.”
A shadow crossed Cassel’s face. “I was there at White Harbour when it was discovered that his ‘medicine’ was in fact poison. He has been weaned off it and… well, you can see the difference. The boy is cleverer, no longer shakes, can ride and has seen more of the Sun.”
They crossed the courtyard in silence after that, turned a corner, went across another smaller courtyard towards a doorway, up some stairs, down a long set of corridors and finally arrived at a large door. “The main library, Ser Jaime,” Cassel said wryly. “The domain of your brother, Maester Luwin and the Lady Surestone. Good luck.” And with that he nodded and walked off.
As he walked into the library he could smell the usual aroma of old books and heavily dusted shelves and he paused for a moment and smiled. Yes, one of the natural domains of Tyrion. Then he looked around. A lot of shelves, a lot of books. Some of the former looked new and a lot of the latter looked old.
Hearing a murmur to one side he strode quietly in that direction. Tyrion was sitting in a chair in front of a large table that was covered in books and pieces of parchment. On the other side of the table was a woman who appeared to be about Tyrion’s age. She had dark hair, a square chin and a nose that was a tad too large to make her pretty. She was looking through a large book in front of her, glancing occasionally at a picture on a piece of parchment to one side. “It looks a bit like the Throne of Winter, only it’s older,” she said with a frown. “How strange. And that inscription… I’m glad you didn’t sit in it.”
“Given the bones around it, I’m very glad as well,” Tyrion replied. He had what looked like the beginnings of a beard on his face and he would occasionally shift in his seat with a wince as if his arse hurt. “I’d rather stay sane.”
He had no idea what they were talking about and he was about to walk closer when all of a sudden his brother’s head came up and tilted to one side. “Hello Jaime!”
“You can always tell when I’m behind you,” Jaime chuckled as he approached the table and then sketched a bow. “How?”
“It’s the oil you use on the leather straps for your armour,” his brother said with a smirk. “Quite distinctive.”
“My vanity will be the death of me,” Jaime smiled as he stood thereand inspected Tyrion. He was a little thinner and his eyes were a bit different, as if he had seen something. “But perhaps you should introduce me to your companion?”
Tyrion started a little and then looked at the woman, who was regarding them both with what looked like carefully hidden amusement. “Where are my manners? Dacey, this is my brother Ser Jaime Lannister, knight of the Kingsguard. Jaime, this is the Lady Dacey Surestone, the Surestone of Surestone as she is known here.”
Jaime bowed his head. “My Lady.”
“It is good to meet you, good Ser,” she replied with a graceful sitting half-bow. “Lord Tyrion here has told me much about you.”
He eyed his brother sardonically. “Should I be worried, brother?”
Tyrion smirked at him. “Just a little.” Then he smiled something more genuine. “Of course not!”
Lady Surestone gathered up some papers and a book before standing. “I will leave you two to your reunion. Tyrion, please let me know when we can resume our discussion about what you saw at the Wall. I’ll be helping Lady Stark with the preparations for tonight’s feast for the King.Oh and I’ll send a little more liniment.”
As she bustled out Jaime saw the look that he gave her retreating back and sighed a little. Oh dear. He drew up a chair and eased himself into it, listened for the sound of the door closing and then looked at his brother. “You like her.”
“What’s not to like?” Tyrion said with a careless shrug of the shoulders that was a little too careless. “She’s clever, she’s fierce, she likes books like very few people I’ve ever met.She’s striking and she’s near enough to my own age.”
“So, are you courting her?”
Something flashed over his brother’s face, a combination of pain and sorrow and anger. “No,” Tyrion said eventually. “I dare not. I care about her too much to risk her. Not after what happened to Tysha.”
Ah. He winced. One day he would have to tell Tyrion the truth about that. “The two are not the same though, brother. This Lady Surestone is… well, a Lady. Is she related to any of the Great Houses of the North or anywhere else?”
“She’s cousin to Ned Stark himself. He late father was very well liked.”
“Surestone… Surestone…” He mulled the name over. Then something sparked at the back of his head. “Wait, there was a Surestone at the Trident, or so I recall from the tales of the battle. A tall man on a horse with a battleaxe who helped carve a hole through the line to allow Baratheon to get at Rhaegar Targaryen.” He looked at Tyrion again. “That was her father? Then she is nothing like Tysha and not even Father can criticise such a match.”
“I know, but… Jaime, I’m nervous. I am very fond of her, but without Father’s permission…”
“She’s a cousin to the Lord of the North. Father wouldn’t dare… harm her. Might glare at her a bit though. Now – what’s all this here? And what was that last part about liniment?”
Tyrion winced. “I’m still recovering from my ride South from the Wall. We got back two days ago and my arse is still one giant bruise.” He leant back in his chair, checked that there was no-one else there and then smiled wryly. “Father needs to know about just how fast Ned Stark can move when he needs to. Jaime, a week ago I was at Castle Black with Ned Stark, two of his sons and a group of others.”
He stared at his brother in some shock as he ran the numbers through his head. “But… that means that… I mean that must have been hundreds of miles and… Tyrion, that’s impossible!”
“Not if you have a series of waypoints arranged, each with fresh horses. I have galloped harder and further than I have ever done in my life this past week and by all the Gods my legs and arse and every part of me still aches a bit, even now. As I said – Father needs to know how fast Ned Stark can move at times.”
Jaime nodded thoughtfully. “And how was the Wall?”
There was a pause as Tyrion flipped through some pieces of parchment and then slid one over towards him. He picked it up and looked at it, his eyebrows rising. It was a sketch in charcoal of what had to be the Wall. Then another sketch slid towards him. Castle Black perhaps? And then a third. He picked it up and felt his eyes widen as he stared at it in shock. “Is this…”
“A giant. On a mammoth. Yes, they really exist. I’ve seen them.” He hesitated for a moment as he ruffled through a number of other sketches. “Members of the Night’s Watch have been going South from the Wall with small cages that were made by the First Men. The cages contain… wight parts. Have you seen one yet?”
He went still for a moment. “Yes,” he said wryly. “I saw one the other day. It was brought before his Grace himself. A head in a cage that still moved. Tell me something – how was it done?”
His words made Tyrion peer at him with one of his head-down, lowering looks, which was a sign that he was either puzzled or annoyed. “How was what done?”
“The head in the cage? How was it made to move? Wires? Levers? It had to me from Myr, yes?”
Tyrion’s hands went still on the parchments. Then he pulled another one out and slid it across the table at him. “Jaime, it was real. Wights are real. I should know. I’ve seen then. I almost died twice at the Wall, once from rogue Wildlings and the second time from, well, wights.”
He looked down at the picture – no, pictures. Dead men running towards the person who had drawn the picture. Severed limbs. And an odd gate of some kind that looked like a mouth. “You drew these?”
“I did. I normally keep my artistic endeavours to myself, but in this case I thought that I had to sketch what I remembered. What I saw. I went beyond the Wall, Jaime. At the Nightfort.”
He looked at them. “You saw these… things?”
“I did.”
“But… Tyrion, the whole point of chopping someone’s head off is to make sure that they never move anything at all ever again. Dead men – aye, and women – don’t move!”
“These did.” Tyrion said the words with a brutal clarity. “They ran towards me. Or rather towards the half-wight we had with us, trying to kill him and us. It’s… a long and complicated story. But yes, they were dead but they still moved. They were sent by these.” Another picture, this time blue ink over charcoal lines that showed thin-faced things that looked like men but weren’t. They wore old-fashioned armour and they held odd swords.
“What… what are these things?”
“Others. They are the reason behind the Wall, why the First Men were so terrified that they built something that split the land in two and then founded the Night’s Watch, an order that has lasted for who knows how many thousands of years. And let me tell you brother, they terrified me. The very air around me grew colder as they approached. If we had not had three men with Valyrian steel swords there… well, I would have died. Fighting one was bad enough.”
None of this made any sense at all. Tyrion had fought one of these things? “You… fought one?”
“With the help of this.” He held up an ancient and rather odd-looking axe. “Peculiarly enough it’s a Lannister family heirloom, left at the Nightfort by a distant relative of ours. It’s called Rocktooth.”
He’d been wrong. Now none of it made any sense at all. “So, you went to the Nightfort to, erm help a half-wight and then fought with full wights and Others?”
“Yes.”
There was a long pause. “Are you drunk?”
“No.” Tyrion said the word with a dreadful finality.
He was pretty sure that he wasn’t drunk himself and he stared at his brother and then at the pictures and then at Tyrion again. Someone opened the door behind him and he heard the boots of two people approaching. “You seem to have had quite a trip, Tyrion.”
“Oh, I’ve barely scratched the surface yet.” Tyrion looked up at whoever was approaching. “I haven’t told him yet,” he said, raising his voice a little.
“I hope he reacts better than you did.”
The newcomer’s voice sounded familiar - very familiar indeed. But that was impossible. He turned and then gaped. Uncle Gerion was standing there, with a young man next to him.
“Hello nephew. The dead are marching on the Wall.”
He was pretty sure that life would never make sense ever again.
Brynden
He was amazed by the change in the great hall of the Twins as he stepped into it. Old tapestries had been torn down, windows uncovered and somewhere high above a large trio of windows had been unblocked.
Now, shards of light speared down onto the dais, illuminating Lord Stevron Frey, Lord of the Crossing, and his oldest son, Ser Ryman. The latter looked as if recent events had shaken his wits and somehow shocked some sense into him.
The previous night had not been a restful one. It had been immediately obvious that Walder Frey was deathly ill in the wake of the apoplexy that had struck him down. He had been carried away at once by his immediately family, including those of his immediate sons that were there.
The Green Man had watched them go with an inscrutable look on his face, before turning to the others. “He will not last the night,” he told them. “Be careful. This place is like a tinderbox.”
And he had been right. As dusk fell and the word from Walder Frey’s chambers continued to be bad, the atmosphere in the Twins had been strained, with various sons and grandsons of the wretched man stalking about the place in clumps, hissing at each other, eying particularly hated relatives. Knuckles had been white as they gripped the pommels of swords.
Brynden, Brienne and the Green Man had stalked through the place, preparing for their departure the next day. Yoren of the Night’s Watch had gone on his way, riding grimly South with his head in a cage, bound for Riverrun. He hoped that Hoster was well when he arrived. He had his issues with his brother, but he did not want him to have the same reaction as Walderbloody Frey.
The Late Lord Frey had finally died just after midnight, whereupon his eldest son had shown that he had nerves of steel. He had immediately claimed his inheritance, being the first in line to the title and also being surrounded by his sons and grandsons with swords that were in some cases half-drawn. Oddly enough one of them had been the Fool of the Crossing, Aegon, also known as Jinglebell. Only there had been nothing foolish about him at that moment – just a grim-faced man in dark clothing.
The Green Man’s party had immediately supported the new Lord Frey. Certain others had not. Ser Aenys Frey had tried to cull the top of the family tree a bit and replace his older brother, a silly idea as his second oldest brother Emmon Frey lived in the Westerlands.
The head of Ser Aenys was now on a spike on the Southern end of the Twins, along with his son Rhaegar. It had been senseless and foolish beyond words and he had wondered at the time why the man had done it.
Now, as he approached the table with the Green Man and Brienne, he could see that times had changed right there and then. The new Lord Frey had a piece of parchment in his hand and seemed to be quietly pleased about something. As they approached he stood – and Brynden realised that he was sitting in a far plainer chair than the one that his father had always used.
“Lady Brienne, Ser Brynden, Ser Duncan – or should I call you just the Green Man? I do not mean to cause offence.”
“I am just the Green Man now,” came the response from the former Knight Commander of the Kingsguard. “I stopped being Ser Duncan the Tall when I set foot on the Isle of Faces.”
Lord Frey nodded and then looked down at the parchment. “House Frey,” he said in a voice like iron, “Will shortly be sending a great deal of support to the Wall. The list of those of my brothers and nephews and grand-nephews who have decided to take the Black is a long one.” He looked up. He seemed taller somehow. “I will also send word to the Lord Commander, apologising for the lack of support that the Night’s Watch received from my late father. He did not believe. I do. I heard the Call. So did my sons. Some have not been the same since – for the right reasons.”
Yes, Brynden could see that. Aegon Frey, once known as Jinglebell, was standing to one side, his hands behind his back and a sword at his side. He seemed… more focussed than before. Interesting. But had he been changed by the Call or had the Call merely made the man within stop pretending to be a fool?
“I will not wait for a man of the Night’s Watch to arrive to send them North,” Lord Frey continued. “Instead I will send them North to the Neck, to Moat Cailin, and then hand them over to Lord Reed’s men.” And then he straightened up again. “The Others have returned. Lord Tully must know of this, if he does not know already. I will not be known as my father was – as the Late Lord Frey. House Frey stands with House Tully and House Stark.”
Brynden nodded with the others and then as they swept out he wondered how long those whoresons Black Walderand Lame Lothar would last on the Wall. Not long at all with luck.
Ned
Robert was very different indeed from the tales that Robb and Jory had told him. Oh, he was still big and if he looked carefully he could see where the fat had been on him, but there was more muscle on him that he had had at Pyke. And he seemed to blaze with energy, the kind that he hadn’t seen since the Trident. That energy occasionally led him astray, as twice he charged down the wrong corridor, before being recalled by Ned’s amused coughs, but it was as if the years had rolled back.
As for Stannis, he was a little balder than at Pyke, but still just as quiet and intense. But there was something a little different about him, the way that he looked about as if searching for something.
When they got to his Solar he placed the Fist on his desk, watched Robert prop what could only be Stormbreaker against the wall, waved them into the chairs that he had prepared for them, closed the door very firmly and then poured three goblets of wine. No need for bread, salt and wine, not those two, although he would have been happier if it had been Jon Arryn instead of Stannis.
“Thank you Ned,” Robert said as he took his goblet. “Gods, I would never have believed it. The change in Jon’s boy… I’m sorry I didn’t talk properly to your bastard son, I was that shaken by it. I’ll tell you both something I’d never admit to Jon, I was beginning to suspect that Robert Arryn was a half-wit. Poor boy, all those fits, the wobbling head, the lack of brains… And then to see him like that!” He quaffed some of the wine and then looked at Ned with a shrewd eye. “He’s no longer taking that, ah, ‘medicine’ of his, is he?”
Ned sat in his chair and sipped his own wine. “No. He’s been weaned off it. And the less he took the more he, well, he grew. Jory Cassel escorted him North with his nurse, Annah, and from he said the lad started to change not long after White Harbour, where the poison was discovered. He’s fast friends with my Bran and your Edric now. The Terrible Threesome – that’s what some call them now. Rightly so at times.”
Robert laughed at that, whilst a ghost of a smile crossed the face of Stannis. Then the laughing stopped as his old friends’ eyes examined him. “You look like shit. You’ve been pushing yourself, haven’t you?”
Ah. Time to tell a few truths. “You heard that I was at Castle Black?” He waited for the nods. “A week ago I was still there. I got back to Winterfell two days ago.”
There was a moment of silence as Robert blinked at him – and then he shared an incredulous glance with his brother before straightening from his slouch. “Bloody hell Ned – Castle Black to here in five days? That’s faster than you moved after the Trident!”
He felt a smile come and go. “I had to talk to the Lords of the North there. And then I had to greet my King.”
“If you call me ‘Your Grace’, here, in your Solar, I’ll clip you about the ear Ned,” Robert rumbled. There was a creaking noise as he then leant forwards in his chair. “Are things that bad at the Wall then?”
He pulled a slight face. “Better than they were. Worse than they need to be. The Night’s Watch were down to three inhabited castles on the Wall. After all that’s happened lately and the people and supplies that have arrived… now the number’s doubled, nay tripled. The Builders on the Wall are repairing and replacing as much they can, but they need more. Lord Commander Jeor Mormont came South with me, in order to speak with you about what the Night’s Watch needs.”
Robert nodded slowly and then looked at Stannis, who raised his eyebrows. “We saw a head in a cage, on the way here Lord Stark. A wight?” Ned nodded. “Then what else are we facing?”
Ned sighed. “The Others. But before we get to what we’re facing you need to know something. I was at the Wall for another reason. I’ve met with Mance Rayder, the so-called King beyond the Wall. Under my authority as the Warden of the North I’ve given him and his wildlings – the Free Folk as they call themselves – permission to pass through the Wall and settle in the Gift and New Gift.”
Black eyebrows seemed to fly upwards like birds. “Bloody Hells Ned,” Robert rumbled. “Why? The Wildlings are naught but savages, as you told me yourself.”
“Aye,” he replied, looking his old friend in the eye. “And I was wrong. I’ve been wrong about a lot of things and I’m man enough to admit it.” He sighed. “The Wildling raids against the Wall happened because of a reason. They were being pushed South. Something was massacring them, forcing them to flee – so they did. They were planning to force a way through the Wall – that was how desperate they were.”
He paused. “There are a lot of the buggers. Far more than I ever imagined. Rayder said that he could call on a host of a hundred thousand of his people. And before you tell me that’s impossible, I’ve seen the Wildlings passing through the main gate at Castle Black. Hundreds of them, hour after hour, an endless line of them. Giant and their mammoths too. All fleeing. All terrified.”
Ned stood up and slid the Fist back into his belt. “And we’ve been lucky. We almost had no warning of what’s coming at all. Because… Your- I mean Robert, do you remember the letter from Lyanna I got when we were at the Eyrie? It was on the day that Denys tried to lift your Warhammer over his head and almost brained himself.”
Roberts face softened for a moment as he remembered. “Aye, I do. What of it?”
“She wrote that on Brandon’s Naming Day he was in this room with our father for a long time and that when she saw him next he was… different. Sombre, as if he knew something. I think that my father told him something. And I think-” He walked over to the wall and pulled the tapestry to one side to reveal the door. “That my father took him in here.” He rolled the tapestry back to that the bulk of the side of it could be held by a metal hook on the wall and then opened the door.
Robert and Stannis had stood the moment that he revealed the door and now they stepped forwards. He had lanterns ready and he led them into the passage, before stopping at the old door with the ancient wolfshead carving.
“Ned, what is this place?” Robert rumbled. “It’s… ancient. Reminds me of the crypts at Storm’s End.”
He inserted the key and turned it, opening the door. The hinges still creaked a bit, but at least the dust was gone. He ushered them in and closed the door behind them. “We still don’t know what a lot of this is. The oldest of the records that were stored in here was on hide and were badly faded. Starks of old kept things in here. Secrets. Secrets that thanks to Aerys Targaryen I never knew about.”
Robert was staring about the place in bafflement. Then he blinked. “You came of age in the Vale, with me.”
“And by the time I saw Winterfell again my father and Brandon were both dead. I never knew this place even existed until recently.”
“Then how did you discover it?” Stannis asked the question as he stared at the skull with the horns.
Ah. Time to tread carefully, at least for a moment. “I… had reason to believe that something was happening North of the Wall. There was a message from the Old Gods.” He paused, taken a little aback at the lack of scoffing, and then ploughed on. “I called on the Lords of the North to send me all the intelligence they had about the Others. You remember GreatJon Umber, Robert?”
“Oh, aye, little man, quite quiet,” Robert replied with a straight face. “I remember him.”
“He checked on an ancient Stark relic that my ancestors had given his thousands of years ago, telling them to check on it and that if it ever changed colour whoever was Lord of the Last Hearth was to bring it to Winterfell. GreatJon Umber did check on it and he brought it straight here once he saw it had changed colour. He placed it in my hand and… I had a vision. Of the North, like I was flying like a bird, and then the Wall and the Wildlings and then… a place called Hopemourne. Where there was a thing shaped like a man, with horns in his head. The Night King. The King of the Others. I saw him, and he somehow saw me. When I came back to my senses in my Solar I told everyone to search Winterfell for anything hidden, before, well, passing out.”
There was still a lack of scoffing, although Stannis was frowning a bit. “You don’t sound surprised.”
“Ned, I stood where the old Godswood used to be in Storm’s End and looked down at a Weirwood tree sapling, touched it and had a vision of a hidden place,” Robert said in a very serious voice. “Edric told me he’d had the same vision when he touched the sapling. And later on we discovered that place - the crypts where the Durrandons, the Storm Kings of old, were buried. There was a statue there with a sword. Stormbreaker, back there in your Solar. And the statue… its eyes lit up with green fire and it called me Storm King, before giving me the sword.”
“Magic has returned to the world,” Stannis said through slightly gritted teeth. “The statues of the Seven in the Great Sept in King’s Landing have changed. They face North now in warning, after telling a Septon that death marched on the Wall.” His face worked for a moment. “And then…” He stopped, rallied, tried to start again, before pulling out a handkerchief and blowing his nose.
“My niece Shireen is no longer marked by greyscale, Ned,” Robert said in a surprisingly gentle voice. “She and Gendry, one of my bastards, found a Godswood on Dragonstone. There was a Heart Tree there. She placed a hand on it and the Old Gods healed her.”
Ned stared at the bald Baratheon and then clapped him on the shoulder. “Then we shall raise a goblet of wine to her continued good health. I am glad to hear of that.”
“Thank you Ned, I mean Lord Stark,” Stannis rumbled, putting his handkerchief away. “So, Winterfell was searched then?”
“It was, and this was found.” He gestured at the walls around it. Then he picked up the little stone bowl, which was covered in a piece of heavy cloth. “And this.” He pulled the cloth aside. Inside lay the Hearthstone. It was not quite shining with light, but it was brighter than it had been on the day that the GreatJon first brought it to him. “The stone’s the Hearthstone. We don’t know what the bowl is called. Placing the Hearthstone in the bowl sent out the Call.”
The two Baratheons peered at the stone and the bowl. “So that’s it?” Robert asked. “That sent out the Call?”
“Aye. Doesn’t seem like much, does it? But it’s drawn a lot of people here to the North. I think it restored all kinds of connections. Like to the direwolves. Something else to tell you about.” He eyed Robert. “You didn’t seem too surprised at the sight of Frostfyre and the other direwolves, did you?”
Another bark of laughter from Robert and a wry twist of the lips from Stannis. “Word on the road and word in the keeps and holdfasts on the way here were of Ned Stark and his direwolf. I told everyone not to react too much at the sight of her. Wasn’t easy. Where is she?”
“She comes and goes. Wouldn’t surprise me if she’s guarding this room.”
“That should surprise Barristan Selmy a bit. Right. These Others. What do they want?”
“All the records, both here and at Castle Black – Maester Aemon has found a huge cache from the Nightfort – all agree on one thing. They want us all dead. Every living thing. You can’t bargain with them. You can’t reason with them. You can’t even threaten them. The Wildlings have seen them in the far North, beyond the Wall. The Night’s Watch has seen them on the First of the First Men, from the protection of an old secret vantage point called the Overlook. Near a place called Craster’s Keep as well. And my sons Robb and Jon, as well as a number of other men and women, fought four of them and a small horde of wights just North of the Wall by the Nightfort.”
Robert frowned a little. “Your sons are alive. What did they have that the Wildlings did not?”
“Dragonglass. Valyrian steel – I gave Robb Ice when I found the Fist of Winter,” he slapped the mace at his side, “In here. And starmetal, the kind of metal that the First Men used to make some of their most important weapons. Like the Fist. And perhaps Stormbreaker too? They’re rare, but there are others.” He raised both eyebrows. “The Lannisters had an axe called Rocktooth. Tyrion Lannister found it at the Nightfort. He was with Robb and Jon. Killed an Other with it too.”
A silence fell. Robert seemed to be having trouble processing what he had just heard and Stannis actually had a finger in one ear to clear some wax out or something like that. Eventually Stannis said what his brother could not: “You… what?”
“The Imp killed… an Other?” Robert blurted.
“Oh, aye.” He looked at them both. “I’m still not sure if, based on what Robb said, he wielded it or it wielded him, but he kill one of the Others with it. And before you say anything else, you need to see this.” He reached out,tugged on a glove and pulled out one of the swords that Robb had brought back with him from the fight at the Nightfort. It was a long, wicked blade, made from some kind of crystallised ice that had somehow not melted, and he needed the glove because he hated the way that it felt in his hand, as if it radiated not just cold but evil too.
“Take out one of your daggers and then test it against this thing. Strike hard.”
Robert gave him a quizzical look and then pulled out a dagger and struck hard indeed – hard enough that he staggered as the dagger shattered into a dozen hoarfrost-covered pieces.
“Gods!” Robert gasped. “That was good steel too!”
“No wonder the Wildlings flee them,” Stannis said as he stroked his beard. “What do they still use, North of the Wall? Bronze? But Valyrian steel works against that thing?”
“It does,” Ned replied as he put the horrible thing away. “We don’t know why. Might be that the Valyrians used dragonfire to make their steel, not that we know anything more about that.”
There was another silence. Robert finally broke it. “The Imp wields an axe like Stormbreaker?”
“Aye,” Ned replied. “He’s changed a bit. He knows what’s out there now. Perhaps he can tell his father.”
“Gods,” muttered Robert. “How is my goodfather going to react to all of this?”
“He might take some persuading, but there’s something else you need to know.” Ned replied. “I mentioned that there were others at that fight North of the Nightfort. One of them was Gerion Lannister. He answered the Call.”
“Gerion Lannister?” Stannis all but spat. “Lord Stark, Gerion Lannister is dead. He sailed into the Smoking Sea and never sailed out of it again.”
“Oh, he sailed out of it. He was half-dead, missing an eye and clutching Brightroar, but he sailed out. It’s a tale that will shake you. Certainly shook me. There’s a look in his eye when he tells the tale that shows that he’s not the same man that left. He’s been at the Summer Islands since then with his family. He’s here with his son. They answered the Call.”
His words bought him another combined stare of incredulity from the Baratheons. But the expression on his face must have convinced them.
“Bloody Hells,” Robert muttered again. “Gerion Lannister? With Brightroar and his son? How old is his son?”
“Old enough to fight with his father and my sons at the Nightfort. Gerion Lannister said that he never told your Goodfather about his family in the Summer Islands. Said that he’d never have approved of them.”
“Wait,” Stannis broke in. “Gerion Lannister heard the Call all the way from here, in the Summer Islands?”
“Aye – and before you ask I do not know if any other Lannisters heard it. Tyrion Lannister did not. But other families did hear it. The North is united like nothing else since the death of my father. The Skagosi have even sent ravens promising support. And people have been coming from the South, as I said. Lord Dayne is here. So is Lord Dondarrion. I’ve heard that even the Ironborn have been sending help to the Wall. The Company of the Rose have returned, something that I need to talk to you about later. And… the Mountain Clans of the Vale are in the Gift as well.”
Robert stared at him again and then seemed to remember that he was still holding a goblet of wine, which he suddenly raised to his lips and emptied in one swallow. “The Mountain Tribes of the Vale? This is where they came to after they vanished?”
“Aye.” He sighed. “I need to have a long talk with Jon Arryn about this. They brought something with them. The banner of the last Griffin King of the Vale.”
Robert passed a hand that shook a little over his forehead and then tried to drink from the empty cup again. “The Mountain Tribes of the Vale and the banner of the last Griffin King. By all the Gods, Ned. I need some more wine.” Then he paused. “These Others. You say they come from Hopemourne. Where’s that?”
Ned nodded. “Far, far, North of the Wall. I’ll show you the map.” He opened the door again, ushered them through, locked it behind them and passed down the corridor and out into the Solar to where the annotated map of the North was hanging.
As they approached it he grabbed the jug of wine and divided the last of what was in it between the three goblets. It gave Robert enough time to get to the map and stare at it intently. “Ned, what are all these places North of the Wall?”
“Wildling settlements,” Ned said grimly. “As I said, there were more of them than we ever suspected. Most are abandoned now. The Others hit the ones to the far North a few years ago. Now, you asked where Hopemourne was. Here.” He stabbed at the map with a finger.
“So far North…” Robert muttered. “Too far North for any army to get to. That far North the horses would die like flies and so would the men…”
“I know,” Ned said heavily as he returned to his seat. “My first instincts were to attack as well, but this is not that kind of a war. We don’t know what strength the enemy is in, what his plans are, other than to attack and what he has waiting for us. An attack would be folly. The Wall was built for a reason, Robert and right now our best stratagem is to defend it. The First Men… there’s something they must have known. They built the Wall, they created these… artefacts, like the Hearthstone, the bowl and who knows what else to alert people that one day the Others would return. Tyrion Lannister didn’t just find Rocktooth, he found twin daggers called the Warnings, that glow at the approach of wights and Others.”
He lifted his hands as if reaching for something and then let them fall. “Our ancestors, the First Men, made all these things, created all these weapons and defences and objects to warn us and we damn near ignored them all! We almost missed all the warning signs! And the Night’s Watch fell into decay and the Wildlings warred with them – did you know that originally they acted as scouts against the Others for the Night’s Watch? Our ancestors built this great system – and we have let it fail in front of us. Us and our ancestors.”
There was a moment of silence. “Too much time,” Stannis grunted as he drank from his own goblet. “Too much time has passed. The Others have not been seen for thousands of years and men reckon that a decade can be a long time. Men go to war for trivial reasons and burns keeps and knowledge too easily. The Andals came and destroyed what they found in places and then came the Targaryens and their dragons. Lord Stark, it’s a wonder that we still have anything after all this time.”
It was a remarkably prescient speech, coming from Stannis Baratheon, and Robert and Ned both looked at him before nodding.
“Aye,” Robert boomed, “You have the right of that, Stannis. We have been warned and we are moving now. The South will stand by the North. We have no choice in this, the stakes are too high. Your people are not just preparing for war but also winter – we saw the preparations with every mile we travelled. We’ll send ravens summoning every manner of help now Ned. Repair the castles on the Wall first, get the logistics in place. We can’t hold the Wall existing on snow and ice once Winter comes. We’ll need food.”
“A lot of it,” Ned agreed. “This has been the longest summer for a thousand years. A long winter will follow it, I feel it in my bones. Luwin has heard from the Citadel that the Maesters are arguing over whether or not this winter will last as long as the summer that now comes to an end.”
“I knew there was a war coming,” Robert said with a grim smile as he drained his goblet and then stood. He seemed to be coming alive again after being so shocked and still earlier. He rolled his shoulders and then grinned at Ned. “I’ve been training with a log again, to get the fat off me. I’ll need one here.”
Then he looked at Stormbreaker as it rested against the wall, before looking at the Fist of Winter. “The Gods have a sense of humour, Ned. You with a mace and me with a sword. Right. There’s a lot of ravens we need to send out. Then I need to train and we’ll talk again.” Grabbing the old sword he hefted it in one hand then walked to the door and opened it, before sticking his head out. “Are you alright there, Ser Barristan?”
“Enjoying the novelty of guarding you in the company of a large and solemn direwolf, your Grace,” came the muffled response. “How can I serve you?”
“If you see a servant wave them down and send the Maester here to see us would you? We have a Call to answer with storm of swords!”
Jorah
Winterfell was just as he remembered it. He had visited it first with his father, years before Robert’s Rebellion, but he remembered it best from the great ride South to avenge the deaths of Rickard and Brandon Stark. He hadn’t fought for Robert Baratheon, he’d fought to gain vengeance for the old Lord of the North and his oldest son, brutally murdered by the Mad King.
He remembered the Trident, the place where men had scrabbled for the rubies in the water after the death of the Mad Prince, and the stink of King’s Landing after that. And he remembered that shining moment at Pyke, the moment the wall crumbled under the impact of great trebuchet to create the breach and the sprint into it, fuelled by rage and hate for those Ironborn scum, Thoros of Myr to one side with his blazing sword, Ser Jaime Lannister not too far away, and Jory Cassell on the other side, with more screaming at his back.
He always wondered if it had been Maron Greyjoy who had been the one who had confronted him first. He knew that Balon Greyjoy’s second son had been there on the other side of the breach, but had he been the one in the chainmail with the sword, or the other one in the boiled leather armour with the axe?
He’d been knighted that day. Heh. A follower of the Old Gods anointed as a knight.
And after that… Lynesse.
He forced his thoughts away from his estranged wife and looked about Winterfell again. The Broken Tower had scaffolding about it, draped with what looked like oilcloth against the rain, and the top did not look as broken as it once had.
Oh and he tried not to look at the people who were darting cold and angry glances at him. Others were refusing to even look at him. Jory Cassell was one of them. As he led the Kingslayer away his eyes slid over Jorah as if he didn’t even exist.
Part of him wanted to shrivel with shame. Another part wanted to run. But the stubborn bastard within him also wanted shout that he and was atoning, that he had earned his pardon, that he was sorry but that he had answered the Call.
Leera had done off to talk to someone about their quarters and he thanked the Old Gods that he had her. She kept his feet on the ground. If only she had been his wife instead of Lynesse.
As he shrugged internally and then watched with a half-smile as the boy Gendry made his way unerringly to the smithy of Winterfell, a hand suddenly landed on his shoulder and then pulled him back so hard that he hit the wall behind him with a grunt of pain.
As his head rang from the impact he shook it for an instant – and then he froze. Father. Father was standing in front of him. He was dressed in black, looked older than ever, had a beard that was now mostly white instead of mostly grey, but it was Father. He also had a raven on one shoulder and a look of... he wasn’t sure what it was a look of. It combined rage with bafflement with pride.
“I don’t know what I should do,” Father said before he could say a word. “Part of me wants to knock you down, spit on you and then denounce you for dragging the name of Mormont through the mud by dealing with slavers. But then part of me wants to hug you for answering the Call from across the other side of the Narrow Sea.”
“I had to come back,” Jorah muttered. “The Call... I felt it in my bones.”
His father seemed to quiver for a moment, before sighing. “By the Old Gods, Jorah... what were you thinking?”
“I needed coin. I was a fool.”
“Aye, that you were. To take a Hightower as a wife after your first wife died... I knew that it wouldn’t end well. Where is she?”
“Lys. Coin outweighed love after I fled into exile. And she can stay there. She’s concubine to another man now.”
His father sighed again and placed a hand on the pommel of his sword. Jorah stared at it. Plain pommel. Terror ran through him. “Father, you’re not wielding Longclaw – please tell me that you got it after I left it behind.”
Something new flickered in Father’s eyes, something that might have been approval. “I got it. Wielded it at the Wall for years. But Maege came to Castle Black with the rest of the Lords of the North and I decided that Dacey should have it. She’s worthy of it.”
He thought about his lanky younger cousin and then nodded reluctantly. “Aye. She is.”
Father stared at him for a long moment. “Right,” he said eventually. “You and I are going to have a little talk about a few things.”
He sighed as Father dragged him towards a door. Hopefully he should get through this without too many clouts across the back of his head.
Jon Arryn
Merryweather was still talking cheerfully about the improvement in the Crown’s finances and he nodded along with the others in satisfaction. Petyr Baelish had lied a lot about so very many things and now things were back on a more even keel.
As Merryweather ended his report Monford Velaryon, the new Master of Ships, leant forwards and started to speak. The Lord of Driftmark was not his first choice for the role – Ser Davos Seaworth was worth ten of the bloody man – but he was competent and above all loyal.
They would need loyal men soon.
As Velaryon spoke he listened with one ear but mulled over other affairs even as he nodded as the words rumbled past him. Gods, but he was tired of this. He’d been doing it for far too long. The Eyrie called.
The Realm still looked to King’s Landing, despite the absence of Robert. News of his trip to the North took time to spread, so still the ravens came with their short messages and the riders with their far larger ones.
And for every great matter of State there was always a hundred, no, a thousand lesser ones. One lord sought justice against another for some tiny slight. One lord saw vengeance against another for some land being ‘stolen’, or merchandise purloined.
There were almost times when he preferred those lesser things to the thornier of the larger ones though. Like the one that was facing the Small Council – well, the Smaller Council as Renly kept calling it – right now as Renly himself started to speak. Hoster Tully had sent a raven saying that the unrest involving the Faith Militant was dying down, as he now had one of the major contributors to it under lock and key at Riverrun, some mad septon called Blackfoot, or Sparrow, or something.
Apparently the man was raving mad, had mysteriously gone blind and kept soiling himself. Hoster wanted to shorten the wretched man by a head but wanted some instruction from King’s Landing first, like the canny old trout that he was.
As far as Jon was concerned his goodfather should drop the wretch into the nearest river, which wouldn’t be hard at Riverrun, but there were other issues at work here. He needed to talk to the new High Septon about this. It was a shame that Cassley was back at Foxhold, he had a good line in bright and cheery smiles as he played with crossbows. Well, Quill would do just as well.
“Have Lord Tully execute the wretched man and be done with it,” Merryweather spat as a silence fell. “He deserves it.”
“Yes, I fully agree my Lord, but surely we need to hear the thoughts of the High Septon?” Pycelle wheezed in a manner that made him seem to be the old fool that he pretended to be.
“From the account sent in by Lord Tully we have more than enough information to order his death three times over,” Jon replied in a voice like iron. “Raising men who bore the banner of the Faith Militant. Leading men against Ser Edmure as he sought to defend High Heart. And, above all, trying to get to the Isles of Faces to burn it to the ground. That last one alone would be enough to earn a death penalty. That place is sacrosanct, as agreed by Kings and lords before even the Conquest.”
It was possible that Pycelle muttered the word ‘Heathen nonsense’ under his breath, but Jon wasn’t entirely sure. The other Lords however nodded in agreement at Jon’s words.
“Agreed,” Renly sighed. “I will talk with the High Septon, but the decision of this Small Council is that the man who calls himself the High Sparrow must die.”
“Aye,” Jon said, and the others followed his lead, even Pycelle. He looked about the table. “Is there any other business? As otherwise-”
Before he could adjourn the meeting and have a long-overdue word with Renly in the next room, a fist hammered against the door. He looked over with a sigh and scowl. “Come!”
The door opened to reveal Quill, who bowed and then approached the table. “Your pardon my Lords, but a man of the Night’s Watch has arrived from Castle Black to address the Small Council.”
Jon peered at his faithful servant. He looked... pale, almost green, and he seemed to be shaking slightly. “From Castle Black, Quill?”
“Aye my Lord,” Quill replied shakily. “A message that... must be seen to be believed.”
Varys frowned. “Seen, master Quill?”
“Aye, my Lord. Seen.”
There was a moment of quiet confusion in the room and then Jon nodded. “Very well, send him in.”
When Quill re-entered he was leading a man in worn and travelstained black clothing. He was holding a square object in both hands that was covered in black cloth., which he held in front of him as if it was something terrible. As he approached the table he paused to bow hastily.
“My Lords, I am Denys Hollern of the Night’s Watch and I bear a... a token of proof from Castle Black.”
Varys raised an eyebrow at the man. “Proof of what, exactly?”
Hollern gulped. “What we face, my Lord.” He placed the object on the table in front of him. “This is from Lord Commander Mormont. He wants the Small Council to know what is marching on the Wall.”
There was a pause as everyone looked from the object, to Hollern and then back to the object. Finally Renly reached out and jerked the black cloth from it. It was a cage made from some kind of odd metal. And inside sat the severed head of a woman.
Jon stared at it. This made no sense whatsoever. He was about to ask what in the Seven Hells this was all about when all of a sudden ice seemed to spread down his back as the head opened its very blue eyes and hissed at them all, before gnashing broken teeth.
Merryweather and Velaryon jerked back in their seats so violently that they came close to falling over. Pycelle also recoiled, but not as badly, whilst Renly froze in place, his eyes very wide indeed. Somehow Jon willed himself to just stare at the horrible, impossible, thing. “What,” he said eventually through very dry lips, “Is that?”
“The head of a wight my Lord,” Hollern answered. “The Others are animating dead bodies North of the Wall. The Call is true.”
There was a long moment of silence in the room. And then it erupted with shouted questions from every man but Varys, who just sat there, his eyes flickering in what Jon knew to be deep thought.
Gendry
The Smith of Winterfell was a man called Mikken who had, much to his surprise, heard of him. “Word travelled ahead of you,” he said as he eyed Gendry carefully. “Lords have ravens. Blacksmiths have those who travel on the roads. Merchants, smithing supplies, apprentices seeking work… aye, I’ve heard of you. Gendry Strongarm Storm, natural son of His Grace the King. Not a bad blacksmith from what I’ve heard.”
Gendry felt his ears go warm. “Just an apprentice,” he muttered.
“So you say,” Mikken said wryly. “Right. There’s a smithing apron over there, and a hammer. There’s a few things I need help on.”
And so he’d buried himself back into smithing work. His life had been truly odd these past months but the feeling of the heat of the forge and the sensation of hammering on metal was real in a way that some things had not been.
He made a trio of hoes, and then a dagger, before starting on something more complex. It was like the head of a halberd, only it had large tines at its base. He puzzled over this for a moment or two as he worked on it and then he realised. “It’s for fighting wights isn’t it?”
Mikken, who had been working on one of his own, grunted with approval. “You’re right. What made you realise it?”
“I saw the head of a wight in a cage on the way here. Made me think about how you fight a dead man that walks. A spear will go straight through him and he’ll keep walking towards. These tines… they’ll hit ribs and stop him dead.”
The Northman smiled and nodded. “Aye. You have the right of it. You saw it faster than my apprentice.”
He smiled and kept at it. One halberd and then another. It was only then that he realised that they had company. There was a quartet of solemn faces at the door. Shireen was there, with three boys all about the same age.
“This is Gendry,” Shireen said with a scowl. “He’s a blacksmith, and a forge is a dangerous place and you are all to do what he says, alright? He’s my cousin and he’s nice, but he wants to keep people safe in a forge and we need to do what he says.” The three boys nodded almost in unison and then sat down in a line at her direction. When they were in place she looked at him. “This is Brandon Stark and Robert Arryn and Edric Storm. They heard about you and wanted to come and pester you, so I have taken them in hand.” She smiled at him, glared at them (which made them all flinch a little) and then look back at him. “Edric’s your half-brother by the way.”
Gendry faltered in mid-stroke before recovering. Yes, the boy at the end had black hair and blue eyes and the look of his father. “Edric, yes?”
The boy nodded slowly. “Are you my half-brother?”
“I am. We share a father.”
“Why are you a blacksmith?”
He shrugged. “I just am. I was apprenticed as a boy in King’s Landing.”
Edric nodded. “I was brought up at Storm’s End. My mother is of House Florent.”
Gendry rolled his shoulders. “My mother wasn’t highborn at all.” He hammered on the halberd head a bit more. “Do you want to be a blacksmith?”
“No. But this forge is amazing!”
“And dangerous,” Shireen broke in with a glare that made all three boys quail a bit. “Very dangerous. Forges are not a place for people to just wander in.” She paused. “Is Father’s knife ready yet?”
He grinned at that, before placing the halberd to one side and then pulling out the knife that he had been working on and handing it over to her. “For your Lord Father.”
Shireen looked at it from all angles – and then she grinned and embraced him. “It’s perfect, Gendry! Thank you so much!”
He smiled at her again before picking his hammer up again and returning to the halberd. “Let me know what Uncle Stannis says about it.”
Robert
He looked at the map again as Ned talked with Stannis and Maester Luwin about messages. When he heard the sound of departing feet he looked at the doorway in time to see Stannis and the Maester leave clutching messages. As they left the huge form of Ned’s direwolf padded in and then sat next to Ned’s chair. It looked at him with its head to one side and then huffed almost in welcome, before it turned its head and looked at Stormbreaker. Again a tilt of the head and a huff, before those disconcertingly intelligent eyes returned to him.
“She’s very protective of you Ned.”
“And I of her. All Starks used to have direwolves once. They were a link to the Old Gods. I don’t know when that link was broken. I don’t even remember the night that it was restored – the Old Gods possessed me to do that.”
He stared at Ned. “The Old Gods… possessed you? Like they possessed Shireen? From what I was told her eyes burned with red fire.”
“Apparently so did mine,” Ned replied dryly. “I don’t remember a bloody thing, but apparently I led a party of men from Winterfell, in the dead of night, to a forgotten Godswood in the Wolfwood, where I summoned her. She was heavy with pups – and now all my children have one. Even Theon Greyjoy.”
He gaped a little at that but then rallied. “Aye, I saw the Squidling. How’s the brat doing?”
Ned raised his eyebrows for a moment. “I might have turned him into a Stark. His own father virtually ignored him growing up, and the boy’s been affected by quite a bit here. He’s turned his back on the Drowned God for a start. He worships the Old Gods now. He had some very odd dreams a few months back. Walked into the hall where we break our fast with a wound on his face one morning. Something with rotted fingernails had slashed at him. He said that he had dreamt about his dead brother Rodrik.”
Something cold seemed to waft through him for an instant and he shivered. “Gods that sounds ominous.”
“Aye, but later he had a dream where what was left of his brother tried to drag him before the Drowned God. He refused and appealed to the Old Gods. The wound vanished and the boy has a Heart tree medallion that appeared from nowhere. No’s he of the North now. He doesn’t want to be a Greyjoy – says that his father’s a fool. Greystark’s a name of ill fortune in the North, so he’s thinking about Greymist perhaps. He might seek you out. Talk to him Robert. He’s not his father.”
He brooded over this for a moment and then laughed shortly. “Gods, I’d like to see the look on the face of old Balon when he hears that his last remaining son has disowned him!” He looked at Ned. “You’ve heard of the fighting on the Iron Islands?”
“Aye, I have. Balon Greyjoy is all but at war with Rodrik Harlaw.”
“Last raven spoke of more than that. I might need to send someone there to bash some heads together. Stannis would do it, but he might enjoy it too much. He’d also say ‘I told you so’ to me too many times before he left.” He sniffed. “He was right though. I should have hammered Balon fucking Greyjoy’s head flatter than a pancake, burnt Pyke to the ground and put The Reader in charge of the pack of raping idiots.”
Ned sighed but then nodded. “Aye, it might have been better in the long run. I always knew that Balon Greyjoy was an idiot, but the years have somehow removed wisdom from his mind instead of increasing it.”
He nodded a little in reply and then peered at his old friend. “By the way, how bad were things at the Wall before this alliance you struck with the Wildlings?”
Ned flared his nostrils for a moment in that way he had whenever he thought of something unpleasant. “Worse than in my worst nightmares. The Watch was down to three castles, as I said. Weaker than they had ever been. The Wildling raids were bad and getting worse almost by the day. I was close to calling my banners and marching to the Wall to defend it. And, yes, I would have sent you a raven. I’d never deny you the chance to dent some skulls.”
“I knew that there was a war coming Ned. I felt it in my bones,” Robert muttered. “I didn’t know where or when, but I knew it was coming. So how many times had young Robb been at the Wall then, finding things out for you?”
Ned blinked at him, confused. “That was his first time there.”
He peered at ned again and then snorted. “Oh come on Ned. That boy of yours has seen more of war than just a couple of skirmishes. I could see it in his eyes. Young face, old eyes.”
Something odd happened to Ned’s face at that point, a shiver of emotion flashed over it like lightning. “Aye,” he said tiredly. “I know. I told you that the Old Gods had spoken through a few people. Well, they spoke or rather acted through him too.” He fell silent for a moment and Robert could tell that Ned was struggling with something. “I said that this all started with a message from the Old Gods. Well, Robb witnessed that message. But as what he saw… you’d never believe me.”
“Come off it Ned,” he protested, “You know that I would!”
“No,” Ned replied with an odd look to his face again. “You wouldn’t. Not without proof. It’s a long and odd – and very terrible – tale to tell, and besides it’s his tale and not mine to tell. You’ll hear of it, I promise you. But not just yet.”
Robert cast an uncertain look at Ned but then nodded. “Speaking of family there’s something else I’d like to speak to you about. We should have been goodbrothers many years ago, you and I. If Lyanna had lived I would have married her. We still can be goodbrothers. I want to join our two Houses – your Sansa with my Joffrey.”
Ned’s eyebrows flew up for a moment. “I would be honoured,” he replied carefully. “But there’s a problem. Sansa’s already betrothed.”
“Damn it,” Robert said a little crossly. “Who to? Can it be quashed?”
“Domeric Bolton. Roose Bolton’s only son.”
Bugger it. His own eyebrows went up and down. “Oh I remember Roose Bolton. Any man with the banner of a flayed man sticks in the mind, but that quiet little bugger always gave me the willies, and I don’t say that lightly. You’d betroth your daughter to the son of that man?”
Ned tilted his head to one side slightly. “Domeric’s not like his father. He was fostered in the Vale, at the Redfort. You can ask Lord Redfort himself what he thinks about the lad. I’ll be talking to him later myself, him and Bronze Yohn Royce. They need to talk to me before tonight’s feast. But back to Domeric – he’s not his father. And he’s certainly nothing like his mad half-brother.”
“I heard about him on the road up. Mad doesn’t seem to begin to describe him.”
“Aye, well, Ramsay Snow’s dead and buried. No, Domeric has sworn to treat my daughter as I would expect him to. And he swore that oath on the Fist of Winter. People who swear on that and lie – well you saw the head on the spike at the main gate? Ser Willem Bootle, who tried to cheat my cousin Lady Surestone out of her birthright. He placed a hand on the Fist and swore that he did not murder Dacey’s father. Next thing I know the man’s flying through the air, stone dead.”
He looked at Ned and then at the mace. “Bloody Hells. That’s useful.”
“And frightening. These things, your sword and my mace, are old, Robert, very old. Who knows what else they can do?”
It was a good point but he still leant back and scowled a bit. “This marriage with the Boltons – important?”
“Domeric’s the only remaining son. There’s some cousins that came over with the Company of the Rose – you’ll need to meet them, as I said – but Domeric’s the heir. The Boltons are important in the North, Robert. And the betrothal has been announced. I can’t break it easily – even for my King. The North needs to be united for this war Robert.”
Damn it, Ned was right. He nodded reluctantly. And then Ned added: “And the two are in love. Sansa and Domeric have been making plans like redesigning the banner of the Boltons.”
Damn it again. “In love are they? Young love. I wouldn’t have Lyanna’s niece be unhappy. A shame, she might be the making of my eldest, but I won’t press for the betrothal to be broken Ned. So stop squinting at me like that. Right. My Tommen and your Arya?”
Ned eyed him with a twinkle in his eye. “Is he tough?”
“Eh?”
“Arya is like Lyanna. It doesn’t surprise me at all that she’s been sneaking out and getting sword lessons. She’s refusing to take embroidery lessons by the way. Says that it makes more sense to learn to fight alongside the men if a second Long Night is coming.”
He thought of Tommen, his sweet, cat-addled boy, married to the reincarnation of Lyanna. “The poor lad,” he said dazedly. “Well, it might make him as well. We’ll talk about it. That or Myrcella and your Bran – they’re of an age, are they not?”
Ned seemed to go into a reverie for a moment. “Aye,” he said eventually. “One of those might work. We’ll discuss it.”
Good. He smiled – and then he sobered. “Right then. We’ve talked of business and duty long enough. Take me to your crypts Ned. I need to pay my respects to your sister.”
Jon Arryn
From the very top of the Tower of the Hand a man could see a long way into Blackwater Bay. A very long way. He stared at the water on the horizon. It looked peaceful, placid, sparkling blue. A classic Summer’s day here in King’s Landing.
Bur he didn’t feel warm. He felt cold. So very cold. Ned had always been right. Winter was coming. Coming for the North, for the Vale, for all of Westeros.
He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. The Small Council had broken up in near-chaos. Velaryon had gone off muttering about consulting the records at Driftmark, Merryweather had just staggered off looking stunned, Pycelle had left in the general direction of his ravens with a remarkably straight back, whilst Varys had rubbed his hands together and muttered that he might have to make some enquiries in certain places personally.
Knuckles rapped on the doorframe to one side and he turned to it. “Come in Renly.”
Renly Baratheon walked in. He was missing quite a bit of his usual, well, swagger. This time he came in almost hesitantly. He smiled at Jon and then joined him at the window.
“A strange place, King’s Landing,” Renly sighed. “It changes your… viewpoint. Everyone looks to this place for leadership, but everyone in this bloody place is busy obsessing over what happens within the walls sometimes. It takes something horribly serious, like the head of a wight to kick people out of that viewpoint.
“Take me for example. I went with Robert to Storm’s End, I was there with him when he found Stormbreaker, I saw a statue – a bloody statue, Jon! – come to life, with fire in its eyes and give Robert that sword and proclaim him Storm King, but within days of returning to this bloody place I’d half-forgotten it all. No, various lords needed a favour, various knights needed patronage, always the usual fuss and bother and churn of plots, for want of a better word. In a place like King’s Landing… you get obsessed with all of that.”
It was a good point and he sighed. “I know. All this talk of the Call, all this business with the Isle of Faces – that was the start of this chill wind that blew the head of that wight in. And yes, I know exactly what you mean. This poisonous place makes minor things seem more important than things that are more important outside the walls. Well – no more. The head will be displayed in the throne room, next to that wretched Iron Throne for a week. I talked to the man of the Night’s Watch – he said that other… parts were already on the way South, so he’s willing to tarry here for a week.”
“Do you think that Robert has seen any of those parts?”
“If Ned is dealing with this Call, then I am certain of it. Who knows what else he might have in the way of proof?”
Renly shuddered for a long moment and then sighed a little. “I’ll make sure that every Stormlord in King’s Landing sees it. Where will the head be going to next?”
“Storm’s End.”
“Good. Then I’ll accompany it. The Stormlands need to know what’s coming.”
Jon nodded – and then he pointed to the chair to one side. “Sit down Renly. I need to talk to you about something else.” He waited until Renly sat with a slight frown. “You need to marry, and soon.”
Renly stared at him – and then he laughed. “Marry? It is a little early for that, surely?”
He resisted the temptation to clutch at his forehead. “Renly, you are past 20 now. Robert was betrothed by your age. So was I. You are the Lord of Storm's End and Lord Paramount of the Stormlands. People expect it of you. A wife and a child show that you are a strong and stable Lord, founding a dynasty that will secure the Stormlands to the Crown for the next generation and more.”
Renly shifted uncomfortably. “I will admit that various Lords have hinted at matters. But Jon, there is plenty of time for this and-”
“There is less time than you think!” Jon snapped the words out, before holding up a hand in apology. “Renly, what I am about to tell you must stay a secret. I know that you have been corresponding with the Tyrells. You cannot tell them this yet.”
“Tell me what?”
“House Baratheon is not as… stable, nor as large as you think it is.” He sighed and walked over with the book that he had placed on the table next to him. “In the past every Baratheon who married a Lannister went on to have children that had black hair and blue eyes. Every time. Why is it that Robert’s children have golden hair and green eyes then?”
Renly stared at him and then at the page that Jon had opened the book to. The Great Houses of Westeros had its uses, even if it was very heavy. “What are you saying?”
“Robert has a number of bastards. They all have black hair and blue eyes and resemble him in some way or another. Why then is there nothing of him in Joffrey, Tommen and Myrcella?”
By now Renly was doing an excellent impression of a landed fish, his eyes wide and his mouth open. Eventually he rallied a little. “Then, if you are right… who is the father?”
Jon pulled a face. “The Kingslayer. Yes, her own brother. I have found a few servants who confirmed that they have seen Cersei in secluded locations within the Red Keep, in the company of her brother. One even said that she had seen the two embrace and kiss. I am keeping them guarded. I have a bad feeling that those servants who were said to have run away were in fact those who saw too much and were silenced by them.”
Renly just sat there, stunned. “Then… Stannis is really the heir?”
“Aye. He knows that too.”
“That trip to Winterfell… then… does Robert know?”
“Not yet.”
A shadow flashed over Renly’s face for an instant. “He’ll kill her the moment he finds out, you know that don’t you?”
“Hopefully he’ll listen to Ned.”
“Does Ned know?”
“I don’t know. He did warn me about a possible Lannister plot against me some months back, at about the time that I sent young Robert to foster with Ned. If he does not know then Stannis will tell him. There will be a reckoning though. And when that happens Tywin Lannister will be furious – and humiliated. So we must be united on this. Whatever happens with Cersei, Robert will be without a wife – and also an heir. Now, he might legitimise one of his bastards, but this will be the greatest crisis to face us since the Greyjoy Rebellion. So now you see why you must marry.”
Again a shadow flashed across the face of the younger man. “Jon,” he said hesitantly. “You say that so easily, but-”
“I know that things are… complicated for you. I know that you have feelings for Loras Tyrell, your squire.”
Red spots blossomed on Renly’s cheeks. “Jon-”
He forestalled him by holding up a hand. “Renly, do you really think that you are the first man I have met who had feeling for other men? I am an old man and I have seen a lot in my life. Including lords who were… fond of their squires. Now, there are ways around this. My mother had a cousin who had something, well, similar.” This was proving to be as difficult as he had thought it would be. “Put simply, we find you a wife who is… understanding about such things. Some girl of kind disposition and gentle heart who knows that you have affections for a man. And as to the matter of an heir, well, the Maesters have certain potions that, well, can assist on getting matters to, erm, arise, so to speak.”
The redness had now taken over the entire face of Renly Baratheon. He also looked as if he had aged a decade in a moment. “Jon, how did you know?”
“Renly, I am not a fool. You thought that you were being careful in public, but as I said I am an old man now and I have seen much in my life.”
There was a silence. “Then others know?”
“Perhaps. Some might have guessed, so maybe.”
Another silence. “Gods. I wondered if perhaps some of my Stormlords were a little less effuse in their greetings of late.”
“Renly, we can deal with this. As I said, a girl of kind disposition for a wife.” He laid a hand on Renly’s shoulder. “My boy, as I said, this is not something that is unknown to me. There is… precedent. Lords and knights that I have known. Do not look so worried, I will keep this a secret. We need to all stand together as much as possible. Let me know if you need to talk to me. And Renly – do not tell the Tyrells about this situation involving Cersei. I will be writing to Willas Tyrell myself, by a secret way that cannot be intercepted.”
Renly nodded. “Thank you Jon,” he said quietly. “Thank you for your counsel on this.” As he stood Jon looked at him.
“Any time Renly. As I said – you can speak to me about this at any time.”
Renly nodded absently and then slipped out of the door. As he left Jon looked after him worriedly. He should have talked to Renly weeks ago. Too much to do. Which just left one question. Who did he know who could help him to find a wife for Renly Baratheon? “The Queen of Thorns, perhaps,” he muttered as he stared out of the window again. “No Lannisters though. Never again.”
Ned
Robert’s eyes were moist as he stared up at Lyanna’s face. “Did you have to bury her here, in a place like this? In all this darkness?” Robert placed a winter rose at the base of the statue. “She should be on a hilltop, with the sun above and the wind around her.”
“This is where she belongs, Robert,” Ned replied sadly. “All Starks come here in the end. Brandon’s here, along with whatever could be found of Father.”
“The statue makes her look like a staid lady. We both know she was never that. She was a she-wolf. My she-wolf”
“I know, Robert,” he replied sadly. “Unfortunately the only way to do her justice would be to have a moving statue on a horse.”
Robert smiled wryly at this. “I still say she belong in the fresh air. But she was your sister. A Stark. I understand.”
“All Starks come here in the end,” Ned said again, before gesturing down the corridor to where a small candle could be seen. “See that? We interred the ashes of Rickon Stark, son of Edwyle Stark. He was the half-wight I told you off. Robert, he was born before the Conquest. But Robb and Jon spoke with him, fought with him and were with him when he died. All Starks come home in the end.”
Robert looked at him and then sighed a little. “I keep dreaming of her, Ned. Lyanna. She’s in a forest full of white trees, she’s trying to tell me something, but something else keeps pulling her away. Ser Barristan tells me that Stormbreaker’s linked to dreams, so you might be right about there being something about the weapons of the First Men that we need to understand better. The Selmys used to be the swordbearers, or something like that, to the Durrandons. Damn it, too much has been lost.”
They stood there for a long moment, staring at Lyanna’s tomb, lit only by the candles by the tomb and the torches on the walls.
“I bloody hate sieges. Boring bloody things. Never been on the defensive like this though. How we will be, that is. I’ll need to see the Wall at some point, Ned.”
“I know.” He smiled wryly. “It’s bigger than you think.”
Robert snorted with amusement. Then he stopped. “Do you think that your father knew that this might happen?”
He sighed. “I did wonder. I don’t know. Who knows how much warning we would have had if he had lived?”
Silence. “If Rhaegar had never taken Lyanna, what do you think our lives would be like?”
Ned snorted a little. “You’d be just the Lord of the Stormlands, obviously. Father might still be alive. Brandon would be the heir, I’d just be the second son, in a keep of my own somewhere. Maybe Moat Cailin, I always wanted to be the one to rebuild it.”
“I thought you already were?”
“It was overdue. Who know I would have married? Maybe… maybe Ashara Dayne. Cat would have been Brandon’s. Lyanna would have been yours.” And the Old Gods alone know how many bastards you and my brother would have had by now, he thought with a silent sigh.
A longer silence. “Ned, I can’t tell you what kind of a husband I would have been to her. A good one, I hope. Gods, I loved her. And yes, I’ve always had a wandering eye. But I would have tried. I miss her, Ned. This marriage to Cersei… it was never about love. I wish Jon had never talked me into it. She’s a poisonous bitch. Mothers Joffrey too much – and there’s something wrong with that boy. He’s an idiot. A cruel idiot. That’s why I was hoping that your Sansa could make something of him. Tommen and Myrcella though – they’re sweet children. Whatever little I did right, I got that much right.”
He took a deep breath. “Right, I have a log to find and some fat to sweat off. Gods, you should have seen me months ago. Fat. I got fat, Ned. But not anymore. Oh, and one more thing. I’ve brought two of my bastards with me. Remember Mya? She came with Redfort and Royce. And there’s Gendry. He likes being a smith and he’s bloody good with a hammer. Probably in your smithy right now. Hmm. Woolgathering again. I need that log. And that some sparring, so get your arse to the practice yard in an hour or so.” And off he went.
Ned watched his friends’ retreating back with a kind of wondering astonishment. Robert had changed. Then he blanched a little. That meant that three of Robert’s bastards were in Winterfell at the same time as all three of ‘his’ children. On the one hand that made a comparison easier. On the other hand it meant that there was a higher chance that someone might look and wonder out loud about the differences between the two.
He turned and strode out. He needed to find Stannis now and talk to him. Fortunately it did not take long to find him – the Hand of the King had found the room that had been set aside for him beforehand and was reading a large number of messages. Ned nodded at the man in Baratheon colours at the entrance, walked in and then cleared his throat.
“Lord Baratheon, we need to talk at once.”
Stannis eyed him for a moment, looked at the messages in front of him, made a notation and then nodded. “Corlys? Take these to Maester Luwin at once please. And close the door. Lord Stark and I are not to be disturbed.”
The man strode in, took the messages, nodded and strode out again, closing the door behind him. Ned stepped forwards and gestured at the walls. “We can talk safely in this room. I made sure. Now – I know the truth about Robert’s children with Cersei. As in they are not Robert’s children. They are the Kingslayers.”
Stannis drew himself up to his full height. “Aye, I know. But how do you know?”
Ah. The tricky part. “It’s hard to explain. I had intelligence of it – intelligence that is hard to explain. I also read my copy of The Great Houses of Westeros and above all, having fostered Edric Storm, I know that it’s more than passing odd that Robert’s bastards have black hair and blue eyes when his so-called legitimate children are all gold of hair and green of eye.”
There was the sound of teeth grinding from the direction of the Lord of Dragonstone. “What intelligence?”
“I do not think you would believe me if I told you.”
“Lord Stark, the dead are marching on the Wall, led by the Others and my daughter has been healed by the Old Gods themselves. Now – what intelligence?”
He stared at Stannis, assessed the situation and then nodded. “The Old Gods brought my oldest son, Robb, back from the dead. He has memories of a world where the Call was never sent, where the Lannisters murdered Jon Arryn, where Robert came to Winterfell to persuade me to become Hand of the King, and where I agreed and went South. Where Robert died, in a hunting accident that could not have been an accident, and I discovered the incest – and was then betrayed and executed. Robb marched to avenge me, no-one believed your claims at first and something called the War of the Five Kings broke out. The Five were Joffrey, you, Renly, Balon Greyjoy as the King of the Iron Islands and Robb as the King in the North and the Riverlands. Chaos in other words. Chaos and folly. All while the dead marched on the Wall. Robb’s part in it all ended when he was betrayed and murdered himself.”
Stannis just stared at him, pale as milk. “That… Gods… he knew such a… Your son died?”
“He did. And the Old Gods brought him back to the here and now, in time to make a difference. Jon Arryn lives. You and I can work together to expose Cersei’s crimes. This War of the Five Kings – this war of madness – will never happen now.”
Stannis ran his tongue over what looked like very dry lips. “Gods, Ned. Your pardon, Lord Stark.”
“Stannis, call me Ned.”
A wry twist of the lips. “Very well then, Ned. Your son was brought back from a future that must never be.” He seemed to absorb this, before licking his lips again and rallying. “Do you have a plan?”
“I do. Ever since I knew that Robert was coming here with Cersei, I have had a plan.”
“What is it?”
“Tonight there will be a feast. Tomorrow there will be a hunt in the Wolfswood. Robert will go, as will many of the lords.” And then he explained the next part of his plan.
Tyrion
Jaime’s reaction to Uncle Gerion’s tale of how he found Brightroar was one of stupefied astonishment – followed what looked like a state of shock. He didn’t even ask about seeing the Valyrian steel sword that had cost Gerion so much to get. He’d just listened with his eyebrows climbing higher and higher until they had almost been in his hairline. And then he’d just sat there, staring into space.
Uncle Gerion had smiled a little at his reaction, whispered to Tyrion that he might have broken his brother a little and then slipped out with his son.
After a while Jaime had returned to himself, his eyebrows coming down. “Well,” he said eventually, “I’d like to see Father’s response to the return of Uncle Gerion. So he found Brightroar.”
“He did.”
Jaime had then stared blankly ahead again and then left the library, muttering something about life getting odder by the day. Ah, his poor brother. If only he knew the things that he had seen on the Wall.
The Wall… he had written a full account of what he had seen and done there for Father. Hopefully he’d be in the same room as Father when he read it. Father’s face would have a fascinating array of expressions on it.
He stared at the books and then sighed and closed them carefully. The mystery of the strange throne-like chair at the Nightfort would have to wait. It was intriguing, but he had no idea what it was and as things stood he needed more information.
He pursed his lips a little as he waddled down the corridor. Winterfell was different these days – busier and more lively than it had been before – and it had hardly been quiet and staid before! As he reached the balcony that looked out over the courtyard he wondered what the place had been like during the days when The King in the North had ruled from here.
Right now it was busy. The King’s party had largely been absorbed into Winterfell, although he suspected that Wintertown had taken quite a bit. Even then, given by the work that was going on around the First Keep, more space was needed. They were working on making parts of the ancient structure habitable and had pulled all the workers off the Broken Tower to do the work. At least the Broken Tower looked a lot less broken now, from what he could see of it, as there was scaffolding all over it, some of which was shrouded with canvas.
He looked down at the training yards to one side. Robb and Jon Stark were sparring with wooden dummies at the direction of the older Cassel. From the way they were fighting they were practicing the kind of blows you’d direct at wights. Fighting things that were already dead and therefore not very skilled at swords meant dismemberment. Judging by the weighted practice swords they were using they didn’t want to use their Valyrian steel swords. He was still curious about how the Bastard of Winterfell had gotten that blade.
He moved to one side and then realised that the Starks were not alone. To one side was another set of dummies, where Theon Greyjoy and Allarion were also practising. And in the distance he could see Sarella Sand, dressed in something more feminine than her recent disguise, at the archery butts, practising with a bow and arrow. She wasn’t very accurate but she looked grimly determined.
Hearing feet to one side he looked up and then suppressed a groan. Joffrey was standing there, with the Hound to one side. Worse, Cersei was also there. She looked at him with that usual look of cool contempt and then down at the training yards.
“The mighty warriors of the North,” she spat quietly, but derisively. Then she looked at him. “Jaime says that Uncle Gerion is alive and here in Winterfell, or at least that was what he muttered as he passed me just now. He can’t be serious.”
“Oh, he’s serious,” Tyrion replied. “Uncle Gerion is indeed alive. Moreover that’s his son down there, the one next to Theon Greyjoy.”
Cersei and Joffrey peered at the lad, whilst the Hound looked supremely indifferent. “But that boy looks half-Essosi!”
“Half Summer Islander actually. A nice lad and very close to his father.” This last was information that left them cold, but Cersei directed a look that was very near to being a sneer at the boy.
“So Uncle Gerion’s back,” Cersei said. “Valyria didn’t kill him. And he’s been in the Summer Islands?”
“He has.”
“A shame he didn’t find Brightroar. That might have almost cheered Father up.”
Tyrion smiled cheerily at her. “What makes you think that he didn’t?”
They both stared at him. “Brightroar has been found?” Cersei asked with a certain amount of asperity mingled with disbelief.
“It has. Uncle Gerion bears it. I’ve seen it.”
“Brightroar!” Joffrey smirked as he seemed to swell slightly with pomposity. “Mother, this is excellent news! When I am King I will have not one famous sword but two! And a Valyrian steel sword is better than that skymetal thing of Fathers. I shall write to Grandfather at once – so should you, Mother!”
This seemed to be a leap of logic that escaped him. “What?”
Joffrey gave him a look that said that he thought that his uncle was a half-wit. “Brightroar goes to the head of House Lannister, which means Grandfather. After that it goes to me. Grandfather is old, Uncle Jaime can’t have it because he’s in the Kingsguard and they can’t have swords that are better than the King’s sword, you can’t have it, because you’re, well, you, so that just leaves me.”
That still made no sense whatsoever and he was about to say so when he was forestalled. “No,” said Uncle Gerion in a very cold voice as he stood in the doorway to one side. “You are about as wrong in that as you can be.” He strode forwards, his hand resting on the pommel of Brightroar, and bowed slightly to Cersei and Joffrey. “Your Grace. My Prince.”
Cersei stepped backwards with shock and her hands flew to her mouth for a moment. But then she suppressed the shock and stepped forwards again, as poised as before. “So formal, Uncle Gerion?”
“So formal, yes.” His knuckles whitened on the pommel of Brightroar. “I have founded a new branch of House Lannister in the Summer Islands. And my brother will never have Brightroar. It’s mine. It will be my son’s sword after I die. I paid a stiff price for this sword. I earned it. And its previous owner gave it to me and me alone. It’s mine – and then Allarion’s after I die.”
Joffrey had gone first pale and then red with fury. “Brightroar is the property of House Lannister! It was held by the Kings of the Westerlands! It belongs to Grandfather and then after him to me!”
“Why does this matter so much, nephew?” Tyrion asked in an effort to calm the wretched brat. “After all, you will have Stormbreaker in the fullness of time?”
Something odd happened to Joffrey’s face at that point. “Stormbreaker is, is, amazing,” he stammered. “But – Brightroar! It’s been lost for so long! Longer than Stormbreaker!”
“Aye,” said Uncle Gerion, “And now it has been found – and now it is mine. I paid a price for it!”
“Grandfather will match that price!” Joffrey cried eagerly and Tyrion wanted to groan and place his face in his hands.
Gerion Lannister stiffened, his knuckles going even whiter on the pommel – and then he reached up and flipped his eyepatch up to reveal the terrible scar that crossed the hole where his eye had once been. “Can even Tywin Lannister match this price? Getting this sword cost me my eye, as you can see. More importantly it also cost me the lives of a lot of my men, men who died because I was obsessed with this sword. Can he bring them back from the dead?”
Joffrey was as white as a sheet as he stared at that terrible empty eyesocket – and then he shook his head before hurrying away, retching as he went. The Hound shrugged a little, his own terrible scar visible for a moment through that curtain of hair, and then followed more slowly, as if he was amused by the whole thing. As for Cersei, she was made from sterner stuff. She just stood a little straighter. “I will write to Father about this,” she hissed. “You have not heard the last of this… matter.” And then she stalked off.
Tyrion watched her go, before turning to Gerion, who had replaced his eyepatch and was now watching the others practise. “That might have gone better Uncle?”
Gerion turned slightly and an odd look crossed his face. “They had to know. I’m not like Kevan, Tyrion. I’m not going to bow and scrape to Tywin. Too much has happened for that. And as for Cersei… she’s always been an odd one. She expects so much and deserves so little.”
“She is Queen, Uncle.”
The odd look returned, before being washed away with a smile and a nod down at the yards. “Allarion looks good does he not? I’ve asked Ser Rodrik Cassell to teach him the Northern ways of fighting.”
“He learns quickly,” Tyrion replied, and it was true, the boy did. “He’s a credit to you Uncle.”
“What do you make of the others down there?”
He peered. “The Stark brothers look as good as they always do. Theon Greyjoy seems to be learning. As for Sarella, she’s no archer – yet.”
“Give the girl time,” Uncle Gerion laughed. Then he sobered a little. “Funny thing about Robb Stark – his eyes are older than his face. Think about that nephew.” And with that enigmatic remark he clattered down into the practice yards, to watch his son more closely.
Bronn
What he really wanted was to be back on that rock, his fishing rod in one hand, a bread roll with some ham in the other, a river-chilled bottle of ale within reach and above all the sun on his face.
Instead he was going through a great big book listing the supplies of every sort that the Foxhold had. Someone had once made a great number of hobnails for example, enough that the Foxhold was in no danger of running out of them any time soon, if ever.
They also had a lot of pickled cucumbers. Well, in a siege there were worse things to eat. There were only so many ways you could roast a rat on a stick.
Ursula Stone, sorry, Ursula Cawlish placed another book down next to the present one and then opened it to the page detailing the repairs that had last been done. She had stopped regarding him with open loathing and now merely eyed him in an uncertain fashion, as if he was a strange and bizarre creature. Which, strictly speaking, he was. Normally sellswords-turned-landowners tended to misunderstand almost everything, try and sleep with the wrong kind of women, drink the wine cellar dry and generally make a mess of a lot of things in the first six months. He was not going to do that.
Unfortunately he had a nasty feeling that he had become a piece in… whatever this was. It wasn’t the normal Game of Thrones, not with this Call business roiling everything. He still remembered it in his dreams.
He mentally shook his head and looked at the new book. Oh look, more than a few local lords owed him money. A canny bird, the late Lord Cawlish.
Someone knocked on the door and they both looked up. “Maester Haster, what can I do for you?” Bronn asked.
“Lady Arryn is awake my Lord. And she is asking to speak with whoever is in charge.”
Bronn leant back in his chair and steepled his fingers. “Is she now? Is she in her right mind, or is she still calling for the late very much unlamented Lord Baelish?”
Haster considered this carefully for a moment. “I would say that she is in as stable a condition as can be expected from her at the moment my Lord.”
He rubbed his chin for a moment. Well, this was a surprise. He swapped a look with Ursula Cawlish, who raised an eyebrow at him and then nodded slightly. He nodded back. “Right then, I’d better meet her. Steward Cawlish, please accompany me.”
She flickered an annoyed eyebrow at him , as if to say that of course she was coming, but then stood and followed him.
Lysa Arryn still looked terrible, but was less terrible-looking than she had seemed just a few days ago. She was still pale and wan, but there was a little more colour in her cheeks. She still looked as if she had lost a lot of weight very quickly – other than her arm of course – and her skin seemed to be a bit, well, loose in places. As they entered she turned her head to look at them.
“Where is Lord Cawlish!” She snapped the words peevishly. “This is the Foxhold, so where is Cawlish?”
Ah. Bronn hooked his thumbs into his belt and looked at his unwelcome guest. “Lord Cawlish is dead. I’m the new Lord of the Foxhold – Bronn Cassley.”
“Lord Cassley,” his Steward pointed out in tone of slight long-suffering.
“What she said,” Bronn grinned with a tilt of his head. “I’m Lord Cassley.”
Lysa Arryn gaped uncertainly at him for a moment and then shook her head. “Very well, Lord Cassley. I demand that you transport me at once to the Eyrie. I am the new Lady Regent of the Vale, despite this…” She waved at her stump. “This… indisposition, I need to get there as soon as possible. My son, my SweetRobin, he needs me. So I need a raven sent to Winterfell at once. My son must be returned to me at once, or the Vale will march on the North!”
Lysa Arryn’s voice had quavered a lot as she had said those last words and Bronn stared at the bloody woman. Oh, this one was madder than a sackload of concussed stoats. He looked at Haster, who looked confused and then at Ursula, whose face had frozen into a mask of carefully hidden loathing for their ‘guest’.
“Lady Arryn,” he said after a moment. “You seem to be labouring under a few, well, delusions. Firstly, you are not the Lady Regent of the Vale. That’s because your husband is not dead. Secondly, I’m not sending you to the Eyrie because Lord Arryn has told me to keep you here. And finally no raven will fly to Winterfell… because you’ve got no power here.”
There was a pause as she stared at him, now white-faced again, and seemed to absorb what he had said. “Jon Arryn… lives?”
“Aye, he does.” He eyed her warily. She seemed to be breathing rather heavily.
“But that’s… impossible. He’s dead. I saw him die. He’s dead.”
Bronn swapped worried gazes with Ursula and then shook his head. “He’s very much alive. And not very happy with you.”
The object of their worry froze into place. And then her eyes seemed to bulge and she thrashed into life on the bed. “Nooooooo! Not that horrible old man! I killed him! I killed him! I stabbed him and I killed him and he’s dead and I am Lady Regent of the Vale and you must do what I say! Do you hear me? DO WHAT I SAY! Send word to my bitch of a sister that SweetRobin must return to me at once, or the Knights of the Vale will ride! And the armies of the Riverlands! My Father will support me! WHAT ARE YOU ALL DOING??? OBEY ME!”
“Sedate her,” Bronn snapped. “The milk of the poppy, Maester Haster. As much as it will take to keep her quiet. I want her healthy enough to take to King’s Landing and her trial.”
Haster nodded and then motioned to two guards, who held the now weakly thrashing woman down as the Maester poured something down her throat and then stroked it until she swallowed it.
As Lady Arryn slumped down again Bronn swapped a troubled look with Ursula. “She’s going to be trouble, I know it,” he sighed. “She’s to be kept safe and healthy until we can get her out of here, mad or not. And now let’s get back to those books. There’s trouble coming, I can smell it, and I want Foxhold to be ready for whatever comes.”
Ursula Cawlish stared at him for a long moment. “Yes my Lord,” she said in a voice that sent shivers up and down his spine.
Ned
It had been such a long day, and yet it was not yet over. There was still the feast to come. Cat had organised everything to a nicety and yet he still wished that it was all over. There was so much to do.
But first he had one last meeting and he looked up from his desk in the solar as Jory escorted Lords Royce and Redfort into the room, before leaving and closing the door to stand guard outside.
Horton Redfort looked older than the last time they’d met – but despite the now completely grey hair and beard that were shading to white in many places he was still straight of back. He clasped arms with Ned with a smile and a slap to his shoulder before making way for Bronze Yohn. His old friend clasped arms with a grin.
“Welcome back to Winterfell, Yohn,” Ned smiled as they pounded each other’s shoulders for a moment and then stepped apart. “Be welcome to both of you.” The offer of bread, salt and wine was hardly necessary, but it was important. As he lowered his cup he looked at them both. Each was wearing adornments to their armour – pieces of cloth were covering some parts.
“You called us, Lord Stark and we have come,” Bronze Yohn rumbled. “The Call shook Runestone down to its very foundations.”
“Aye and the Redfort too,” Horton broke in. “A greater shock than the start of the Rebellion, when I heard about the death of your father.”
“A lot has happened,” Ned nodded. “And the Others have indeed returned. You have seen the wight parts that have gone about the land?”
“Yes,” Bronze Yohn said with a wince. “A strange and terrible sight. But at Runestone we didn’t need to see them to know what was coming. The runes, Ned.” He pulled a piece of cloth to one side and Ned could see that the runed armour beneath was glowing dully. “The further North we get the more they glow. And at Runestone… well, I told you that there were certain places that we guard? The runes on the walls there glow even brighter than that. They’re older than we thought – carved after the last great war against the Others, thousands of years ago – and there’s more of them than I thought.
“They tell of the war and the weapons that it was fought with. The First Men came from all over to fight the Others and after the war they went home, but not before the Wall was started. It must have been the last time that the First Men were all united for one cause.”
“Until now, for their descendants anyway,” Horton muttered. “The King is here with the sword of the Durrandons and you have the Fist of Winter. There’s word from the Reach that Otherbane has been found too.”
“Aye, we heard that too,” Ned replied. “Tyrion Lannister found Rocktooth, the axe of his ancestors, at the Nightfort, along with twin daggers called the Warnings.”
Lords Royce and Redfort traded surprised glances. “That’s good news indeed,” muttered Bronze Yohn. “There was a legend of a sword of light from Dorne and a shield that was once carried by the kings of the Riverlands.”
Ned frowned. “A sword of light? That might mean Dawn, the sword of House Dayne. Lord Dayne himself is here now – he bears it. As for the shield… well, I can send a raven to my goodfather. There might be some record in Riverrun.” He leant back a bit and frowned. “That makes for a major First Men weapon for all the mainland Westerosi kingdoms except the Vale then. What did the Vale have?”
“This,” Bronze Yohn said quietly as he pointed at the glowing runes on his armour. “The runes. From what the runes on the walls at Runestone say I think that the ones on our armour deter the Others in some way. How – I know not.” He looked at his feet, his face working a little for a moment before he looked up again. “Ned, I am ashamed to say that despite my own house’s words of ‘We Remember’, in this case we do not. Certain runes glow and certain words don’t, and I’m buggered if I know why. I’ve brought books with me with each and every transcription in Runestone faithfully copied out, every rune on the walls, as well as sketches of them.
“I’ve had blacksmiths work on inscribing runes on new armour, but again some glow and some don’t. There must be a reason for this, something recorded somewhere. My only thought about this is that my ancestors thought that the secret was so obvious that they never wrote it down – and so the secret was lost.”
“Ned, at the Redfort there’s a dim legend that there were once runescribers, those who knew how to craft runes of power. But who they were, how they did it… is a mystery.” Horton Redfort looked more than a bit haunted as he said the words.
Ned sighed. Yet another mystery. He forced a smile. “Well, better to know what to look for than not to know it at all. I’ll look through everything you brought. Maester Luwin here is dedicated to me and has been looking through a great many records.”
The two Lords of the Vale nodded sombrely. “By the way,” Bronze Yohn said in a more cheerful tone, “We saw Lord Arryn’s son playing earlier with your own son as well as King Robert’s bastard. He looked much changed from the last time I saw him, and all for the better.”
“Ned,” muttered Horton, “When we announced we were coming North a number of lords asked that we… observe Robert Arryn. There were rumours about him being weak and stunted. I am so very glad to see that they were not right.”
“Aye,” Ned said with a certain amount of pride. “He’s changed a lot. He’s free of the poison that his mother was feeding him, whether she knew it was poison or not. He reminds me of Denys Arryn a great deal.”
“He’s his father’s heir then?”
“Oh aye – ah. You mean-?”
“There have been rumours, Ned.”
“Put them at rest. He’s an Arryn. Looks just like Denys at that age. He’s not Baelish’s son. The timings don’t match up anyway – I have done some quiet questioning of my own. He is the son of Jon Arryn.”
The other two men looked at him, nodded seriously and then Bronze Yohn smiled a little. “You have been to Castle Black?”
“I have. And before you ask, yes I saw Waymar there. He was well. He heard the Call, as did all at the Wall.”
A fist knocked at the door and he looked at it. “Come!”
The door opened to reveal Jory Cassel. “Your pardon my Lord, but Lady Stark has sent word that you need to bathe and change your clothes before tonight’s feast.”
Ned rolled his eyes, but stood. “Your pardon, my Lords. My wife calls me.” He paused. “Send the records to Luwin if you would. We shall look into this.”
Jaime
As he escorted Baratheon into the Great Hall of Winterfell for the feast he was already listing all the things that would take place that evening. Robert Baratheon was a creature of habit and when it came to feasts he always followed the same pattern. He would bellow some comments in a ‘speech’, he’d guzzle wine like water, he’d gorge on half a boar, eye the chest of the woman with the biggest tits in the room, say something drunken and rude, pinch the bottom of at least one serving girl and generally be embarrassing. And nine months later a bastard would be born somewhere, unless moontea was on hand that night.
The feast did not start out the way that he predicted however. As soon as the hall was full Baratheon stood up. “I see many old friends here tonight – aye, and new ones as well. I see men who marched with me to the Trident. I also see men who fought against me. And tonight I also see men who fought in Essos.
“We all share something though. We are all men of Westeros. Aye, and women. And we all know what comes, what marches on the Wall. My old friend here, Lord Stark, often told me that Winter was coming. I never knew until the Call was sent out how true that was.
“Yes, the North has sent out the Call. We have answered it! Look around this hall. There are men and women here from all over Westeros. Stormlanders. Reachmen. Westerlanders. Crownlanders. Valemen. Riverlanders. Even Iron Islanders! We have come here, at this time, in this place, to answer the Call of the North. The Others have returned. We all know what’s at stake.”
The Great Hall was silent as everyone looked at Baratheon. Jaime squinted around. They were hanging on his every word, although Cersei seemed to be suppressing a violent need to roll her eyes at all this foolishness. Selmy, however… his back was straight and his eyes were bright as he looked at Baratheon.
“The North must know this – you are not alone,” The King continued. “We will stand and fight with you. There is only one war ahead of us – the great war and it is here, now. We will fight on the Wall and beat back the Others. From now until the end of time, I pledge this here and now. We will fight and some will die, but we will win. Ours in the fury! Because Winter is coming!”
As he roared the last words he raised his goblet high and every person in the Great Hall stood almost as one and cheered him to the rafters. The hairs rose on the back of Jaime’s neck. He hadn’t been at the Trident before the battle of the Ruby Ford, but he had always wondered what Baratheon had said to his men there to make them fight with such fury.
The feast started and after a moment Jaime broke out of his reverie and started to look about again. And the longer he watched the more confused he became. Robert Baratheon was not guzzling wine as if it was water, instead he was sipping it. He wasn’t sinking up to his jawline in roast boar, he was eating slowly. And he was not eying the serving wenches, he was instead involved in a very intent talk with Ned Stark and Stannis Baratheon, with the intermittent intervention from Maester Luwin, who would collect or deliver the occasional message.
It was all most peculiar.
And then it got odder. The feast was not a long one and although many stayed on to drink wine and ale and generally carouse, Baratheon was not going to be one of them, based on what he was saying.
He cast an eye at Cersei. She was busy talking in a rather icy fashion with Catelyn Stark, who was trying her best to be civil, based on the look on her face. When his sister seemed to sense his gaze she glanced in his direction and then blinked twice. Ah. Time to talk.
As Cersei stood and then swept out in the general direction of the privies he followed her, linking her arm in his as they went. “Interesting speech,” he muttered. “They seemed to like it.”
“They were drunk, they would,” she all but sneered. “Have you explored Winterfell much?”
“I am a loyal member of the Kingsguard, I have inspected much of it so that I can protect the King and his family. The First Keep, for example, appears at first glance to be empty, but is actually being repaired in large part. Of course that means that the Broken Tower, which was under repair, is now empty.”
“I see, dear brother. What time does my Husband leave tomorrow for this hunt of his?”
“About mid-morning.”
“Are you joining him?”
“I have other matters to attend to at that hour. More inspections, for one.”
“I am grateful for your diligence. Please let me know about what you find after he is gone on his hunt.”
“Oh, I shall investigate matters most diligently. And… hard.”
“I would expect no other.” And with that she turned to face him with eyes that promised everything, before going off to the privy.
He walked back to the Great Hall and arrived there just in time to see Robert Baratheon stalk out, still talking to Stark and the Toothgrinder. As Stark walked past them a great dark shaggy figure stalked up to him and Jaime repressed a shudder. That thing scared him a bit, he had to admit. There was something about the way that it looked at anyone who approached Stark, as if it was wondering how to pull their arms out of the sockets and only then take a bite out of their throat.
A flash of white at the corner of his eye made him aware of the arrival of Preston Greenfield, who paused and looked at the direwolf as well. “Aye,” his sworn brother muttered, “She worries me as well. Not for the safety of the King – He’s too close to Lord Stark. Those eyes though…”
Jaime took the first watch that night, having asked for it. He was still getting used to Winterfell and much to his interest the castle was far warmer than he had first thought. Tyrion had told him once that the place had been built on top of hot springs and that the water was somehow pumped about inside the walls. All he knew was that his room had access to hot water at all times and he was going to enjoy a bath the next day.
Oh and another surprise. No chambermaids or other female servants were in the King’s chambers. Instead the only sounds to emerge were loud snores from a very asleep Robert Baratheon. It was no wonder really, the man had been staggering around a courtyard earlier with another log on his shoulders. Well… not quite staggering. Striding. And then he’d had a sparring session with Ned Stark that had left the pair of them covered in sweat, leaning on their practice swords and grinning as they swapped old war stories.
When Preston Greenfield relieved him in the early hours Jaime did not go to bed at once. No, first he strode about the courtyard outside, sniffing their air, measuring and assessing. Only when he thought that the last of the servants had gone to bed did he make a move. He took off his white cloak, balled it up and then walked to a door to one side of the armoury where he had left a sheet that he had, well, ‘borrowed’ from a neat pile in the servants quarters.
His path had then taken him to the bigger courtyard to one side that led to… he slowed and stopped. He had the oddest feeling that he was being watched. But by who? He peered around carefully. Every now and then he saw a spear flash in the moonlight as a guard walked on the walls, but they were all far away.
It wasn’t until he looked towards the Guard’s Hall that he realised just who – or rather what – was watching him. A direwolf pup of all things. It was just sitting there, its head tilted to one side as it regarded him gravely. Well, perhaps pup was the wrong word. The damn thing was as big as a hound already, if a lot fluffier. Its ears swivelled slightly as he approached.
He eyed it carefully. “Shoo.” It just sat there, staring at him. “Impudent little thing aren’t you,” he muttered and then blinked a little as the little direwolf seemed to laugh with a huff huff of sound. “Bugger off!”
He walked past it, having suppressed the desire to kick the bloody thing – a bad idea given its mother – walked around the Guard’s Hall and then strode quickly to the Broken Tower. The door at the base of it was open and he pattered up the creaking stairs, past the first floor, which was filled with building supplies and onto the second floor, where someone had left a desk with plans neatly stacked to one side. It belonged to a Northman called Gethyn, or something like that, who was spending the next day in the First Keep repairing as much as possible. Jaime dropped the sheet there and then peered out of the window. Perfect. Isolated, with a creaking staircase that would give plenty of warning. The next level up was inaccessible, being blocked off by a wooden door – the plans said ‘unsafe’.
His next task was to get some water and fortunately the well had a well-oiled windlass. The secret to assignments such as the one that would happen the next day was to not smell like sex afterwards. So – a sheet, a pail of water and some soap. All ready. It was all so very primitive, but so was the North.
As he left the tower carefully, looking about, he caught sight of that bloody direwolf pup. It was still staring at him. As he strode towards his quarters it pricked up its ears and then loped off. How odd. Well – nothing to worry about. He had a bath ahead of him and then sleep. And then, after that… something that made him feel more alive than anything else.
Jon Stark
He yawned as he walked down the corridor. Father had told them all to take it easy the night before, adding that they’d have to be up early. Well – this was early. Too bloody early. The sun had risen but it was earlier than he was used to. And they had to get ready for this bloody hunt.
He knew what was at stake. Father had explained everything in great detail, so they all knew just how important this was. The plan had to work. From what he’d seen of the little shit Joffrey Baratheon would make a bloody awful king – and Robb’s tale of what the boy had done when he was king had been a terrible one.
A lot still had to be done though. Robb and Luwin were talking to one side with Stannis Baratheon and Jory Cassel. He sighed a little and then looked at the sun. Another few hours.
He spent the first of those hours checking out the horses and making sure that the saddles and other riding gear was in good shape. The grooms helped with that, but it kept him busy and Theon even wandered in at one point to help.
It was odd, how much Theon had changed. He’d gone from being an arrogant prideful idiot into a far more thoughtful person. Oh, there were still flashes of that old Theon now and then, but whenever he said anything meaningful it was only after a considerable amount of thought. Plus he despised his own Father, which gave him something in common with Jon.
After the stables he walked out into the training yards. Robb had had the same thought and was practising with Ice against a target dummy. He was much better at using the huge blade, but he still needed to practice with it and Ser Rodrik was there besides him, giving him instructions and advice, whilst on a balcony to one side Sansa watched with the Princess Myrcella. The little Princess seemed to have very wide eyes.
And then there was the second group, the smaller one. Ygritte and Val were standing next to Sarella Sand, with the red-headed Wildling giving the Dornish girl advice about the best way to aim and loose arrows smoothly.
After a while the Wildlings moved away and left the Dornish girl to her practice. Val went to watch Robb – just what was going on there? – whilst Ygritte sought him out. “Where’s Dorne?”
“What?”
“Where’s Dorne? She keeps talking about the place and how cold the North is compared to Dorne. Given how warm it is down here compared to North of the Wall, Dorne must be hellish. How far South is it?”
“All the way South – the Southernmost part of all Westeros. And yes, it’s hot down there. Whatever she and Lord Dayne say about Dorne… well, you might not believe them, but it’s very likely true.”
She nodded slowly, before looking about the walls of Winterfell again. “I never thought I’d see anything like this. It’s the biggest place in the world!”
“I’ve read that there are bigger places. King’s Landing is huge. In terms of citadels Storm’s End is big too.”
Ygritte mouthed the names almost in wonder, before shaking her head a little. “So this is where you live, Jon Stark. Will you live here all your life?”
He paused at that. “No,” he said eventually. “Lord Stark says that he’ll grant me a holdfast somewhere. I’ll be a bannerman to my brother Robb. Found a cadet branch – Snowstarks perhaps.” It all seemed so unreal… a plan for a future that he had no idea if he would ever reach. He had to survive the war first and that was easier said than done.
“Does he have a Southron lady lined up for you then? All dressed up in la-di-dah dresses?”
He stared at her, baffled. “La-di-dah?”
“Silks and satins,” she replied, mouthing the words oddly as if she had no idea what they were. “All thin and flimsy and no use North of the Wall.”
This conversation was taking a very odd direction, but he shook his head. “No. My Father has no wife lined up for me.”
“Good,” said Ygritte. “I like a challenge.” And then she stalked off.
She baffled him at times, she really did.
A throat was cleared to one side and he turned to see Father standing there. He looked amused for some reason, although the smile faded after a moment. “It’s time.”
The main courtyard was abuzz with activity as they walked into it. The horses had all been saddled, but Jon still checked his out of habit. Looked fine. Robb was doing the same to one side and they shared a look and a nod, along with Theon on the other side.
A booming laugh heralded the arrival of the King, who looked as if he had just stuck his head in a bucket of water, which was probably what had just happened. The man had been walking about with that log on his shoulders again, something that still awed him a bit. He’d grown up on stories about Robert Baratheon and the man was certainly every bit as impressive as those stories had made him out to be.
As the King heaved himself onto his saddle, with Ser Barristan Selmy next to him, he looked for Father, before finally spotting him. “Right Ned,” he shouted as he took the proffered spear, “Let’s get some boar for the supper table!”
The huntsmen roared agreement and then the first of them started to ride through the gates, a small thicket of spears. As he urged his own horse out Jon looked quickly around the courtyard. Lady Stark was on the balcony, with Arya and Bran next to her. In the future that Robb had come from Bran had fallen off the walls on this day. That was not going to happen today.
He could see Joffrey and the Hound ahead of him, both looking unamused. The little shit probably thought that he had better things to do than participate in this hunt, whilst the Hound was probably still hungover and surly after all the ale he had swilled the previous night. And to one side he caught a flash of blonde hair. The Queen.
As he passed through the gates he knew that if all went well he would return to a castle that would be… well, it wouldn’t be boring.
Ned
There was a man on the gatehouse with a Myrish spyglass watching them. He knew that because he had issued orders for that to happen. The moment that the hunting party entered the Wolfswood then a rider on a very fast horse would be sent after them. It was all a matter of timing.
The trees were looming ahead and he sighed a little. Explaining all this was going to be… difficult. He and Stannis would have to talk Robert down from killing the Lannister Twins the moment that he saw them.
Robert was giving orders already about the hunt – where some of the best horsemen would go, how much of an interval there would be, all the things that went to making a hunt successful. Ned watched all this, issuing orders of his own here and there. Robb, Jon and Theon were to one side, talking quietly amongst themselves.
He wanted to look over his shoulder at the treeline behind them as he felt the minutes trickling through his fingers, but he dared not. He detested all this trickery and mummery, but he had no choice in this. The two had to be caught in the act and this was the best chance for this. Thanks to Arya and Nymeria he knew that the Kingslayer had already made preparations in the Broken Tower.
It came as a relief when the rider arrived, on a blowing horse. “Lord Stark, a message from the Lord Hand,” the rider panted as he held out the note. He took it and unfolded it. Yes, a summons from Stannis, as they had planned it.
“Your Grace?” Ned shouted to Robert.
“What’s wrong Ned?” Robert looked at the message. “What’s happened?”
“Lord Stannis and my wife need me back at Winterfell. A minor dispute, but they need me back there. I’ll be back, but I need to take Robb with me. And I need to borrow Ser Barristan.”
Robert stared at him, confused. “Selmy? Why?”
“He’s highly regarded and impartial. Stannis asked for him to witness the resolution of this.” He smiled. “I’ll be back – don’t hog all the best boars to yourself – or the deer.”
Robert groaned at the pun but nodded. “Alright. Ser Barristan?”
“Your Grace?”
“You heard?”
“I did your Grace. I’d be happy to help, but I do it under protest – my place is here by your side.”
“I’ve got the others,” Robert replied. “Greenfield too.”
“Jon and Theon have hunted here often – they’ll help you,” Ned said as he turned his horse. “Let’s get this done with.”
The trio galloped back to Winterfell, but halfway there Ned held up a hand and they slowed. “Ser Barristan, my apologies, but I have taken you away under something of a false pretence. We are needed at Winterfell, but for a different reason – a far more important one. Treason.”
The old knight’s frown turned into an alarmed stare. “Treason, my Lord? Is the King in any danger?”
“None whatsoever – he is safe at the hunt, you have my word on it. But there is a situation in Winterfell, one that involves treason. I need you as a witness to this.”
Selmy’s eyes flickered over his face, before he nodded slowly. “Very well, my Lord. As I have your word that the king is safe, I will assist you in this.”
They rode in silence after this, but not to the Hunter’s Gate. Instead they went to a small postern gate that was at the side of one of the towers on the wall. Faithful Jory was there, with his uncle next to him. As they passed through the wall and into the Godswood he saw that Stannis Baratheon was approaching, with two of his own men.
“Lord Stark, Ser Barristan. We are all ready here. Your daughter says that they are both in the tower.”
“Who are we talking about? Lord Stark mentioned treason, my Lord Hand.” Selmy was frowning again.
“Oh, it is treason indeed. I will not say more, we need you to witness this in an impartial manner. But we need to move now.”
Selmy still looked troubled but nodded – and then they were off through the trees. “Your orders have been carried out my Lord,” Ser Rodrik muttered. “No-one is to go near the tower. There will be no warning of our arrival.”
“Good,” Ned muttered and then silence fell as they walked. The men were armed with a collection of weapons, including short swords, daggers and two crossbows. And above all they were not wearing anything that might clink or make a noise easily. He eyed Ser Barristan. The man was in his usual plate steel armour, but he also walked like a cat.
Nymeria was sitting at the base of the tower and looked at them as they approached – before huffing and then loping away. Arya didn’t know why she had been asked to keep an eye on the Kingslayer, but had jumped at the chance to warg.
Ned turned to the others and held a finger to his lips before walking to the scaffolding and then pulling the cloth carefully to one side. A ladder led to a carefully constructed wooden walkway that curved upwards. Ned led them all upwards, treading carefully. The walkway had been built well and his inspection of it before Robert had arrived had shown that it was possible to use it quietly. That said, he moved as silently as he could.
Up they went, his heart pounding at the slightest noise made by anyone, up to the opening in the side of the tower. They passed through it and onto the stairs. The stairs leading up from the ground floor were not in good repair. These stairs however were. They had been completely repaired. Still, they went down just as carefully to the wooden door that blocked the way. Jory slipped past him and put an eye to the slight gap in it. Then he nodded. “They’ve closed the door,” he said in a ghost of a whisper.
Ned nodded and then opened the door, which had been very well oiled indeed. As they assembled on the landing the crossbows, which had been cocked beforehand, were loaded with quarrels. The others placed a hand on the pommel of their swords and looked at Ned, who had an ear to the door. Inside he could hear moans and groans of passion. They were in luck. And then he leant back slightly and kicked the door open.
Jaime
Their first coupling in the tower had been one born of need and lust. After so long a time on the road, being unable to touch each other as they might have longed for had been torture, so the moment that he had closed the door to the room she had been on him like a falcon on a sparrow.
Heh. Some sparrow he was. They had fucked urgently, almost roughly, and he had been unable to make it last as long as he might have wanted it to.
Afterwards they had lain in each other’s arms and all the pent-up torrent of bitterness had poured out of Cersei. She hated this place, she hated the North, Robert had no right to bring her and the children here, the Northerners were all savages, Stannis was an idiot and shouldn’t be Hand of the King, Jaime should be instead, oh and she had written to Father and Brightroar would be taken from Uncle Gerion, by force if need be, and given to Jaime, or Joffrey, she hadn’t made her mind up yet.
And the closeness, the smell of her, the touches, the kisses, all had led to this, their second coupling. This was longer, he was able to take his time on this, making her groan and shudder as he thrust into her. Nothing louder, they could not be detected, but the look on her face was amazing, showing him everything that she felt about him.
There was no warning. One minute it was just them, lost in that moment, and then the door burst open, almost coming off its hinges, and a group of men darted in, drawing swords as they came.
He froze in utter horror, shocked beyond belief. The stairs had not creaked – there had been nothing to warn of their approach. They had been discovered in the most compromising of positions.
And then as he saw Stannis Baratheon and Ned Stark enter the room, with someone else behind him, the moment of shock broke. Cersei shrieked in shock and jerked away from him, back as fast as she could whilst trying to use first her hands and then whatever she could grab of the sheets to cover her nakedness.
Jaime gaped at her for a moment as his rapid deflating cock came close to being hit by her feet – and then his instincts kicked in. Sword, he thought automatically, I need my sword. He rolled to one side, towards where he had thrown his clothes and left his sword, reached out with one hand – and then a boot hammered into his shoulder and he was driven to one side with a shock that made his teeth click. Sword, he needed to get to his sword. He pushed himself up and tried to lunge for it again, aware that Cersei had stopped screaming incoherently and was now screaming orders that they all get out, now, but suddenly a hand grabbed his sword and pulled it away – and there was a crossbow being pointed at him.
“Don’t.” Jory Cassel said the word with an intentness that promised that he would pull the trigger if he had to. He was fast, he’d always been fast, but could he outspeed a crossbow bolt? His sword was out of reach but his boots had his dagger in them and they were just over there and if he could just get to it…
A hand descended on the back of his neck and all of a sudden he was hurtling backwards to hit the wall. The impact made him see stars for a moment and then a gauntleted hand was wrapped around his neck and started to squeeze.
It was Selmy and there was a look on his face that he had never seen before. The Lord Commander of the Kingsguard’s eyes were blazing with incandescent fury, whilst his face wore a snarl of utter rage.
“You… you… I’ll burn your cloak myself, lighting it with your page from the White Book! You are not worthy of them! You never were! You have no honour! YOU ARE NO KNIGHT OF THE KINGSGUARD! YOU ARE NO KNIGHT AT ALL!!!”
He may have been an old man, but his fingers were not, no, they were made of iron and they kept squeezing no matter how hard he beat at them with his bare hands and his vision was starting to go grey at the edges…
“SELMY! HOLD!” Ned Stark was at Selmy’s side now. “They will both face the King’s justice! But you have to let him go!”
Slowly, so very slowly, Selmy’s fingers released their grip on his throat and Jaime took a desperate gulp of air into his lungs. Ser Barristan Selmy still loomed over him, a look of utter fury on his face. “He keeps a knife – a dagger – in his boot. Be wary of this one. He’s an animal.”
Jory Cassel strode over to his boots and pulled the dagger out, his eyebrows going up and down. “Nasty,” he muttered. “You can put an eye out with something like this.”
Cersei was still screaming something about having everyone executed when Stannis Baratheon steeped in front of her. “Be silent!” His roar actually shut her up. “You are both under arrest. The charge is treason to the Crown. Throw some clothes on them both. We’ll need to hood them as well. Take him to a cell and confine her to her room. Search it for blades first.”
“You cannot do this!” Cersei screamed. “I am the Queen!”
“Not for much longer,” Stark snapped. “Not for much longer at all.”
Chapter Text
Apologies for the lack of updates. Hopefully a chapter this long will make up for it!
Ned
They had been lucky. So very, very, lucky. He had gambled and won – a calculated gamble, one that he had thought long and hard about, but still a gamble. If they had been too early or too late then they might not have been able to discover the truth of it. But now they knew.
And so did Selmy. The old knight was in a killing rage, but was restraining himself. With every moment as they went down the creaking stairs with their now-hooded prisoners he seemed to rebuild the image of the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard that he usually showed.
“Where will you hold them My Lord?” Selmy asked formally, an echo of the rage still in his voice. “I suggest you choose a very safe place.”
“We have made sure that there are two rooms prepared. One a cell and the other a… secure room.”
“This will cause a lot of… trouble, to say the very least.” The hooded figure of Jaime Lannister seemed to find this funny and Selmy glanced at him, narrowed his eyes and clamped a gauntleted hand around the back of his neck and squeezed hard enough to cause a yelp of pain. “Silence, dog!”
“That’s something of an understatement Ser Barristan,” Ned sighed. “Jory, take the prisoners on to the Old Keep, via the side gate. We have guards there – men I trust.”
As the stumbling (and in the case of Cersei, muttering – he had threatened to gag her at one point) prisoners were taken away he turned to Ser Barristan and Stannis. “We need to take care of the Redcloaks in Winterfell. There numbers are small, but they might try something.”
“They will not,” said a new voice and he turned with an oath, his hand going to the Fist at his waist, whilst the other two drew their swords. Gerion Lannister and his son were standing in the shadows to one side. Neither was armed. “Peace! We are unarmed.”
“What do you want, Lannister?” Stannis ground out. Then he frowned. “How did you come to be here?”
Gerion Lannister looked at his son, who nodded at him before clearing his throat nervously. “I dreamt… I dreamt a greendream, my Lords. Two nights ago and again last night. I dreamt…. I dreamt that two lions rutted at the top of a tower, which crumbled beneath them and plunged them into a pit of despair.” The young man blushed a bit. “One of the lions tried to claw its way back into the light, but which one it was and if it succeeded I do not know.”
“I dreamt something similar last night as well,” Gerion Lannister muttered. “You look a little sceptical, Ser Barristan. You should not. Greendreams are… enigmatic. Nebulous things of mist, with many interpretations. But this one was clear. I dreamt of twin lions. And this tower. There could be only one conclusion.” He drew himself up. “I will order the Lannister guards in Winterfell and Wintertown to stay in their barracks. I am the brother of Tywin Lannister. I will make them listen. You have my word on that. Not the word of my idiot nephew Jaime I might add. Mine.”
There was a long pause as they looked at the two Lannisters – the other Lannisters, as it were. And then Ned nodded slightly. “Very well.” As Selmy and Stannis stared at him he raised an eyebrow. “They have both proved themselves. And their word is good at least.”
Selmy raised an eyebrow at this and there was the faintest sound of teeth-grinding from Stannis, but eventually they both nodded. Not that they had much of a choice, not here in Winterfell. He looked at Gerion Lannister and jerked his head towards the barracks. “Very well – go.”
“I need to tell the King what has happened here,” Selmy muttered. “He will be… well, beyond furious.”
“A moment, Ser Barristan. Two other things. Firstly, and I ask your pardon for this but it is important, we have just placed the Queen in confinement. Which of your sworn brothers can now be relied on? Which of them were placed in the Kingsguard under her orders?”
Selmy bristled for a moment – and then his shoulders slumped a little. “It… it is true that the Kingsguard is not what it was. When I served Aerys in the beginning… well, ‘tis no matter.” He took a deep breath. “Blount… he’s brave but not a thinker. He’s from the Crownlands and should do whatever his King commands – no matter who the King is. Trant too. Sadly I suspect that the Queen has corrupted them both. Moore is an odd man, but I think that we can rely on him. Greenfield too. As for Oakheart… well, he is as sound as his name or thinks and hopes that he is. Of them, Greenfield and Oakheart are with us here in Winterfell. The Queen objected, but with all that has happened I wanted men that I could trust Implicitly, or as much as I could trust them.”
Ned looked at him for a long moment and then nodded. “It might be,” he said delicately, “That you might need to reconsider how to deal with certain of your sworn brothers. Jaime Lannister must be dismissed from the Kingsguard. But more of that for another time. There is the second matter. That of Prince Joffrey. What colour are his hair and eyes, Ser Barristan?”
The old knight looked confused for a moment. “He has his mother’s colouring, Lord Stark. Gold of hair and green of eye.”
“And his brother? And his sister?”
“The same.”
“And what colour hair and eyes does Gendry Storm have?”
“Why… the boy takes after his Grace.”
“As does Edric Storm. And I believe that another of his Grace’s bastard children are here as well, Mya Stone. All three are black of hair and blue of eye. Just like their father.”
Selmy just stared blankly at him for a long moment – and then all of a sudden the rage returned. “You mean to say that… Gods, it cannot be!”
“Oh believe me, it is,” Stannis ground out. “I have seen five more of Robert’s Bastards, in King’s Landing and other places, with word of another two. All were black of hair and blue of eye. My brother’s blood is strong. How much of it therefore flows in the veins of Joffrey, Tommen and Myrcella?”
Selmy looked as if he was about to burst into a thousand pieces with rage – and then he paused and seemed to master his anger. “I should have insisted on that whoreson being dismissed from the Kingsguard when it was reformed after the War. But what is done now cannot be undone. Very well. The King’s children might not be his own. They too will have to be guarded.” He peered at Ned. “They are but children though,” he all but pleaded. “They cannot be executed, no matter how great the rage of the King.”
“You have my word on that Ser Barristan,” Ned grated. “I will not see children die for the mistakes of their parents.”
“I agree,” Stannis said heavily. “But they must remain here. Under protection.”
Ned nodded and then looked at them both. “I will ride out with you Ser Barristan and tell the King. He’ll want to get back here at once and hopefully the gallop will allow him to see through his rage and at the position this has placed him in. My Lord Hand, I leave matters in Winterfell in your hands. We will be back soon.”
The three men nodded at each other and then Ned and Selmy strode off to the gate where their horses were being held for them.
As they rode back towards the Wolfswood at a steady canter Ned thought matters over carefully. “What of Clegane?”
“The Hound?” Ser Barristan Selmy fell silent for a long moment as if in deep thought. “He will obey the orders of the King. He is true to that. The King is the only person who can give him his heart’s desire.”
“And what is that?”
“A chance to fight and kill the Mountain.”
Ned shivered a little as he remembered that room in the Red Keep and the pathetic little – and not so little – bodies. “He’s welcome to that animal.”
They found Robert standing in a clearing, with a huge smile on his face and the carcasses of four boars already slung from poles held by servants. Robb and Jon were with him, looking alert and gesturing in the direction of where they thought more boars might be.
As soon as his old friend saw them he beamed at them. “Ned! Ser Barristan! Back at last!” But then he saw the looks on their faces and he sobered and strode over to them both. “I know that look Ned. What’s amiss?”
Ned dismounted and rubbed his chin, before jerking his head to one side. “I need to talk to you Robert.”
The King frowned but followed him over to one side. “What is it Ned?”
“We need you back in Winterfell. We have uncovered a treasonous plot against you.”
Robert frowned direfully. “Treason? What treason?”
Ned looked about carefully. Robb and Jon were close, looking about the place, whilst Selmy was whispering into the ear of Preston Greenfield – whose eyes had suddenly widened hugely. ‘Prince’ Joffrey was off on the far side of the clearing, looking sour and sulky.
“Your wife has been discovered… having relations with another man.”
Robert just stared at him for a long moment. “Having relations… what…” Then the words fully sank in and his face flushed with blood. “What???? With who????”
“Calmly, Robert, calmly, there is a lot at stake here. I will tell you we ride, as we need to leave now and ride for Winterfell.”
Robert glared at him, his face red with rage, but eventually he nodded choppily and mounted his horse. Ned looked at Robb, who nodded and then gestured at the head huntsmen, who in turn led a large section of the party away North, after more boar. That just left Ned in charge of a smaller, now grim-faced group who coalesced around them – all in Stark or Baratheon colours.
“Who, Ned? Tell me!” Robert snarled as he urged his horse back towards Winterfell.
He hesitated for a moment, but then said the words he had been dreading saying: “Her own brother. The Kingslayer.” Ned winced as he said those words, expecting a bellow of rage – but instead Robert’s snarl deepened and he urged his horse on faster.
“I’ll kill that bitch myself!” Robert finally roared as they reached a track and caught sight of the walls of Winterfell in the distance.
Well now. Time for him to preach restraint.
It was not going to be easy. At all.
Tyrion
He closed the book and patted it gently. The number and variety of books that he had now read about the First Men and their wars was growing by the day. But the more he read the more frustrated he became. The last war against the Others had been so long ago that all they had were legends – an echo of a rumour of a conflated half-remembered semi-fact.
If it wasn’t for the fact that the situation North of the Wall was so serious, he would have been in a paradise of books. Instead he felt as if he was scrabbling in the darkness, trying to feel his way towards answers, only able to use his fingertips.
For a man used to finding answers easily, this was beyond frustrating. Somewhere, in all these books there had to be something, anything, that gave a hint about that damn chair in the Nightfort. It was important, he knew it. But why?
He pulled out another book but just before he could open it he heard hurried footsteps to one side, which heralded the arrival of Allarion, who looked worried. “Cousin Tyrion, my father wants to see you at once. It’s urgent.”
He looked at the lad. He was rattled – more rattled than he had been at the battle of the Nightfort. “What has happened?”
Allarion looked about. “Something of great import. Father needs to talk to you now, cousin.”
It was easy to find Uncle Gerion. He was standing at a doorway in the barracks, talking to the leader of the Redcloaks who had accompanied the King. Or rather he was shouting at him.
“I am Ser Gerion Lannister, Lord of Lannishall in the Summer Islands and brother of Lord Tywin Lannister. I am the oldest and most senior male Lannister in Winterfell and you will acknowledge my authority!” He looked over to Allarion, who hurried over, and it was only then that Tyrion realised that he was holding Brightroar, which he handed over to his father. Gerion nodded at his son and then held up the sword, hilt first. “Do you see this? Brightroar! The sword of the Lannister Kings of the Westerlands. Think of it as the symbol of my authority. If you cross me you’ll be lucky to get a job as a sellsword guarding a hovel somewhere in Essos. And if you are unlucky then you’ll be very dead.”
“But Ser Gerion-” the Redcloak started to say, only to be cut off by his uncle.
“This matter is the business of the King! He has the ultimate authority here and if need be I will involve him. Do you want that?”
The Redcloak went white and shook his head. “But the Queen-”
“Is the business of the King. Now – have your men stand down. You will not do a damn thing without my direct orders. Do you understand?” The Redcloak nodded. “Good. Now – I will arrange to have food and drink brought to your men. Keep a firm grip on them. I will be watching to make sure that you do so.”
The Redcloak scurried off, a combination of fear and sullen resentment on his face and Gerion beckoned Tyrion over. “Nephew, I need your help.”
“What has Cersei done Uncle?” Tyrion asked the question as a worm of terror gripped his innards. Gods, what had his fool of a sister attempted?
Gerion looked at him and then sighed and winced at the same time. “She,” he muttered quietly, “Was discovered having… relations with your brother.”
The meaning of the word relations clattered about in his head for a long instant – what had he meant? – before all of a sudden everything came together in his head with terrifying speed. “They were… they were… coupling.”
“It sounds more like they were rutting like mindless animals, but yes, they were found together. Naked and… entwined.”
He felt as if he had been suddenly plunged into a vat of ice cold water that he had never suspected had been lurking under his feet. The implications were… terrifying. “Who witnessed this?”
Uncle Gerion somehow managed to look even grimmer. “Ned Stark, Stannis Baratheon, Barristan Selmy and some guards. The ravens are flying already.”
It was not a vat, it was a small lake of cold water. “Gods… what do you need me to do?”
“Keep calm and do nothing rash at all. You are not your brother, you are more of a thinker. You have already probably considered what this will mean, not just for your siblings, but for all of us who bear the name Lannister.”
Yes, he had indeed thought through the implications, and frankly he was now terrified. “I always knew that she was selfish and stupid,” he said, slightly dazed, “But I never thought that she could be this selfish and stupid. Their lives… are now possibly forfeit. If Jaime is very, very, lucky it might be the Wall. Gods…” His voice trailed off as the full implications hit him. “Father is going to be beyond furious. What did that captain of the Redcloaks know?”
“Just that the Queen has been arrested on a charge of treason. We need to keep an eye on the men, to make sure that no-one does something stupid. Wars have been started over such things. Seven Hells, wars have been started for less. Our eyes need to be on the Wall – not on Tywin’s reaction.”
Tyrion nodded numbly – and then looked at Gerion. “Uncle… did you suspect something? You seem to be awfully calm about this.”
“Allarion had a greendream that hinted at this. So did I.”
He absorbed this. “Did you warn anyone?”
Sorrow crossed Gerion’s face. “Would Cersei have listened? Would your brother? She wrote me a letter last night, ordering me to give up Brightroar. I wanted to tear it up. I did not know that this was going to happen, but I knew that disaster was hanging over her head somewhere.”
“She had to bring Jaime into this. She always thinks that only she knows best.” He closed his eyes for a long moment. “And now she has doomed them both.”
A horn was sounded somewhere to one side and he heard shouts.
“And the King has returned from his hunting,” Gerion sighed. “Keep your guard up. House Lannister is now on the brink of a precipice.”
Tyrion stared at him. And then his eyes widened. “Oh… the children?”
“Aye. Three bastards of the King in Winterfell, under our noses. Black of hair and blue of eye. Curious, is it not, compared to Joffrey and the others?”
No, it wasn’t a lake of cold water. It was a sea. And they might all drown in it if they were not all very, very careful now.
Ned
A lifetime ago Jon Arryn had once given him a piece of very good advice: “Give Robert bad news at the start of a journey, not at the end. He’ll ride out a lot of his fury and merely be bloody furious at the end.”
As they galloped for Winterfell he could see that it was working – sort of. The snarl of fury had eroded slightly into a ‘mere’ thunderous scowl of anger. Robert was thinking hard, not just raging, thinking. He wasn’t sure if that was reassuring or terrifying.
Robert had changed. He wasn’t the Robert of the Vale anymore, or the Robert of the siege of Pyke, and certainly not the Robert that Robb had remembered from that dark future he had seen. No, this Robert was… more focussed than ever before. The closest he had been to this had been on the morning of the Battle of the Trident, when he knew that Rhaegar Targaryen did indeed command the enemy army.
The stakes kept inching that bit higher every time he thought about what was about to happen. Robert’s first reaction was going to be on the lines of killing his faithless wife at once, followed by his equally untrustworthy goodbrother.
A horn sounded from the gatehouse they were headed towards and as the gates opened he could see Stannis Baratheon standing there, one hand on the pommel of his sword and the other clutching pieces of paper. To his right was Luwin and to his left was Jory Cassel.
As they drew rein Robert all but threw himself out of the saddle, tossed the reins to a groom and scowled at his brother. “Well? Where are they?”
Stannis held up a hand. “In the First Keep. She’s in quarters and he’s in a cell. They are well-separated, Robert.”
Robert was visibly going red in the face, but at the same time trying to control himself, judging by the way that he was clenching and unclenching his fists. He took a half-step forwards – but then he closed his eyes for a long moment. “No,” he snarled, “If I see either of them now I’ll just kill them without even thinking about it.” His knuckles were white and his nostrils were flared and Ned looked at him worriedly.
“My solar, now, your Grace,” he said firmly. “There is much that we must discuss.”
Robert stood there for a long moment, irresolution on his face as he looked at the main keep and then at the First Keep, emotions – anger, fury, disgust, worry – roiling his face. Ned watched for a moment, before intervening. “Robert,” he said in a low, urgent voice, “We must talk. NOW.”
Robert looked at him, his nostrils flaring yet again – and then he nodded choppily. As he stamped off in the direction of the main keep Ned let out a heartfelt sigh, before swapping raised eyebrows with the others near him.
The moment that he reached his solar Ned poured wine for all – and then bade Ser Barristan close the door and stay in the room. Robert took his cup of wine with a look of distracted anger and gulped from it. Finally he stopped staring at the far wall and seemed to come back from wherever he had gone to. “Who saw them?”
Ned traded glances with Stannis and then leant forwards. “Me, Stannis, Ser Barristan, Rodrik and Jory Cassel and two guards.”
“And they were… they were fucking.”
“Yes,” Ned said heavily.
“How long has this been going on for?”
“We don’t know,” Ned sighed. “Which is the problem.”
Robert’s brow furrowed in another huge scowl. “Why is that a problem?”
“Robert,” Stannis broke in, “What colour hair do your true born children have? And what colour eyes?”
“Gold hair,” Robert said, still frowning. “And green eyes.”
“And what colour hair and eyes do Gendry, Edric and Mya have?”
“Black hair, and blue eyes.” Then he sat bolt upright. “Stannis, what are you saying?”
“All Baratheon men have second toes that’s a shade longer than our big toes. The women too. I noticed it on Shireen when she was a child. I have it. You have it. Does Joffrey?”
“I… I don’t know.”
“I have seen eight of your bastards. All have black hair and blue eyes. I even checked the feet of the babes. All had a second toes slightly longer than their big toes. They are your children. They show Baratheon traits. Joffrey, Tommen and Myrcella have none. Not a single Baratheon trait.” He set his jaw grimly. “I do not know if they are yours. We have to act on the assumption that they are not.”
Robert’s face was busy going red again and Ned moved to quickly take the goblet out of his hand before his rapidly tightening fist crushed it. “WHAT???? That… that… fucking WHORE! I’ll kill her! I’ll take Stormbreaker and I’ll cut her fucking head off, before I start slicing her traitorous brother into pieces!!!”
“ROBERT!” Ned bellowed, so loudly that Robert blinked and fell silent. “You can’t. Not yet. We need them to confess. We have to know if the children are yours or not. We need Cersei to admit her guilt, or Jaime if she will not say. These are not smallfolk accused of a crime. These are the children of Tywin Lannister accused of treason to the throne, the greatest crime in the Realm. They have sought to alter the succession. They are traitors, but we must tread carefully here. We must get to the truth.”
Robert had turned an alarming succession of colours during this and now sat there, visibly thinking things through as his nostrils flared so hard that white lines appeared by them. “Gods,” he choked in a voice that trembled with rage, “I want to kill them both, cut them to pieces… but you’re both right. I can’t. Not yet. We need them to confess. About my children.” He passed a trembling hand over his eyes. “Joffrey… I’ve always wondered about him. There’s little enough of me in him. But Tommen… he’s a sweet child. Reminds me of Renly when he was a boy. And Myrcella… she’s a good girl. Cleverer than I thought, but she hides it. Hides it from her bitch of a mother.” He paused. “How can we tell?”
Oddly enough it was Ser Barristan who cleared his throat and stepped forwards. “Your pardon your Grace, but I think I can suggest a way.”
Varys
He did so like to people watch at times. It could be… amusing to watch people react in so many different ways to the same thing.
However… this time it was different. He was standing in the shadow of one of the pillars in the throneroom and watching as people approached the table in front of the Iron Throne. On it was the cage with the head of the wight – the moving, hissing, snapping severed head. The thing that had no right to exist.
The thing that had been the final blow to all his plans.
Oh, the plans had been ruined long before that, thanks to the Call, but he had always hoped that perhaps with a little time things could be re-arranged, the timings shifted a few years along, the puppets nudged a bit further, the dance continued for a few more steps.
Not anymore. Not now. Not now that more and more people were aware of what was coming.
A Stormlord – House Buckler was it? – strode in with a small retinue and Varys pulled a little deeper into the shadows as he placed his hands up his sleeves and watched the group as they strode – swaggered almost – up to the table. From what he could hear of their words they were already convinced that it was all just a trick, a Mryish toy of some kind.
But they closer they got to the gnashing jaws and the blues eyes that glared at them the weaker the japes became… and then they ceased completely. The man of the Night’s Watch who had been watching as well stepped up and spoke to them quietly, allowing them to pick the cage up and look into it with white faces and hands that had started to tremble.
As the cage went back down onto the table and the Stormlanders walked out in a subdued silence Varys sighed a little. The word was going out. The Others had indeed returned, legends walked North of the Wall and magic was not merely real but undisputable.
He padded noiselessly off to his office, where he sat down, poured from a sealed bottle and then sipped quietly, whilst staring at the map on the wall. Everything was… different. Changed. Altered. The King was in the North, being an actual king instead of a lecherous and drunken glutton. He wouldn’t be surprised if ‘the King’s Great Matter’ (so cliched of Arryn and Stannis Baratheon to call it that, did they really think that everyone around them were clueless idiots? Well… not everyone. Just most of them) also was resolved there. It really was the perfect place. Cersei and her fool of a brother were certainly both stupid and arrogant enough to think that they could never be caught.
It would be such a tragedy if they were discovered. That said, their absence had already lifted the collective intelligence level of the Red Keep and that was no small matter.
Stannis Baratheon was also Hand of the King and that had changed much as well. The man was annoyingly direct and had all the tact of an arrow in the eye, but he was younger than Arryn and more energetic. And he was annoyingly good at being Hand. It was all most peculiar. He ignored the game and dealt with the players directly and bluntly.
A small shape entered from a dark doorway and handed him a small scroll, before vanishing the way that he or she had come. He unrolled it and read it carefully, his eyes widening as he did so. Damn it. Another thing that had gone wrong.
He stood and rang the bell. When one of his servants appeared in the main door he waved a hand at him. “Tell Captain Waters to prepare his fastest ship at once. I need to leave for Pentos on the first tide.” The servant left and he threw what was left in his cup down his throat. Damn it all, he should have guessed that this would happen.
Gendry
He liked making scythes. They had been a challenge to make at first, but after he had been taught the knack of getting the curve just right he’d soon gotten used to them. According to Mikken they needed as many as he could make, for the Gift and New Gift.
That said, he needed a new project. He’d made the helmets and he’d made the new knife for Lord Stannis. Now he needed something else to work on. Perhaps a new Warhammer? The one he was training with had been his father’s, but he felt awkward with it at times. It still felt as if it wasn’t his, not yet.
The scythe was finished and he placed it carefully to one side, before walking to the door to the courtyard. Mikken was still sitting there, puzzling over the broken cage that had arrived that morning from someplace called Harlhome, or Hardhome, or something like that. The problem was that it was made of no metal that he recognised.
“The First Men made these, but the First Men could not use iron, not then,” Mikken muttered to him. “But this isn’t bronze. Or copper. Or anything like that. What the bloody hell is it?”
“I don’t know, Master,” Gendry replied as he peered at it himself. He needed to stick his head in a bucket to wash the sweat off. “It looks… odd.”
“Lad, I’m not your master. And you’re a fine enough smith as it is. There’s little enough I can teach you.”
“Master Mott used to say that there’s always something new to learn. That cage for a start.”
Mikken snorted with amusement and then nodded, before looking around the courtyard. “Something’s up.”
Confused, Gendry looked about as well. He couldn’t see anything wrong. “How do you know?”
“No Redcloaks strutting about with their noses in the air, what you can see of them with those daft helmets of theirs.”
Gendry looked about again. The smith of Winterfell was right, no Redcloaks at all. Then he heard boots approaching and looked over to see Ser Rodrik Cassel and his nephew striding towards him. “Lad, His Grace wants to see you.”
Gendry gaped at him and then looked at his own clothes, which were still stained with sweat. “Now? I’ve been at the forge since this morning, I’m hardly in a fit state to see the King!”
The Cassels looked him up and down, issued almost identical sniffs and then looked at each other. “I’ve still got to get the Terrible Threesome in from their riding lesson with Lord Domeric,” Jory Cassel said eventually. “The lad’s got time for a scrub and a clean shirt.”
“Aye – if he runs. Go on then, lad. Meet us in the great hall.”
He ran back to his room and thanked the gods for the hot water that ran through the walls. It was all a bit odd, having access to hot water so easily, but he blessed the fact that he could scrub himself to get rid of the accumulated sweat and forge dirt so quickly. He was also getting used to the fact that he didn’t have to wash his own clothes any more. A scrub, a wipe, new clothes, an attempt at wetting down his rebellious hair and then he was off again, heading back to the great hall.
Rory Cassel was waiting at the doors and he nodded at him. “In you go lad. They’re just waiting for a few others.”
Inside he was surprised to see Lord Stannis and Shireen, along with Edric and the tall lanky girl that looked disconcertingly like him. Mya. Lord Stark was talking to his father and Ser Barristan Selmy, and-
He stopped dead. The King had a look on his face that did not bode well at all – a look of anger and worry and oddly enough dread. He also had Stormbreaker in his hands, with the tip of the big sword on the stone flagstones.
As he recovered and walked in Shireen beamed and waved at him, whilst the others nodded or just looked at him. “Your Grace,” Gendry said eventually and rather hesitantly. “You sent for me?”
“Aye,” said the King with a smile and a nod of the head. “I did. Sit down Gendry. We’re just waiting for a few others.”
He sat and waited and after a few minutes the doors opened again and his other brothers and sister entered, escorted by Sandor Clegane, a man who still scared the shit out of him. Clegane seemed a bit edgy, looking about the place suspiciously, but after he saw Shireen and Edric he seemed to relax a little, and behind him came Maester Luwin.
“Father,” Joffrey cried as soon as he saw the King, “What’s this nonsense about Mother being arrested? What’s happened? Is she ill or something?” Then he noticed Gendry and the others. “And what are they doing here? The bastards?”
“Oh, it’s ‘or something’,” the King muttered as he stood up. “Right. Yes, your mother’s under arrest. It’s treason, children. And it’s a long story. Bur there’s something important we need to work out first.”
There was a pause and then Tommen and Myrcella both burst into tears whilst Joffrey looked baffled. As for Clegane, his eyes narrowed as he looked at the King, who eyed him back. “Clegane?”
“Your Grace.”
“Who are you sworn to?”
“You, your Grace.”
“Who do you obey?”
The Hound stiffened at this. “You your Grace.”
“Then remove your hand from the pommel of that sword. We will talk later.” The King looked back at the crying children and muttered something under his breath. “Alright, it’s alright, children. Your mother’s just… confined to a new room. I’ll explain everything later. Now – dry those eyes, because this is important.”
Tommen and Myrcella slowly stopped crying and instead frowned slightly as Stannis pulled out what looked like one of Mikken’s hammers. Meanwhile Father unsheathed Stormbreaker and took the hammer from his brother and then looked around – before frowning slightly. “It’s just Stormbreaker, Joffrey, it’s not going to bloody bite you.” Then he looked at them all. “Now – you all have a piece of parchment and piece of charcoal with you all.”
Gendry looked about frowning and then noticed that there was indeed a piece of parchment on a table next to him. A glance about him revealed that the others also had the same.
“As I said, this is important. Odd but important. I am going to tap Stormbreaker with this hammer. I want you all to listen very carefully and then write down what it sounds like. Don’t say out loud, just write it down. And yes, Joffrey, you are to do the same. This affects you too. So – just listen.”
His father struck the sword and Gendry closed his eyes at the beautiful chiming sound that echoed around the room, before opening his eyes and taking up the charcoal so that he could carefully write ‘CHIME’ on the parchment, sticking the tip of his tongue out as he wrote. Having written it he peered at it worriedly. His penmanship was not very good, but the word could be read clearly.
“Joffrey, bring me what you have written,” the King barked, gesturing at the gold-headed boy impatiently. Joffrey smirked for no reason that Gendry could discern and swaggered over to his father, with the look of someone who is doing something ridiculous, before handing over his parchment. The King took the paper, read it – and then his shoulders slumped a little. “’A loud, stupid clank’ Joffrey has written.”
“That’s what I heard,” Joffrey scoffed, before sitting down and starting to inspect his nails. “What is all this nonsense about?”
“Be silent boy,” the King hissed as he gave the parchment to Maester Luwin, and Joffrey looked up, startled, before turning more than a little pale. The King turned to Tommen and gave him a strained smile. “Tommen, bring me what you wrote.”
Tommen hesitantly walked over and held out his parchment and the King smiled and tousled the boy’s hair as he took it. “’A clank’, Tommen has written.” Down came his shoulders again. “Thank you, lad, back to your place. Myrcella – yours now.”
The girl strode up and handed her piece of parchment over. The King peered at it and then smiled a little even as his shoulders slumped a little further. “’A dolorous clank’, according to Myrcella.”
“That’s stupid,” Joffrey laughed. “’Dolorous’! There’s no such word!”
This seemed to pain Shireen, who made a face and then sighed. “Yes,” she said heavily, “There is such a word.”
“It means mournful, or distressing,” Edric piped up, before Joffrey turned on him with a snarl.
“Silence, bastard!” Joffrey hissed. “Don’t you-”
“Joffrey!” Everyone froze. The King was standing, his face red with fury. “You will not insult Edric!”
Joffrey subsided, looking cowed and the King stood there for a long moment, glaring at his son, before looking at Gendry. “Gendry, bring me yours.” He obeyed, wondering what in the seven hells was going on, but suddenly aware that he was suddenly on very uncertain ground.
The King looked at it. “’Chime’, Gendry writes.” He looked at him and Gendry had the oddest feeling that he was being very closely examined for the first time.
“Nonsense!” Joffrey roared. “Chime??? How can a sword chime? It’s impossible! You’ve done it now, bastard, you have lied to your King and your Prince and-”
“Joffrey.” The King said the word in a way that was both flat and final. He did not shout it, he did not hiss it, he just said it – and silence followed. “Sit down. Edric, give me yours.”
A pale Edric handed his over. “’A chime’, Edric has written. Mya, let me see yours.” The girl from the Vale handed hers over with a shaking hand. Their father smiled briefly as he read it. “My girls are wordier than my boys, it seems. ‘A gorgeous chime that went straight through me’ Mya writes.”
The King closed his eyes and sighed and there was a long pause as everyone stared at him. Finally he opened his eyes again. “Joffrey, Tommen, Myrcella, you’d best go back to your rooms. I will be along soon to explain things. To explain everything. Off you go.”
The three went, followed by Sandor Clegane, whose eyes were suddenly very wide and who seemed to almost have something on the tip of his tongue for a moment before shrugging and going out the door.
Gendry wandered over to an equally wide-eyed Shireen. “What just happened?”
“I heard a chime,” she said in a stunned voice. “All those with the blood of the Durrandons of Storm’s End heard a chime.”
“But that can’t be right, the King’s children didn’t hear it.” She nodded at his words and then peered owlishly at him until the pieces clattered together in his mind. The Queen had been arrested for treason and-
He felt his own eyes go wide – and then he saw that Edric and Mya had the same look on their faces. Oh… shit.
Ned
Robert just stood there for a long moment after his bastard children were escorted out by Maester Luwin. Shireen looked at him worriedly and then slipped out as well after a word from her father, who swapped a concerned glance with Ned. Robert was just standing there, his eyes on the wall, his face working as he seemed to be wrestling with himself.
Finally he sighed and then handed Stormbreaker to Selmy, who was also looking at him worriedly. “Keep this safe for me, Ser Barristan. I need to talk to that Lannister bitch and I don’t want my first reaction on seeing her to be me slicing her in half.”
“Robert,” Ned sighed, “Is this wise?”
His old friend sent a slightly deranged look his way. “No,” he said flatly. “But it has to be done. I know that my children are not my children. My bastards bear my blood, not Joffrey, Tommen or Myrcella. This morning, before the hunt, I had three children. A secure line of succession. Now? Now Stannis is my heir for the time being. Shireen after him and then Renly. And the last time we had a Queen rule Westeros… well, she claimed the Iron Throne and we had the Dance of Dragons.”
Stannis Baratheon set his jaw stubbornly. “My Shireen-”
“Is cleverer and braver and kinder than Joffrey ever can be. But there are those who would insist that she is too weak to lead Westeros. Especially with this… this war on the Wall coming. The Game of Thrones is in abeyance for the time being because of this coming war, but the discovery of what my bitch of a wife has done will open it all up again. Damn it, I hate it. But we have to face facts. We need Cersei to be disposed of cleanly. I will declare that our marriage is dissolved here and now. But the children… we need to prove why they cannot succeed me. Oh, I’ll crack the skull of anyone who tried to claim that Joffrey is trueborn, but it would be better if we had a bloody confession, from either of them.”
Ned blinked and stared at the brooding Baratheon. That was… an unexpectedly clear analysis of the situation that had been spoken and not bellowed. Robert seemed to notice his surprise, because he chuckled. “I’m not a fool Ned. Oh, I’m angrier than I’ve ever been in my life and I want nothing more then to kill them both right now. But now’s not the time for vengeance. Never before have I needed to keep a clear head, than now.”
“Do you still want to confront her your Grace?” Ser Barristan Selmy rumbled. Then his face hardened. “And what of her treacherous brother? His betrayal means that he can longer be a Kingsguard. Your pardon, your Grace, but he has sullied his armour.”
“You are the Lord Commander, Ser Barristan. See to it that he is removed from the Kingsguard at once.”
The white-haired man bowed deeply. “I shall burn his cloak myself, as I promised him. And I shall tear out his page from the White Book the next time I see King’s Landing.” He paused. “Your Grace, the Kingsguard has not served you as best it could. We have… we have failed you.”
Robert turned and placed one large hand on the older man’s shoulder. “The fault was mine. I listened to that bitch too often when vacancies came up on the White Cloaks, instead of to you. You have been a loyal friend to me. Do what you need to do to restore the Kingsguard.”
Selmy straightened up at this. “As your Grace commands,” he said firmly. “So shall I obey.”
Robert nodded, before pulling a face. “What do you think Ned? See her now?”
“She should at least know that she is no longer Queen,” Ned grated, his nostrils flaring. “You must stay your hand though. We need proof that the children are not yours. We know the truth, but if you went to Tywin Lannister and told him that his grandchildren are all bastards born of incest based on the noise they heard a sword make, he’ll not believe you. We need proof.”
“Aye.” Robert nodded. “Ned, tell your men to bring her from her cell. Ser Barristan, please take Stormbreaker away. And I’d be obliged if you could send someone to summon the Imp as well. I need to find out if he knew.”
Ned walked to the door and had a word with a waiting Jory Cassel, who strode off grimly, whilst Selmy left and Robert sank into a chair and brooded as they waited. Every now and then the King would clench his fists so tightly that the knuckles whitened.
“It might be best if you had the table between you and her,” Ned noted dryly. “Otherwise you might do something foolish.”
Robert glared at him for a moment, before sheepishly nodding and then walking to the chair on the opposite end of the table that faced the door. “You might be right there Ned.”
They heard her coming a long way off. Cersei Lannister was shrieking loudly that she was the Queen that she’d see them all hang for this, no, executed, her father would unleash the Mountain on the North and Winterfell would be full of crows soon, eating the dead, and release her now… and many other things. He closed his eyes and tried to ignore her.
When finally, the door opened and the struggling form of Cersei Lannister was dragged into the room he stood and glared at her. She was dressed in a simple dress and her hair swung loose about her face. A guard pushed her so that she stumbled forwards, and she snarled and brushed her hair back from her eyes. She saw Ned first and the snarl became a shriek. “You! Stark! You treacherous dog, how dare you-”
There was an answering snarl and the scrape of the chair from the table as Robert came bolt upright, and Cersei turned towards the sounds – and then went as white as a sheet as she saw her former husband standing there, his face mottled with fury.
There was a long moment before she seemed to rally a little. “Whatever these dogs have told you, Robert, it’s a lie!”
It was so brazen, so ridiculous that Ned blinked – and then laughed. “Denial? I never thought you’d try that! I saw you rutting with your brother, as did all in my party. It’s no lie.”
Cersei looked at him with loathing. “How dare you and your men lay a hand on me!”
“I’d dare anything to expose a treason that threatens my King.”
“Treason! Why you-”
“SILENCE!” Robert roared the word and Cersei took a step back, her face whiter than before as her hands flew to her throat.
“Husband,” she started to say, “It’s all a lie and-”
“You are no longer my wife,” Robert said through gritted teeth. “The ravens will go out announcing it. I, Robert Baratheon, do hereby divorce you. Our marriage is dissolved. You are no longer Queen.”
Somehow she went even whiter – and then she swallowed. “You cannot,” she whispered. “I am Queen.”
“You are Queen of nothing, save dissemblance, filth and LIES!” Robert roared. “I have heard what Lords Stark and Baratheon saw, aye and what Ser Barristen Selmy saw! All sworn upon the Gods the truth of what they saw!”
Cersei looked about the men in the room with hunted little flickers of her eyes. She licked her lips nervously for a moment, a lizard instead of a lion, before she spoke again. “They… misunderstood what we were doing.”
“Misunderstood?” Ned laughed again, before turning grim. “You were both naked and both rutting like animals. You and your own brother!”
“Which is treason,” Stannis said flatly.
Cersei looked at him quickly, her face working. “No,” she whispered. “Not true.”
Stannis tilted his head in astonishment. “Of course it was treason! What, did you think that somehow it was not? Especially the matter of your children!”
She swallowed with an audible gulp. “Robert, why is he talking about our children?”
Robert leant across the table. “Oh, he means your children. They’re not mine. They’re the spawn of your treacherous brother, the Kingslayer!”
She gaped at him for a long moment – and then her chin came up. “Prove it,” she hissed malevolently. “Prove that claim!”
“They look nothing like me,” Robert snarled. “Gold hair and green eyes – not my black hair and blue eyes!”
“So? Robb Stark has red hair. Does that mean that he is Lord Stark’s son, or Edmure Tullys?”
Ned burst into laughter. “Oh, Robb’s a Stark alright,” he chortled. “The Old Gods… well, they touched him in a way that they would not with someone who was not a Stark.” He glared at the wretched woman. “Robert’s bastards all have black hair and blue eyes. And there are other signs of Baratheon blood.”
“Joffrey, Tommen and Myrcella could not hear Stormbreaker chime when it was struck,” Robert rumbled.
Cersei looked at him as if he was mad. “Swords do not chime.”
“Stormbreaker does,” Stannis spat. “I heard it, as did Shireen – and the three bastards. Is that why you tried to have Gendry killed? Were you afraid that people might notice how like his father he looks, unlike the three you spawned with your brother? There was one calthrop under his saddle and according to man I had guard him, another two attempts with calthrops or other devices.”
Cersei glared at him and then drew herself up. “It matters not – you have no proof. I will swear that my children are legitimate. Try telling my father that you have disinherited his grandchildren based on not hearing a ‘chime’. He’ll raise the Westerlands against you, along with half the realm whilst you’re still here in this hovel, worrying about snarks and grumpkins. Joffrey will be king!” She spat the last four words with a glee and malevolence that took Ned aback.
Her words certainly enraged Robert. He reached down and flung the table to one side before surging forwards and raising a fist in the sir.
“Go on,” Cersei shrieked. “Hit me! That’s your answer to everything isn’t it? Hit me! Prove to the world what you’re really like! Hit me!”
But Robert didn’t. He stood there, his fist – his whole arm – quivering with readiness, but he just stared at her, a snarl on his face but his eyes locked with hers. And then, after that long terrible moment, he lowered his fist.
“No, that would play into your hands, wouldn’t it? You want me to hit you so you can play the martyr. Show off your bruises and try and get sympathy, despite your crimes.” He glared at her, his upper lip quivering as he repressed the snarl, and Ned realised that his old friend was using every scrap of will he had not to kill her with a single blow. “I’m done playing your games.
“You always thought I was a stupid, brutish drunk, and part of that might be right, but this isn’t King’s Landing where you can pretend to be clever and where I can let you do whatever the seven hells you want as I drink and eat and wench my way to an early death. No, this is Winterfell, where my path is clearer than it has ever been before. Westeros is in danger and I am King and I need to act like the king I always hoped to be. Joffrey will never succeed me. CASSEL!”
The door opened and the two Cassels entered, looking a bit confused. “Your Grace?” Jory asked.
“Take this creature back to her cell.”
“Yes your Grace,” Jory replied, walking up to Cersei Lannister, who was staring at Robert as if she had no idea what he was.
Oddly enough Cersei did not say a word as she was taken out. She seemed… stunned. Almost as stunned as Ned felt. Yes, Robert had changed.
Willas
The best part about having his leg whole again was that he could ride properly for the first time in years – really ride, on the fastest of his horses. Hunting was once again open to him, along with that age-old favourite of his, just simply riding down the road and watching the world go by. Watching it from a carriage had not been much fun.
And so, as he cantered down the road on Quicksilver, his outriders a sensible distance enough away from him, he thought about all that had happened of late. How much life had changed. And yet, despite that, he could not shake off the feeling that something was hanging in the air over Highgarden, something that had to be dealt with but which was dark and terrible.
Loras was pressing to be allowed back to King’s Landing. So far he had refused permission. There was too much to do in the Reach, especially with all this talk of the civil war in the Iron Islands. He intended to send his youngest brother off the Shield Islands to inspect the defences. Loras wouldn’t like it very much, but he’d go.
He really needed to have a word with Grandmother about Loras. They needed to find him a wife – someone who… understood about Loras’s leanings.
Grandmother’s advice was going to be key here. Acerbic too. And possibly a bit florid.
Loras would thank him one day. Hopefully. Perhaps.
Highgarden loomed ahead and he shook his head for a moment and then rode on. Too much to do. Fend off suitors for his hand as well. Grandmother was sifting the wheat from the chaff, or rather (as Grandmother put it) the decent ones that might have an ounce of brains from the simpering ninnyhammers.
As he trotted into the small courtyard that he used he could see Garlan waiting for him by the stable door. “Enjoy yourself? You always loved riding before your accident.”
“Oh yes,” Willas grinned as he dismounted and then inspected Quicksilver carefully before unbuckling the saddle and then lifting it off. “Very pleasant.”
“Brother, there are grooms who can do that,” Garlan pointed out with the long-suffering air of a man who had said the same thing many times before.
“Aye,” Willas said as he placed the saddle on a wooden rail and then took up a blanket and swung it over Quicksilver’s back. “But I like to keep in practice. I prefer to stay close to my horses. What’s amiss?”
“Nothing, save that Grandmother now has three lists she needs you to review. The list of those women who would make good matches for you, the list of those who would not but who will have to be gently let down and the list of those who would make good wives for Loras. Mother is helping her.”
Willas paused. “Ah. Is Mother still irked with me?”
Garlan grimaced slightly. “A little, but not too much. She understands why you did what you did.”
He sighed. “As long as Father keeps hunting and stays away until we get more information about this Call, the better. Lord Tarly’s mission is important. I hope he sends word soon.”
“Willas!” He turned to see Mother – and Grandmother, and the Maester walking as quickly as they could towards them.
“What’s wrong?” Willas asked, alarmed by the look on their faces. “What’s happened?”
“A letter to your father has arrived, from Oldtown,” Grandmother all but snarled. “From Septon Alyston at the Starry Sept.”
Oh, Gods, he thought wearily. “What has he done?”
“He has accused your Grandfather of hiding a blasphemous object in the base of the Hightower and demands that Mace support him in his quest to cleanse it.”
He stared at Grandmother, baffled. “I beg your pardon? A what?”
“Here.” She thrust the letter at him and he looked at it whilst suppressing the obvious question about why she had opened something that was not addressed to her.
It was indeed a letter to father, written in the spidery hand of the idiot in charge of the Starry Sept. He wrote of rumours in Oldtown about a dread object in the Hightower, followed by some guard telling a septon about a dreadful gate in the lowest level of the Hightower that… had obviously been made by the pagan First Men, heathens who worshipped false gods, and he, Septon Alyston, sought the aid of Lord Tyrell in his bid to cleanse the blasphemous thing with the aid of the Seven-who-are-One.
The letter stank of sanctimonious piety and naked self-interest. “He’s trying to be holier than the High Septon in a bid to try and regain the influence lost to the Great Sept in King’s Landing,” he said flatly and was rewarded with a curt nod from Grandmother and an approving gleam of the eye.
But it was Mother who spoke next. “Willas, your grandfather has written to me as well. He is very worried about the lowest level of the Hightower and wanted me to speak with you about it. There is a gate there.”
His eyebrows flew up and he swapped a startled gaze with Garlan and Grandmother. The Maester simply looked intrigued. “What is it?”
“Every member of House Hightower has seen it, but we do not talk about it,” Mother said in a low voice. “We do not know who built it or why. It’s a closed doorway and I never liked it – it made my skin crawl just looking at it. House Hightower was charged with guarding it at the time of the building of the Hightower – at least in its present form. We don’t know why, we just know that it has to be guarded. And… and your grandfather says that something has happened to it. It’s started glowing. And there’s a noise, he says. Almost like something is trying to get through it.”
It was a warm day, but hearing Mother’s words sent a chill through him. Then he looked back at the letter. “Wait – he writes that he is sending a letter here and another to Father’s hunting lodge?”
“Yes,” Grandmother sighed. “And given Mace’s earlier letters, filled with complaints and general idiocy…”
The chill came back. “He’ll go to Oldtown himself and get involved with this thing himself, won’t he?”
Mother nodded. “I love your father dearly, but he wants to run the Reach again very badly. He will indeed get involved with this – and I do not think that he understands what he is dealing with. I doubt that anyone does. If the gate has changed… well, the Citadel might be able to find out what it is, but I don’t think that the Septon of the Starry Sept should be allowed anywhere near it.”
“And Father’s hunting lodge is nearer to Oldtown than Highgarden is,” Willas sighed before looking at his brother. “Get Loras. You two are coming with me. Grooms! Saddle three of my fastest horses! Arrange guards as well! We ride for Oldtown at once!”
Well, at least he now knew what his premonition had been about. Something dark was indeed coming.
Tyrion
He heard Cersei coming from a distance. Fortunately there was a handy alcove that he could hide in and his dear sister was so busy ranting about traitors that she didn’t see him at all, which was a mercy. Once she had passed he stuck his head out and sighed, before following warily.
When he reached the room that he had been summoned to he sat on a chair outside it and listened worriedly to the voices inside, along with the Cassels, who were guarding the door. Robert Baratheon was very angry indeed – and his dear sister was no longer the Queen. Well, that was unsurprising. The question now was if she would now become a corpse. The odds were quite excellent about that King Robert was going to kill her there and then.
But much to his surprise the bellowing rose and fell before a rumble as something wooden was shoved across a floor and then more raised voices – Cersei was shrieking something – and then a shout from the King for one of the Cassels. Both went in and then re-emerged with a white and shaken Cersei, who seemed to be trying to puzzle something out. She did not even look at him as she was escorted out, much to his relief.
It was Stannis Baratheon who stuck his head through the door and peered around. When he saw Tyrion his eyes narrowed. “You. In.”
Tyrion trotted briskly in and then stopped dead in the middle of the room. There was a table to one side being looked at by Ned Stark. King Robert was standing by him, his face red and his hands shaking.
“I knew that she did not like me Ned,” the King rumbled, “But to hate me that much?” Then he caught sight of Tyrion. “Ah. You.”
“You summoned me your Grace?” Tyrion said quickly.
Robert Baratheon loomed over him menacingly. “Did you know?”
He thought for a moment about asking for a clearer question, but soon realised that now was not the time to play silly buggers. “About Jaime and Cersei? No. I suspected but I did not know.”
The King did not seem to be expecting that, because he peered at Tyrion suspiciously. “You suspected?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you not tell anyone of this ‘suspicion’ then?”
Much to his own surprise a bitter laugh bubbled up from within him. “Who would have believed me? I am the Imp, the dwarf, the jester of House Lannister, the joke of the family. Who would have believed my suspicion that my siblings were doing something so foolish? Who… who would have taken me in the least bit seriously? I had no proof, not a shred of it. You, your Grace? You’d have said that it wasn’t a very funny joke. My father? I would have felt the flat of his hand. To denigrate the Golden Pair, the Lannister twins that he is so proud of… well, if I had been lucky then I would then merely have been banished to the Wall. No. I kept my suspicions to myself. And besides… Jaime has always been my friend as well as my brother. To risk his life by telling of what I suspected… No.”
The three other men stared at him with varying degrees of intensity. Ned Stark’s face might have been carved from granite, but there was something in his eyes that spoke of understanding. Stannis Baratheon seemed to be thinking about what he had said. And the King… he was staring at Tyrion with a look of deep thought.
“No proof at all then?” King Robert said eventually.
“None. Although the more I think about it, it might explain why servants would occasionally vanish from Casterly Rock. If they saw the two of them…”
“Yes, yes,” the King boomed, before staring at him again and then scowling thunderously. “And the children? Did you not suspect anything there?”
He looked at the King for a moment, puzzled – and then terror went straight through him. Uncle Gerion had mentioned how blond the children were compared to the bastards but… “Surely Cersei would not have been that stupid?” He croaked the words in horror.
“Yes, she was indeed that stupid,” Ned Stark muttered as he poured a goblet of wine and then handed it to him.
Tyrion took the wine in a daze and then sipped at it as he tried to reassemble his fractured mind. The implications were… stunning. Uncle Gerion had been right. There was a precipice beneath his feet. “I… hoped that the children merely took after her side of the family. Are you saying that Jaime is the father?”
“There is not a drop of Durrandon blood in them,” Stannis told him through gritted teeth. “She has betrayed her king. The children are not Robert’s.”
“How do you know that though?”
“They could not hear Stormbreaker.”
His eyebrows flew up. “I’m sorry?”
“The sword. When struck with a hammer it chimes – if you have Durrandon blood. If not – it merely clanks. Robert’s bastards all heard it chime. Joffrey, Tommen and Myrcella did not.”
Wonderful. Magic swords now. “Sadly that will not satisfy my father. You need more proof.”
The King’s eyebrows came down into a scowl that made his previous one seem like a light laugh – but then he sighed. “We know. Your sister will not confess the true parentage of her children. That leaves your brother.”
Tyrion nodded, his mind whirling like a sycamore seed in the wind. This was very bad. But there was one gambit that just might work. “If he knows that he is condemned to death then there is little chance of him confessing. However, if he knows that the Wall is an option… there is more of a chance then.”
“Your brother is an oathbreaker and a traitor,” Stannis said angrily. “Tampering with the succession, trying to pass off a bastard as Robert’s heir-”
“Did he though?” Tyrion broke in. “Jaime is not Cersei. Did he say a word on the parentage of the children? No – blame Cersei for that. Not Jaime. His crimes, yes, I have called them that, are terrible – but he is not guilty of that charge. The other charge of treason yes, but not the one of tampering with the succession. If he is offered the choice of the Night’s Watch then he might be prevailed upon to confess. You need him. My father would accept a confession from Jaime. He would be furious, but he would accept it.”
There was a long moment of silence and then – very reluctantly – King Robert nodded. “If he confesses then he will be offered the choice. Death – or the Night’s Watch. The Gods know that we will need every skilled sword on the Wall when the time comes.”
“Tyrion, the oath of the Night’s Watch is not one that can be broken,” Ned Stark interjected. “And if he does take it then he will have to swear it on the Fist of Winter.”
He swallowed. And if Jaime broke that oath then he had little doubt that what had happened to the late and unlamented Ser Willem Bootle would happen to his brother. “I will tell him. He will know what is at stake. And I will get him to confess. I don’t care what happens to Cersei – she has been a bitch to me for no reason all my life – but he is my brother and I will save him even if I have to beat him over the head with something blunt.”
King Robert looked him up and down for a long moment. “Very well. Go to him now and explain.” He looked at the doorway, where Ser Barristan Selmy was standing with Stormbreaker. “Ser Barristan, be so kind as to escort Lord Tyrion here to his brother. Don’t kill him when you see him, we need his confession.”
Ser Barristan Selmy’s nostrils flared for a moment. “As your Grace wishes.”
Tyrion bowed and then headed for the doorway. Right. Time to shout at his brother.
Jaime
He sat there in the cell and stared at the wall opposite. He wanted to scream and howl at the ceiling, but all he felt was this terrible numbness.
He’d warned Cersei that they were taking too many risks at times, that they might be found out. She had laughed at him. His sweet sister liked taking risks at times. He had tried to refuse her, especially when she was too bold in her demands, but the sight of her naked body made his blood boil to the point where he would take any risk.
And now look where taking those risks had taken them both. Separate cells at the end of the world. And all the screaming and howling in the world would not help him. Father could not help them. No-one would help them. He closed his eyes. Stupid. They’d been so stupid. They’d given in to their lusts. But - how had Stark known? How had Stannis Baratheon known?
Claws skittered on wood and he opened his eyes and stared at the bars of the cell door. There was a bloody direwolf standing there. Staring at him. He glared at it with very real loathing. “Go away, dog,” he sneered. “Or whatever you are.”
Boots thumped in the corridor and Robb Stark appeared – and then Jaime wondered what the Seven Hells had happened to his eyes, because for an instant the boy seemed slightly taller and the direwolf a lot larger with red fire in both of their eyes. And then he blinked and they were back to normal. Perhaps he’d hit his head.
“What do you want boy?” Robb Stark tilted his head to one side, narrowing his eyes just a fraction. Oho. “Ah – don’t like being called ‘boy’. Offended!”
Oddly enough this seemed to amuse the Stark brat, who muttered something odd about how he’d said that last time, before he just resumed staring at him.
After a long moment Jaime snapped: “What? What’s so fascinating about me? Do I intrigue you? Sorry, boy, I’m not interested. I don’t sleep with boys.” The moment he said the words he knew that it was a mistake.
“No,” Stark said, quick as lightning, “Just your sister.” He tilted his head again. “I’m trying to understand you, Kingslayer. I’m trying to understand why you do the… things that you do.”
The way that he said the word ‘things’ made his blood boil. It made him sound as if he was describing dog shit on his boot. “Go away boy.”
“Did you tell the others to go away?”
“What? What others?”
“The others who discovered you. Servants. Surely you can’t have been lucky enough to never be discovered until now.”
He felt the back of his neck flush. Yes, there had been the occasional servant. Cersei had had them dealt with. He’d never asked what had happened to them. “Go away boy.”
“No. Tell me, Kingslayer – oh. Should I call you Sisterfucker instead? Or what about the other name they’re calling you, Oathbreaker?”
“Go. Away.”
“Not until I work out what you are. I’ve been wondering for a long time you see. What kind of a man are you? Did you know that my little brother, Bran, liked to climb the walls of Winterfell?”
This was bewildering. “What?”
“Bran liked to climb the walls. Until Father told him to stop.”
“How very typically serious of your father. What does this have to do with me?”
“Bran liked to climb the walls of the First Keep, where we are now. He also liked to climb the Broken Tower. He found it a challenge. Tell me something, Oathbreaker. What would you have done if Bran had been climbing the walls of the tower when you were cavorting with your sister and then looked in through the window? What would you have done?”
He stared at the boy. “I would have told him to go away as well – that we were wrestling.”
Robb Stark just stared at him, his eyes flickering all over his face. “No,” he said softly. “You wouldn’t. Not a man like you. Not a man who stuck his sword in the back of a man he was sworn to protect. Not a man who almost drew his sword on those who discovered your treason. No. You’re the kind of man who’d push a little boy out of a window to keep your sordid little secret.”
He stared at the boy. “No, I’m not.” The words sounded weak and he knew it.
“Yes, you are. I can see it in your eyes. That’s the kind of man you are.”
Rage washed over him. The gall of this… child. Who was this mere wolf to judge a Lion? He was a Lannister of Casterly Rock. “So good of you to judge me. What would you know of the world?”
“Enough to know what you are, Kingslayer.”
The rage enveloped him. “Kingslayer??? Your father named me that and never asked me why! Do you know anything about that wretched man? He burnt your grandfather alive! He had your uncle strangled with that collar! Do you know what it was like to watch him burn people alive in front of you for no crime at all, a giggling madman who’d be so aroused by the whole thing that he’d then rape his own wife afterwards? And yet people complain that I broke my oath in killing him! No – he broke his own oath first, when he tried to murder the entire fucking city of King’s Landing when your precious father’s banners appeared on the horizon! Your father owes me his life! Did you know that?”
Robb Stark took a step back – but then frowned. “What are you talking about? Is this yet another of your lies?”
A red mist came down on his vision. “LIES??? Do you have any idea what Aerys had planned??? Did no-one else wonder why that Targaryen lunatic appointed the chief fucking pyromancer as his Hand at the end? He had them prepare a lake of wildfire that would be lit the moment your father and his fat friend Robert entered the city, destroying the entire city and somehow turning that ranting fool into a dragon. I found out about the whole thing – not even Varys knew! I found out and I knew that the only way to stop it was to kill the Mad King. What was my oath worth compared to the lives of hundreds of thousands of people? Then my father arrived and betrayed Aerys and he ordered that I kill my father even as he told Rossart to burn the city. So what was I to do, Stark? I killed the Pyromancer and then I killed the Mad King as he ran for his throne. You call me Oathbreaker for that? You know NOTHING, boy!” He roared the last words, his hands rattling the bars of the cell as he gripped them.
There was a tinkling noise as something fell down the corridor and Jaime looked to one side. Tyrion and Selmy were standing there, astounded. They had heard everything.
“Jaime – that’s why you killed the Mad King?” Tyrion looked as if he wanted to weep. “Why did you not tell anyone?”
“No-one asked,” Jaime spat, still furious, before a wave of weariness replaced the rage. What was the point? “No-one ever asked. They just judged me. They thought I did it to please Father. I didn’t. I saved the city.”
“You lie!” Selmy roared. “No wildfire was ever found in the Red Keep – or anywhere else!”
“It was hidden beneath it!” Jaime roared back. “Under the Red Keep, under the Great Sept, under the Dragonpit, under all the gates! They had it shipped in in barrels!”
“No wildfire was ever taken out of anywhere after the King took the throne! I would have heard about it!”
“I didn’t tell anyone, Selmy! I couldn’t! There would have been panic!”
“You mean it’s still there?” The question came from Tyrion, who had gone as pale as a ghost.
Jaime nodded tiredly as he slumped onto the rough bed behind him. “I knew that it… what was the word you once used… debrades as it gets older. It’s harmless now.”
“Degrades, Jaime, that’s the word.” Tyrion walked forwards and gripped the bars. “But it degrades only if it’s stored in a place that has the right qualities and even then it only degrades if it was mixed badly. If. And if it’s stored somewhere dark then it can mature – and become unstable over the years. And you say that this stuff has been under King’s Landing since the Rebellion???”
Horror drove all the blood from his face and he swallowed. “No… Tyrion you must be wrong. I saved the city!”
“Brother, I fear that you placed it under suspended sentence of death.” He looked at Selmy and Stark, both of whom were now as pale as he was. “We must see the King at once about this. King’s Landing must be searched at once. The wildfire must be found and stored somewhere safe.”
They hurried off quickly and Jaime watched them go with a look of utter horror on his face. And then he doubled over and threw up on the floor. What had he done?
Ned
Robert seemed to be more sad than angry now. Sad – and bitter. He was wandering vaguely about the room, glaring at objects and occasionally poking at them with a large finger. When he knocked over a jar of roses that Cat had placed to one side in an effort to make the place… smell nice perhaps… Ned directed a glare of his own at him, which made his old friend flush with embarrassment and mutter an apology, before slumping into a chair and brooding.
This was a bad thing, as Robert could brood with the best of them. “Stop it.”
“…what? What was that Ned?” Robert seemed startled.
“Stop brooding.”
“…wasn’t brooding. I was thinking.”
“About what?”
There was a strained silence. “Family,” Robert all but whispered eventually. “How important it is. When I lost my parents to that storm in Shipbreaker’s Bay… I wonder what else I lost? Did Father know about the catacombs? What might he have known? And what else did he fail to pass on? I’m closer now to Stannis than any time for years, but how’d I let things get that bad? Why didn’t I spot that Cersei hated me so much? Have I been an idiot? Stupid? Or just… arrogant? Jon Arryn taught us both how to fight and how to rule. My parents would have told me how to love and how to live. I saw you and your family this morning and I envied you. Your Cat loves you and your children adore you. What do I have? This morning I had an heir, a spare and a daughter. Right now I have nothing.”
“Rubbish,” Ned said brusquely. “You’ve got friends and you’ve got family. You’ve got three children of your blood, who heard that sword.”
“Aye,” he replied with a sigh. “And all three of them are bastards. Seven Hells, only Edric’s mother is a noble. This is going to make a right mess of things. My only legal heir is Stannis. There’ll be those that claim that Stannis’s heir is Renly and not Shireen! A right mess this is.”
“You have the power to legitimise bastards,” Ned said carefully. “As you did for me.”
Robert pulled a face. “Gendry’s the eldest boy. But he’s a blacksmith and his mother worked in a tavern, the Gods rest her soul. The only noble blood there is from me, unless his mother was a bastard herself of some Lord – we’ll never know. Edric’s mother is a Florent. So he’s noble enough, but in the blink of an eye I’d annoy the Tyrells and suddenly get covered in bloody Florents. That said, people would accept Edric. The problem is that he’s just a boy and I need my heir to be older. This war that’s coming for the Wall, it’s going to be hard and it’s going to be bloody – and I don’t know if I’m going to live long enough to see Edric grow up enough to fight with me. Gendry – he’s the right age, but he’s got no noble blood, so if I make him my heir he’ll have to fight twice as hard against a bunch of stuck-up hoity-toities.”
Ned stared at him. That was… quite a good summation. “Hoity-toities?”
“Stuck up bastards. The kind of nobles who don’t lead or do a damn thing for their people, but just think that it’s enough to be a bloody noble and get all offended when what they think is a commoner gets the castle next to theirs. That smuggler who got those onions into Storm’s End – Ser Davos Seaworth. He’s a good example of a commoner getting a step up. Man’s worth ten, no, a hundred of some of the nobles I’ve met over the years. But I’ve heard the sneers at court. The Onion Knight they call him, before making fun of his accent. We put Seaworth in charge of the Goldcloaks after we found out that their main officers were in Baelish’s pocket and by all the Gods he’s done a good job with them. He’s worth a thousand of those fops in court.” He paused. “Gods, I’m meandering aren’t I?”
Ned found himself smiling slightly. “You’ve had a busy day Robert.”
“My point is that I might just have to legitimise them all. I need to talk to Jon Arryn about this, but I need a son. I need someone that the Realm can see as my heir in this war that’s coming. Someone to stand by me on the Wall and who can wield Stormbreaker if I fall. We need as many Baratheons as we can get. Can’t fail on this Ned. You know the stakes as much as I do. Edric’s too young right now. It might have to be Gendry. I don’t know yet. I’ll send a raven summoning Jon.” Robert looked at him gravely. “Is this the point where you tell me I’m a fool and to declare Stannis my heir?”
He paused and thought about it all carefully. “Gendry’s not hoity-toity.” Then he shook his head. “This is the North. We don’t do fops – idiots who think that being a noble means sitting on your arse will get killed right quick up here. Winter is always coming and here we start planning for each winter the moment that spring starts. There’s no room for idiots here. No, whoever you choose we’ll follow you. The Lords of the North have heard of both your sons here. Edric is popular because there’s no side to him at all – he treats everyone the same, no false pride there. As for Gendry, he’s already Gendry Strongarm, the blacksmith son of the King. People like him too. They’re you’re your sons. Whoever you pick we’ll still follow you.”
Robert looked at him and there were tears in his eyes for a moment. “Thank you Ned,” he sighed. “I wish I could count on more men like you. Loyal friends. Not like the Lannisters.”
“Not all the Lannisters are like the ones in the cells here, or their father. Gerion Lannister helped save my son’s lives. Tyrion Lannister has been a good friend to us all. Clever and committed. Braver than most people think. He might even end up as family – he’s fond of my cousin, Lady Dacey Surestone. He’d better treat her right.”
“Torgen Surestone. I remember that man. Gods, he was a terror on that horse of his at the Trident. Scared even me more for a moment. A good man. Can’t believe he’s dead.” He shook his head. “Aye, there might be a few Lannisters we can trust. It’ll be hard though.”
“I know,” Ned sighed. “But we-” He was interrupted by hurried boots in the corridor, muttered words and the door flying open to reveal Ser Barristan Selmy, Tyrion Lannister and, much to Ned’s surprise, Robb, with Grey Wind at his side. He stood at once, his eyes searching their faces. Trouble. “What’s wrong?”
“Your Grace, we have grave news,” Ser Barristan gasped, clearly out of breath, and dread roiled through Ned.
“Oh Gods,” Robert groaned. “Alright – who killed the Kingslayer?”
“What?” Tyrion gasped. “No, your Grace, my brother still… still lives. Gods, my legs were not made for this… or my lungs… No, it was what he… said.”
Robb, who looked fresher, glanced at the others. “Father, your Grace, I was talking to Jaime Lannister, trying to understand why a man like him would do what he did, when he confessed to something.”
Robert came to his feet, his eyes suddenly shrewd. “What?”
“The real reason why he killed Aerys Targaryen,” Ser Barristan said.
Confusion flashed through him, but it was Robert who voiced what he was thinking. “What? He killed the whoreson on orders from his father, surely?”
“No, your Grace,” Tyrion said firmly. “He did not. He said that he did it to save the city.”
“What?” Ned asked, baffled. “To save the city? King’s Landing? From what?”
“Your Grace, he pointed out something that I have always wondered about – why did Aerys Targaryen appoint Rossart, the chief pyromancer, as his last Hand of the King? And then he claimed that the then King ordered the pyromancers to create a huge amount of wildfire to be used on your approaching army.”
Ned flinched – but then frowned. “No wildfire was ever used against us!”
“No, but he said that Aerys planned for it to be used on you. That he had the pyromancers bury caches of wildfire under all the gates, under the Great Sept, the Dragonpit and the Red Keep. That Aerys planned to use it to kill you and your army and the whole city and then somehow become a dragon himself via some alchemy of his madness.”
There was a long silence – and then Ned felt all the blood drain from his face. “Truly?”
“Truly,” Ser Barristan said grimly. “I always wondered why Aerys had appointed that giggling lunatic as Hand. He was an odd man, always talking about ‘The Substance’ as if it was alive. If any man would have gone along with such a mad plan, it was him. Jaime Lannister said that when his father’s army arrived Aerys suspended his plan – but then when Tywin Lannister turned on him and started to sack the city, he told him to bring him his father’s head – and then told Rossart to ignite the caches. Instead Jaime Lannister cut down Rossart, before killing Aerys.”
By the Old Gods… “If it’s true then a great many people owe him their lives,” Ned said hoarsely. Then he frowned. “But why did you run here to tell us this?”
“If it’s true, aye,” Robert objected. “But I never heard of any wildfire being taken out from under the Red Keep!”
“Because my idiot brother never told anyone about the wildfire,” Tyrion Lannister said through gritted teeth. “He thought that as long as it was buried and forgotten about, it would degrade – weaken and wither. But he was wrong. Wildfire left to mature in darkness strengthens with age. And becomes less stable! More easily ignited! A beam of sunlight might set it off, a thump, a shake, vibration!”
This time the silence was longer. “Do you mean to say,” Robert said eventually, “That every time I have seated my arse on that damn chair there has been a cache of wildfire beneath it somewhere?”
“Aye,” the three at the door chorused.
“My brother said that the pyromancers brewed a lake of the wretched stuff,” Tyrion said hoarsely. “Your Grace, we must send a raven to King’s Landing at once, telling them to search most carefully. My brother believes this wildfire tale. It explains everything I always wondered about the death of the last Targaryen King.”
“Not a raven,” Robert said with a sigh, “Ravens. Five at least, this is too important for just one. And two to White Harbour, with messages to send to King’s Landing by ship.” He rubbed his face with both hands. “Damn it. This changes a few things. But it doesn’t change one thing. I have to tell my children that I am not their father.” He glanced at Ned. “Fetch your Maester. We have messages to send. And then I have to visit my ‘children’.”
Sandor
Gods, what a mess this was. He knew the implications of that sword clanking – or chiming as some had heard it – at once. The Bitch-Queen of Westeros had not just been fucking her own brother but very likely had been fucking other men who were not her husband for a long time. Long enough to mean that the Royal Children were not royal at all.
His high and mightiness in Casterley Rock was not going to like this one bit. Not that he minded that one bit. Fuck Tywin Lannister.
No, the problem was that Prince Brat did not realise what had happened earlier that day and was still ranting about Father needed to punish the bastards for lying to him and that perhaps he should take it on himself to order his dog to punish them instead. He eyed the boy balefully as he stalked about the room, still fuming. Well, too bad. Laying a hand against the King’s actual children, rather than his supposed children, would be a fast way to get Stormbreaker acquainted with his neck. He wasn’t a fool.
“Your father, his Grace the King, sent you to this room and told you to stay in this room,” he finally ground out. “Stay in this room. I’ll be outside. I’ll be guarding this bloody room.”
“Now listen, dog,” the brat snarled. “I want you to find that upstart blacksmith and-”
“I’ll do nothing to him. The King likes him. If I harm a hair on his head then the King will want to know why and who ordered me to. And I’ll have no choice but to tell him. You want the King angry with you?”
That shut the brat up. He glared at him and then waved a hand in dismissal.
As Sandor retreated outside and closed the door he wondered just why whatever gods might exist were punishing him so badly. His burns were bad enough, but first he’d been the sworn sword of that Blonde Bitch and then the Brat. There were times when there wasn’t enough ale in the world to drown his bitterness.
What next after this? A bastard, even a Hill, would not need a sworn sword. What would Old Tywin do? He frowned for a moment. Who was the father? Was it that smug fucker the Kingslayer? He pulled a face and then decided that he didn’t care. Jaime Lannister was an entitled smirking bastard and some time in a cell might just do him some good.
Boots thumped in the corridor and he looked up to see Selmy – a grim-faced Selmy, with the eyes of a man who was truly dangerous – came into view, with the bulk of the King behind him. Now there was a man who was beyond dangerous. He’d changed.
Selmy nodded at him and Sandor opened the door for the King, who glowered at him suspiciously for a moment before nodding slightly at him. “In,” he said grimly. “I need people to witness this.”
In he went, in time to see the Brat stand hurriedly and then stare at the King. “Father? What in the Seven Hells is going on? First Mother is in her room and now all this nonsense with your bastards and-”
“Joffrey, sit down,” the King said in what Sandor suspected was the softest voice that he could manage. “I need to talk to you.”
The Brat scowled, wiped the look off his face at the sight of his father and then sat sulkily on the nearest chair. The King sat down on the sturdiest chair he could lay his hand on and then sat there, looking intensely uncomfortable for a long moment. “Joffrey,” he started, and that stopped as he scowled at the fireplace. Then he started again. “Joffrey…” Again he stopped.
The Brat was staring at his ‘father’ with a lot of confusion on his face. “Is everything alright Father?”
The King scowled at his own feet and then rallied, looking at the Brat full in the face. “You were asking about your mother. She’s under arrest. It’s treason, lad.”
This baffled the Brat, who just stared at the King. “What do you mean, ‘treason’? Mother’s the Queen. Queens can’t commit treason.”
The King’s eyes took on that flinty look that meant that he was reining in his temper a bit. “They can when they betray their King. Their husband. Joffrey, your mother betrayed me. She was… she was discovered having… relations… with another man.” The King’s face was a bit flushed and the flinty look was positively stony by now.
The Brat still looked baffled, but shock was starting to creep in a bit. “What?” The word was spat out in a confused and almost frightened voice. “But… she wouldn’t do that.”
“She did.”
“….says who?”
“There were witnesses. Lord Stark for one.”
It was here that the Brat looked contemptuous. “Stark? But Mother says that he’s nothing more than a Northern oaf, and-”
The King stood up so abruptly that the chair flew back and the Brat actually cringed. “Ned Stark is no oaf, Joffrey. Be very careful when you speak of him.”
The Brat gulped. “But… but Father, Mother would never-”
“She did.” The King pulled a face as he sat down again. “With her own twin brother.”
Revulsion rippled over the Brat’s face. “Father, that’s disgusting! What a stupid accusation! Mother would never do… that with Uncle Jaime!”
“She did,” the King said flatly. “They were seen by Lord Stark, Lord Baratheon and Ser Barristan Selmy. In full sight. There can be no denying it. Which is why I am here. Joffrey, we don’t yet know how long that… your mother has been betraying me. What I do know though is that you didn’t hear the sword.”
The Brat stared at him, baffled. “That sword again? Father, all your bastards lied. Lied to your face! And you need to punish them! Swords don’t chime!”
“I heard it chime.” The King said the words heavily. “So did Stannis and Shireen. The sword is tied to those with the blood of Durran Godsgrief. And that’s the problem.”
“What problem?” The Brat was still baffled and by all the gods was he stupid as well. “I’m your son but I didn’t hear any chime!”
The King blinked and then tilted his head a little as he peered at the Brat. “Gods,” he muttered, “This is going to be harder than I thought.” He scratched the back of his head and then tried again. “Joffrey, those with the blood of Durran Godsgrief heard the sword chime. You, your brother and your sister did not hear it. You all have gold hair and green eyes. You don’t resemble me at all. In any way. Do you see what I mean now?”
The Brat blinked at this – and then he went white with shock as the King’s words finally sank in. “No… no, Father. I am your son. I am your heir. I am a prince of the realm! I will be King after you. I might take after Mother’s line, but I am still your son!”
“You are not my son. I am sorry, but given how much you look like a Lannister, your real father might well be… the man your mother was caught with.” The King looked tired and strained. “There is nothing of me in you. I am sorry, lad. I am not good at this, I’ve never been one for words, but you did not hear the sword.”
“NO!” Joffrey leapt to his feet, his eyes wide and his face contorted with what might be panic with a bit of fury. “I am your son. I am a prince! Sound the sword again, I will hear it chime! I wasn’t sitting in the right place, I did not take it seriously, sound it again!”
“You did not hear it the first time,” the King muttered. “It’s no use lad. Now, I’ll need to talk to your Grandfather. Not sure if that makes you a Hill or a Waters, given who your father might be but-”
“Sound the sword again!” The Brat looked almost demented now. “I am a prince! Sound the sword again!”
“No, ask him to hold it.” Sandor was surprised with himself – the words slipped out of his mouth without much thought.
Everyone stared at him in surprise and he shrugged a little. “He tried to pick it up in your cabin before White Harbour your Grace. It burned his hand and threw him across the room. ‘False’ was the word I heard in my head.”
The King stared at the Brat, his eyes narrowing. “Is that true, boy? Did you try to hold Stormbreaker?”
The Brat put his gloved hands behind his back. “No,” he quavered, before sending a look of utter hatred at Sandor, who didn’t give a damn. He’d been hired to protect the Prince and the Brat was now a bastard. “I did not try and hold it.”
The King squinted at him. “Gods, you’re a terrible liar boy. I noticed that you’ve been wearing gloves a lot. Let me see your hand.”
The white-faced Brat shook his head for a moment and then, as the King glowered at him, he finally pulled his shaking hands into view, before slipping the gloves off. At a gesture from the King he showed his palms – and the burn line that crossed the right one. The King stared at it. And then he gestured to Selmy, who was carrying that bloody sword. “Ser Barristan, you can carry it, but Joffrey cannot. Why?”
The old man frowned slightly as he stepped up next to the King. “I am merely the swordbearer, your Grace, as my forefathers were to yours. I have no claim on this sword, I would never dare to call it mine. I know little of such things, but I would hazard that that falsely claiming to be worthy enough to bear it might results in… repercussions.”
Sandor thought about this. “You mean, if I tried to steal it, it might bite me as well?”
The old Kingsguard eyed him, before nodding. “Aye.”
“I wasn’t trying to steal it! It will be mine one day! I am your son, Father! I am a prince! I will be King!” The Brat looked half-deranged again.
The King frowned at the Brat for a moment – and then he reached out, took the sword from Selmy and then held it out hilt-first to the Brat. “Then take it. If you claim to be my son, prove it. Take the sword.”
There was a long moment of utter silence as the Brat stood there and quivered like a leaf, his eyes fixed on the hilt. He was as white as a sheet, almost green, and he seemed to be thinking furiously. And then he slowly raised his right hand and reached out to place it over pommel, before gulping. “I am Joffrey Baratheon and this sword will one day be mine!”
The Brat’s fingers curled around the pommel and there was a long moment of nothing – and then the sword seemed to flare with light. “FALSE!” boomed a voice that seemed to come from nowhere – and then the Brat was flying backwards, just as he had on the ship. He landed on a table, which just about survived the impact and jerked backwards. Once again there was the slight smell of charred flesh in the air, along with something else.
“Fetch the Maester,” the King sighed as he stood up. “And get the boy some new underwear, it smells like he’ll need it.” He looked at the Brat, who was clutching at his hand, and his face hardened. “Well, that’s that. Joffrey Hill it is. Clegane, guard him. Stop him from doing anything stupid.”
Sandor stared at the groaning brat. Easier said than done.
Tyrion
He felt… numb. There was every chance that Jaime was going to die. It was treason. Worse, it was stupid treason. He loved his brother, but Jaime had been a complete imbecile. And now everything was… numb. The name of Lannister had plunged to new depths and all his plans were now in ruins.
It had been nice to dream, just for a while. To imagine that he might be a valued part of the nobility, even just for a while, as they planned this war that was going to happen. He could imagine him doing some research and perhaps advising the King about some history. And perhaps, just perhaps asking Ned Stark about… no. That door had closed. They’d never allow it now.
He wandered down the corridor tiredly. A positive blizzard of ravens had flown off and they had to wait for some to come in before any more could go out. They wouldn’t know the truth about the wildfire for weeks though. It took time for ravens to get to and from King’s Landing. That said, he knew that Jaime had told the truth. Or at least that he believed that he had told the truth.
A closed door brought him to a halt and he looked up and then blinked. Of course. His feet had brought him to the library. Where else? He pushed the door open and wandered in with a sigh – before stopping. There were voices to one side. He waddled wearily over and then peered around a bookshelf. As he had thought. Dacey was sitting there with Shireen next to her, both engrossed in some books. He stared at the former sadly. Well. Ned Stark would never agree to any request to marry his cousin now.
He sighed slightly but walked towards them anyway. He might as well take the opportunity to wring a few last precious moments out of life. As he approached they both looked up. “Hello Tyrion,” Dacey said quietly. “Shireen was looking for a good book on the Durrandons.”
“I want to know a bit more about them,” Shireen nodded. “As I’m descended from them and I really want to know how I can hear Stormbreaker chime whilst others hear it clank.”
Tyrion stared at her and then swapped a glance with Dacey, who looked as baffled as he felt, before she asked the obvious question: “Shireen, what was that about Stormbreaker?”
“Uncle Robert called Father and all his children into the same room. Then he hit Stormbreaker with a hammer and told them all – his children that is – to write down what they heard. And then the funny thing was – funny as in odd that is, not amusing – was that all his, erm, natural children heard it chime, the same as Father and I, whilst all his so-called legal children just heard a clank. Father said that he’ll explain it all later, but there’s no need, I know what it meant. His children are sort of swapped over.”
Tyrion closed his eyes for a moment as his heart sank a little further into his boots. Joffrey… well the boy was a monster, he didn’t care what happened to him. But Tommen and Myrcella…
When he opened his eyes he caught the gaze of Dacey, who nodded at him sadly. “I’m sure that Ned will do his best to make sure that the children will be taken care of, Tyrion.”
He nodded back. Well. Time to hold his head up and try and show some dignity. “I agree, Lady Surestone. Given the… recent circumstances, I realise that House Lannister is not exactly in good standing at the moment, at least in the Royal Court. There is every chance that I will soon be sent back to Casterley Rock. I would like to thank you for your friendship and your kindness.”
Dacey and Shireen just stared at him for a long moment, before looking at each other. “Dacey, he’s being noble,” Shireen said after a moment. “And silly.”
“Yes,” said Dacey in a steely voice, “He is. Shireen, is this book enough, or do you need more?”
The girl looked owlishly at the books, picked up two of them, nodded and then trotted off. Dacey watched her go and then folded her hands in her lap and gazed at him seriously. “Tyrion, what are you doing?”
Hoping not to say goodbye to you, he thought. Instead he said: “My brother and sister are traitors to the realm. They were found red-handed in their treason. The stink of this will spread far and wide and I do not think that anyone will-”
She cut him off with a raised hand. “Tyrion, did you help them in that treason?”
“No!”
“Did you know about it?”
“Well, I suspected that they were doing something stupid, but I never dreamt that they were being that stupid.”
“Would you have approved?”
“Never!”
“Did you fight with Robb and Jon at the Nightfort?”
“Well, yes, or at least I was there when they fought. I threw a knife at a man I think.”
“Did you fight with them beyond the Wall, against Wights and Others?”
“Yes.”
“Has anyone placed you in a cell?”
“No.”
“Have any of your family, other than your siblings, been placed in a cell or asked to leave?”
“Well… no. I’d forgotten Tyrek was here. And Lancel. Haven’t even seen either of them.”
Dacey stood up and walked over to him. “You are ten times cleverer than your brother, you have a thousand times your sister’s heart – she made fun of my name when we met – and none of her vileness, you have fought side by side with House Stark, you saved me at the Inn from that whoreson. Tyrion, you do not need to leave, or withdraw yourself, or hold yourself apart in any way. Now, I have had a word with Ned and he is expecting you to talk with him at some point.”
Something stirred in his heart. It was either astonishment or hope, he wasn’t sure which one. “About what?”
“About you asking Ned for my hand in marriage. There will be a lot to arrange.” And with that she kissed him on the cheek. “Not sure about the beard. You will need to be taken in hand on a few things.” A smile that made his heart stop for an instant came his way and then she swept out.
He put his hand to the spot on his cheek where she had kissed him. All of a sudden the world was a different place.
“Right,” he muttered, his thoughts dancing on new heights, “I need to go and shout that confession out of Jaime.”
Cat
She found Ned, naturally, in the Godswood. He was sitting there staring at the Heart Tree, the Fist on the ground at his feet and his face a mystery, lost in the shadow cast by a tree from the setting sun.
“Are you well my love?” She asked the question quietly and only after looking about the place to make sure that they were alone.
“It’s been a very long day,” Ned sighed. “And I was just thinking about my father and what I did to avenge him. Him and Brandon. And Lyanna. The cost as well. If what Jaime Lannister said is true, I very nearly joined Father in death by wildfire.”
“I heard the news from Luwin, told to him by Robb,” she said faintly, her stomach still roiling with horror. “Do you believe him?”
There was a long silence as Ned brooded over that question. “Yes,” he said eventually. “It fits with what I remember of that madman. When I saw him at Harrenhall… I remember how horrifying his appearance was. Those nails, those eyes, his cackles… and his insane shrieks. It fits the facts – why else would he have appointed that pyromancer to be his Hand?”
She sat down next him, a little more heavily than she had intended. “You might have died.”
“But I did not,” he said, reassuringly. “Come now Cat – I made it back to you. You and Robb.”
She thought about things for a moment and then smiled slightly. “To think that you owe your life – and that of your men! – to Jaime Lannister!”
A slight chuckle erupted from her husband. “I know,” he muttered. “The Old Gods have a sense of humour, so they not?”
She smiled and leant against him, drawing inspiration from his quiet strength. “What will become of him?”
“I don’t know.” Ned said the words slowly. “He is guilty of treason, and Stannis wants his head on a spike, but he admits that while that is the law, there is a certain amount of… difficulty in this case because of Tywin Lannister’s importance. We need the Westerlands in this war that is coming. That said, Jaime Lannister must be punished for what he has done. If I was Robert… well, the Wall needs men more now than it ever has before.”
“You would send him to the Night’s Watch?”
Ned shrugged. “He’s a vain, smug, dissembling, whoreson, who in that future that will never come to pass might have thrown Bran from the Old Keep for seeing something that he should not have. But he’s also a fine swordsman. I would have him swear his oath on the Fist of Winter here in the Godswood. If he breaks such an oath, then what happened to Bootle will happen to him.”
She remembered that moment, the crash, the flash of light and the moment that the wretched man had been hurled backwards, quite dead. She’d known that he was dead almost instantly, feeling it in her heart. “We need to tell him that then.”
“Aye.” Ned stood and helped her up, before picking up the Fist and attaching it to his belt. “There’s a lot to be done, even now. Robert will need to see the Wall, Tywin Lannister will have to be dealt with…” He sighed, offered his arm to her, which she took, linking her own in his, and then escorted her out of the Godswood and across the courtyard. “There’s a lot to do, as I said. Arya and Bran have done well though.”
She was about to smile wryly and tell him about how she had done her best to keep an open mind there, when she heard the sound of hurrying feet. It was Luwin, who was holding up a piece of paper. “My Lord… the last raven of the day… brought this. You should… read it at once.” He handed it over and then stood there panting.
Ned opened it and held it up to his eyes in the dying light. “Ah,” he said, a bit too calmly for her liking. “Tywin Lannister is headed to Winterfell. He’s coming to ascertain the truth of the Call. Well. That should be interesting.”
“How many people is he bringing?” Cat asked, as she thought about dealing with yet more guests. At least the Royal Party had brought coin with them and today’s hunt had restocked their larders twice over.
“He did not say. But knowing Tywin Lannister, there will be a fair few people. I think I should tell His Grace at once.”
“He was last seen by the Great Keep, with another log,” Luwin pointed out.
Ned nodded. “The years have rolled off of him. To see him training with a log… it brought back such memories of growing up.” He nodded at Luwin, who pattered off in the direction of the library, and then Ned and Cat walked towards the Great Keep, through the gathering darkness.
As they approached it however Cat could see that someone had lit candles in the little Sept that Ned had had built for her so many years ago, and where she worshiped the Seven every morning.
“Ned, is there someone in the Sept?”
Her husband squinted at it and nodded, looking surprised. “Someone is in there. I wonder who?”
“Do you think it’s the King?”
Ned shrugged. “He never was very religious. Let us check though.”
As they approached they could see a figure within it. Cat looked at Ned questioningly. It was Ser Barristan Selmy. The old Whitecloak was kneeling before the statue of the Warrior, looking strained. After a while he looked up and then seemed to sense them both, turning slightly. “Lord and Lady Stark. Your pardon, I felt the need for guidance.”
“You have no need to apologise, Ser Barristan,” Ned rumbled. “I myself have just come from the Godswood. We all need guidance at times.”
“I felt a most particular need for it today,” Ser Barristan sighed. “To have witnessed such a betrayal by one of my sworn brothers… And now I have been commanded by His Grace the King to rebuild the Kingsguard. I have a great task in front of me and I cannot fail in this. I fear that the Kingsguard has fallen mightily in recent years – indeed for some time now. The rot started in the time of Aerys Targaryen.”
“You are too hard on yourself, Ser Barristan,” Ned objected.
“You are too kind, Lord Stark, but no. We started to fall many years ago, it just took time for the rot to show. I saved the then King at Duskendale, but I soon realised that it might have been better had I failed. Aerys’s madness was a stark and terrible one.”
He looked at Ned and a look of pain crossed his face. “I was there, at the Red Keep, when your father and brother died. I remember that terrible day so very vividly. Aerys murdered them both. And I and the other members of the Kingsguard who were there… We said nothing. Not a word. I was a coward that day, we all were. We did not want to be added to the flames. I often think of that day. I should have said something, done something, to stop it. But I dared not. His madness was too great by that point, the smallest thing would set him off. And he loved wildfire. That, if nothing else, tells me that he – the prisoner – was telling the truth about the caches in Kings Landing.
“Ser Gerold Hightower once said that we guarded the King, we did not judge him.” He shook his head. “No. We should have said something. Counselled him that what he was doing was madness.”
“Then you would have died, Ser Barristan,” Ned sighed. “He was too mad to hear of anything that went against his wishes. The only way to stop him by then was with the sword. And even then, replacing Aerys would only have meant that Rhaegar would have taken the throne.”
“Aye, and I do not know if he might not have gone mad himself,” Ser Barristan frowned. “I knew him – or at least I thought I did. I once thought that he would make a good king. Now, hearing about this wildfire plot of his father’s… I wonder. I wonder about many things. Why he abducted your sister for one. In the last year of his life he was… different. Rhaegar was increasingly obsessed with prophecy. At the end, one specific prophecy. The Prophecy of Ice and Fire. And then, right at the end, the day before he died…
“He went to the Isle of Faces in the God’s Eye in the days before that battle. He went alone, despite my objections. When he came back he was… different. Resigned. He said that he had met the Green Man and that he had been told something about his fate. And then he gave me and my sworn brothers at the Trident orders that placed us all away from him at the start of the battle. During the battle I saw him half-fighting and half-searching. I think that he sought out the then Lord Baratheon. That does not sound like the man I thought I knew. Was he mad or sane at the end?”
Cat looked at Ser Barristan Selmy carefully. The man looked and sounded strained. “Are you well Ser Barristan?”
The old man looked at her sadly. “I have to restore the Kingsguard my Lady. I am not entirely sure how I can do that. How can I remake it so that the Kingsguard is not a place to drop creatures like Boros Blount? But at the same time, how can I ensure that we have no Crispin Coles? And how can I find men who are willing to kill their king if their king tries to order the death of an entire city like King’s Landing? How is it that men like Jaime Lannister can be both right and wrong? Gods, this is the task for men like Ser Duncan the Tall. And he is long dead. All I have is myself.”
Gods, no wonder he had sought the guidance of the Warrior. Ned must have thought the same thing, because he shook his head. “I wish you every success on your quest, Ser Barristan.” He glanced at Cat, who caught the message instantly.
“We will leave you to your devotions, Ser Barristan,” she said, nodding respectfully to him. “I hope you find the answers that you seek.”
“My thanks, my Lady, my Lord. I hope that I do too.” And with that the old man knelt before the Warrior again. Perhaps a prayer to the Father might help as well.
Tyrion
He’d been fiddling with old coin the first time he’d tried to visit Jaime, only to hear his brother’s confession about Aerys and the wildfire. He’d been so shocked that he had dropped it on the floor – and there it was. He picked it up and peered at it. Old and worn and somehow apt for this place.
Jaime was slumped against the bunk. His eyes seemed sunken and unseeing, his hands shook slightly and there was a stain on the knees. There was also a slight smell of vomit in the air and a damp patch on the floor, as if something had been sluiced away. Tyrion looked at him sadly and then slumped against the wall opposite his brother.
“Oh, Jaime,” he said mournfully. “What a mess.”
Jaime looked at him dully. “Hello Tyrion. Found a coin have you?”
“I had it earlier. Dropped it when I heard your little revelation about the wildfire plot. A lot of ravens have flown on that one.” He paused and looked at Jaime. “I saw the Maester here on the way to see you. There was a raven from the South. Father is coming here.”
Jaime froze for a moment – but then leant back and laughed softly. “He hasn’t heard yet. Ravens can’t get to Casterley Rock and back in a day. Why is he coming?”
“To find out the truth about the Call.”
“The Call… and what is the truth about the Call?”
“That it happened. It explains the dreams.”
Jaime went very still. “Dreams?”
“We have Greenseers in our family, Jaime. Uncle Gerion has it, his son Allarion has it. I think that I have a touch of it. I dreamt a dream on my way here to Winterfell. A terrible one. Father had been one of those who didn’t send help to the Wall. And as a result Casterley Rock had fallen. The place we both grew up in was filled with wights – one of which was Father. You were dead. Cersei was dead. I was leading the last survivors South, trying to stay ahead of the walking dead.”
Jaime said nothing – he just stared at Tyrion with eyes that were filled with some undefinable emotion. Then he finally let out a sigh and ran his hands through his hair. “Dreams…” He muttered the word carefully, an odd tone in his voice. “Why is Father so important?”
“We need his men, his gold and above all his goodwill – and his brains. House Lannister must be seen to support the Night’s Watch in this war that is to come.”
“The war you claim is coming.”
“You saw the head of the wight. I have seen far worse. Trust me, Jaime, the Others are coming for us all. And they bring the dead with them. They are coming.”
His brother eyed him for a long time, his eyes flitting about his face almost feverishly. “You believe this.”
He repressed the need to take off his boot and hurl it at Jaime’s head. “Yes,” he said very firmly instead. “Which is why we need Father on our side.”
“Our… have you become a Northman, brother?”
He glared at Jaime. “I am a man of Westeros, brother. That is how we should all think. There can be no neutrals on this. If the Dornish think that this is another war that they can sit out, then they are fools. Besides, the Dornish are already coming - House Dayne is already here.”
Jaime looked at him again – and then sighed and looked away. “My severed head on a spike will not enamour Father when he sees it.”
Right. Time to roll the dice. “It might not come to that. The spike that is. There is another option for you.”
Jaime looked at him, confused. Then his face cleared. “The Wall?”
“You saved King’s Landing from Aerys Targaryen, the Mad King.”
“Stark and the Baratheons don’t know that yet.”
“Your tale rings true. Selmy thinks its true.”
“Selmy wants me dead. I’m surprised he hasn’t burnt my white cloak already and smeared my face with the ashes.”
“Selmy knows we need every man we can get on the Wall.”
Jaime hung his head for a moment. “The Wall… do you want me dead that badly, brother?”
“Don’t be a fool!” He shouted the words as he came to his feet. “I want you to live for years to come! You are the only friend I have had all my life! But it’s the Wall and life for as long as you can survive there or the headsman and death tomorrow! You are the finest fighter House Lannister has seen for many years, you can live in the Night’s Watch. Yes, the Wall is the place where this war that is coming will be fought. You can fight there – no wasted death here.”
Jaime just looked at him again, hollow-eyed. “Death… or death in a few months or years, in the company of rapists and thieves and murderers. My, what a choice.”
“The Night’s Watch is not what is was, Jaime. Volunteers are flocking to it. And every man in it heard the Call. Every one of them. Perhaps it was their calling. Perhaps it was the Wall. But they are fighting for us all.”
Jaime looked unconvinced and it was then that Tyrion’s temper finally came to the boil. “Jaime, do you have any idea what you and our brainless sister have done? House Lannister stands on the brink of ruin! We are all tainted by what the two of you have done! We will not be fully trusted in the matter of marriage for years, decades to come, if that is we survive the war! Do you think that House Lannister will be trusted from now onwards? That other Houses will approach us for marriage alliances?
“No. So we must repair the damage that you have done! Or at least start to! Yes, you are guilty as to the matter of treason. That much is plain as you were caught red-handed. But you also saved King’s Landing. That can be used as a counter-balance. Not much of one, but just enough to alter your fate from the headsman to the Wall. And the best thing you can do right now is to confess.”
His brother stared at him again. “Confess? To what? They already have witnesses to what I did!”
“But not for how long you did it for. You need to confess to being the father of the children.”
“Father? I was never a father to them,” Jaime spat bitterly. “I just… slept with her.”
“Semantics. The King needs that confession. He would be willing to send you to the Wall for it.”
“Why?”
“Because of Father. You know what he’s like. He will deny what you have done. He will think that it is a plot. He will drag his heels and think it all an affront to the family name. He will even think that it’s a plot by Stannis Baratheon to steal what should rightfully be Joffrey’s. The King has already disowned his children. This is the biggest political crisis to strike his reign so far. He needs as much certainty as possible on this. You can give him what he needs to prove to the Realm that his children are not his own and that what he has done in divorcing Cersei was the only thing he could have done. Confess.”
“He’ll kill me.”
“He could have killed you earlier today. He did not.”
Jaime looked at him for a very long time – and then he leant back and passed a slightly shaking hand over his eyes as he seemed to think very hard. “Do you think it might work?”
“I will speak until I am blue in the face until I make them agree to it.”
Jaime stared at him for another long moment. And then his face seemed to set. “I will sign a confession.”
Tyrion let out a sigh. “Thank you. Jaime.”
“But there is a condition.”
Ah. “What is it?”
“I want a trial by combat.”
The words rang around his head but failed to make the least bit of sense. “What?”
“I want a trial by combat.”
“For what? You are already guilty of treason and you are signing a confession!”
“For the death of Aerys Targaryen.” Jaime looked at him with eyes that were far away again. “I’m done drifting. Father pushed me one way, Aerys pushed me another and then Cersei… did what she did. I’m done with drifting. I don’t want to be called ‘Kingslayer’ on the Wall. I want a trial by combat for what I did to save King’s Landing.”
He stared at Jaime, who had an odd look on his face. “Jaime, that makes not the least bit of sense.”
“But that’s my condition.”
“If you lose you’ll be dead!”
“Lose? Me?” And Jaime smirked, like in the old days. “Oh, I’ll win. I’m Ser Jaime Lannister.”
He gazed at his brother and then he finally nodded. “I’ll tell the King.” Even though it was madness.
Ned
It was a quiet feast. Not sombre, just... subdued, as if everyone knew just what kind of a cloud was hanging over Robert's head.
Oddly enough however Robert was not busy brooding, getting drunk or snarling at people. Instead he and Stannis were having a very intent conversation on the far side of the High Table with Jeor Mormont, who was telling them both, in a great deal of detail, about just what life on the Wall had been like before the Call. Judging from the taut expression on his face Robert was feeling more than a bit guilty. Not that he should - the Night's Watch had been neglected for centuries.
That said, given by the way that he was talking, and the notes that Stannis was taking, that neglect on the part of the Iron Throne had now ended. To one side stood Ser Barristan Selmy, who still looked as if he had a great deal on his mind.
Ned sighed as he ate his own food - some venison that the Cassells has hunted down whilst he had still been riding South from the Wall. Cat was next to him but Robb, Jon and Theon were away to one side, sitting at a table and having a quiet but intense conversation about a piece of paper that lay in front of Theon.
"He's choosing his new name," Cat said, seeming to read his mind. "He's making his decision. Wants to talk to the King tomorrow about it. Ned, the lad's nervous."
"Can't say I blame him," Ned muttered. "Not an easy thing to do, disowning your own father."
"You do know that he wishes that you were his father don't you?" Cat asked shrewdly.
"I know," he sighed. "I can't imagine what it must have been like to grow up with Balon bloody Greyjoy as a father. The man's an idiot."
The discussion on the table with Robb, Jon and Theon was petering out a little, as the latter jabbed at a spot on the paper and then set his chin a little, before looking at the King, who was still talking to Stannis and Jeor. Hmmm, a decision had indeed been made.
He nodded to himself - and then reached out and snatched the last piece of bread on the table just ahead of Rickon, who had been eyeing it surreptitiously for some time and talking to his direwolf about it in what he had obviously thought was a low voice. As his youngest son looked at him in shock he stuck his tongue out at him - and then grinned, tousled his hair and gave it to him, delighting in the giggle that the boy uttered.
It was only then that he saw that Tyrion Lannister had entered the room from one side and was walking towards him, his face set. Ah. What had he discussed with his honourless brother?
"Lord Stark," Tyrion said formally as he walked up, "I need a word with his Grace and yourself."
Ned nodded, wiped the sides of his mouth carefully and then stood up and walked over to Robert, who greeted him with raised eyebrows. "What's up Ned?"
Ned looked at Tyrion, who stepped forwards, cleared his throat, stared at his feet, scowled at the ceiling and then finally looked at his King. "Your Grace, my brother has made his decision."
Robert nodded seriously. "And what has he decided?"
"That he will confess his... crimes. Confess to what he did."
Ned stared at him, along with Robert, Stannis, Jeor and Selmy. "A full confession?"
"Yes, Lord Stark," Tyrion said in a low voice. "He will take the Black."
Jeor made a slight face, but then schooled his features quickly. "A new brother," he muttered. "Well... he's skilled at fighting. He'll be needed."
"He has stated a condition though," Tyrion said with a wince. "He wants a trial by combat for the killing of Aerys Targaryen."
Everyone within earshot stopped what they were doing and stared at him, and as the whispers spread the silence that followed grew.
It was Robert who broke the silence, after cleaning out both ears with his forefingers and then staring at Tyrion. "You what?"
Tyrion lifted his chin a little and then repeated: "He wants a trial by combat for the killing of Aerys Targaryen."
"Why?"
Tyrion shrugged his shoulders. "When he joins the Night's Watch he does not want to be called Kingslayer anymore."
There was a pause. Then Robert cleared his throat again. "Is he mad?"
"No, your Grace. He smirked at me, said that he'd win any such trial by combat and added that he really did not want to be known as the Kingslayer anymore."
Robert leant back in his chair and just stared at Tyrion Lannister for a very long moment. And then he finally responded: "Very well. Tell your brother that I accept his condition. He will have a trial by combat."
Tyrion nodded sombrely and then bowed formally and walked out. As he left Robert stroked his chin. "Smirked, did he?"
Selmy stepped forwards. "I fear that the man might be a bit unbalanced your Grace."
Robert nodded, but Ned could tell that his mind was elsewhere. He had to admit that so was his own. Who on earth could they find to fight to defend Aerys Targaryen, the whoreson who had murdered his father and his brother?
"Right then," Robert rumbled. "The Kingslayer wants to fight someone? Fair enough. He'll fight me."
A shocked silence fell - and then everyone seemed to surge to their feet in protest.
"Your Grace!"
"Robert!"
"Are you mad brother?"
Robert rose and raised a hand, before looking at Ser Barristan Selmy. "The Red Keep."
The Lord Commander of the Kingsguard opened his mouth - and then froze. "Oh," he muttered in a slightly stunned voice. "Of course." He paused, as an expression that combined shock, chagrin and then reluctant acceptance stole over his face. "Are you sure your Grace?"
"I am," Robert stated as he set his chin. "Stormbreaker will break him."
Jorah
He sat in the Godswood until well after the Sun had gone down, the little piece of paper in his hand. He felt… well, he felt… he didn’t know how he felt. There was numbness there. Anger. Shame. A kind of guilt as well.
And then there was the other feeling. The… relief? Was that what it was?
But - he had let her down, he knew it. He should have been there for her. So many memories. So much love. So much bitterness. So very many words. Angry words. Sad words. Bitter words.
Feet pattered on leaves and he looked up to see Leera walking towards him, holding a lantern, a worried look on her face. “Jorah? Is this where you have been for so long?”
“Aye, I’ve been here,” he muttered, before wiping at his eyes. “There was a message from White Harbour.”
She came to a halt next to him, obviously uncertain about what to do next. “What was the message? Whatever it was, it seems to have hit you hard.”
He looked down at the message, which was hidden in darkness. Despite that he knew every word on it. “Word came from Lys.”
She went very still. “Word of… her?”
“Aye,” he said tiredly. “Word of her.”
Leera bowed her head. “She is coming home then? I have read of the Hightowers. They are a very old family. The Call must have been strong with her.”
He stared at her. “Aye, it must have been for her.”
A tear trickled down her face, illuminated by the lantern as she drew herself up. “Very well, I shall-”
But he interrupted her. “Lynesse is dead.”
She stood there, her eyes widening – and then she closed her mouth with an almost audible snap. “Dead?”
Jorah passed the message over to her. “She tried to leave Lys in order to heed the Call. The… the man she was with, a merchant-lord, or something like that, called Tregar Ormollen, objected.” He paused. “They killed each other.”
There was a pause as she stared at the piece of paper and then at him and then at the paper and finally back at him. There was a look in her eyes that combined all kinds of emotions, ones that he suspected matched his own. Finally she said: “So, you are no longer married?”
“No,” he said quietly. “I am not. I mourn what I had… but that flame burnt out years ago. Truth be told, I don’t know what I now feel about her. She is gone.”
There was a long moment of silence and then she nodded. “I understand. You have a lot to think about. I will leave you to your gods.”
She turned and walked away – and then he stepped forwards and placed a hand on her shoulder, stopping her in her tracks. “Do not leave me, I beg of you.”
He heard her swallow and then turn to meet his gaze. “I will never leave you.”
“I know,” he muttered as he took her hand and lifted it to his lips. “Please do not. You have stayed with me through all of this, since I heard the Call. You have come with me to lands that are nothing like anything you have ever seen before. You have seen things that I have not, supported me as no-one else could. I don’t know how to thank you.”
She smiled at him, tears in her eyes. “I just did what I could, my love.”
He reached out and brushed the tears away. “I need to say something to you, Leera. I love you.” He gulped. Yes, it had always been coming to this, in his dreams at least. A kind of fog overtook his thoughts. “I am now free to… I mean that I could ask you… would you consider…” Damn it, he was getting this all wrong, his words awry, the intent blunted. Was this too soon? No, it was not, but… “Leera, will… I mean…”
“I will marry you.” She looked at him, more tears in her eyes and she felt his own pricking. “That is what you were asking, was it not?”
“It was,” he choked out. “It was.” He looked her in the eyes. “Marry me.”
Her eyes crinkled as she smiled at him. “Yes my love. I would love nothing more.” And then she was in his arms and her lips on his and all of a sudden that hollow place in his heart was no more.
Tyrion
He did not sleep well that night. Poderick had returned from the kitchen with a plate of food and the news that an unnamed someone had volunteered at fight Jaime and that the trial by combat would happen the next morning. His mind had promptly wandered about, trying not to think about it and utterly failing.
Although his bed was comfortable and he usually never had any trouble nodding off, that night sleep did not come easily at all. He tossed, turned, punched his pillows into all kinds of shapes, stared at the ceiling, the walls, the pillows and even once at the mattress.
And then when, finally, sleep came, so did the dreams. He dreamt that his brother fought a giant wolf, no, a giant on its mammoth, no, a stag, no, the Mountain. He saw his brother lose both the battle and his life, and then another battle which he won but lost a hand, no, a hand and an eye. He talked with Jaime after his brother had won his trial by combat despite the sword that his opponent had stuck into him and left, the blood pooling on the ground as Jaime grinned and spoke of how he had prevailed.
The nightmares followed. Jaime dead, his head on a spike. Jaime on the Wall, huddled in furs, a beard shrouding his face as he stared bitterly North of the Wall. That was important for some reason, he didn’t know why, but Jaime was trying to tell him something and he just couldn’t hear him because of a strange skittering noise.
And then there was the worst one. Jaime as a shambling lifeless wight, eyes blue, throat torn out, lurching about in a blood-spattered room that he realised was the great hall at Casterly Rock. To one side an Other sat in what looked like a throne of ice, with what remained of Father acting as a footstool. And as Tyrion looked around the room in horror, seeing to many men and women that he knew standing motionless but also lifeless, everyone of them with blue eyes, the Other seemed to notice him. Its eyes narrowed as it looked at him – and then it was standing and striding across the room towards him, not that he could do a thing, his feet seemed to be frozen in place as he tried to run, tried to scream, tried to-
He came awake with a half-scream, scattering pillows all over the place, before staring around the room blearily. Well, that had been unpleasant. He ran a shaking hand over his chin, decided that he needed a bath and a shave and then gave up on sleep and waddled off to the room to one side that had that wonderful bath with the hot water.
By the time he was clean, shaved and dressed the sun had risen and he walked out to the courtyard outside, where men were setting up tables on two sides. Uncle Gerion was standing by one of the tables, along with Allarion and Lancel, inspecting a suit of armour and some weapons – swords to be precise. He walked over and as Uncle Gerion saw him he nodded. “Uncle. What’s all this?”
“Jaime’s armour and weapons. His armour needs a polish and his swords need to be sharpened. I’ve got a cloak for him as well.” Gerion looked at him sharply. “Tyrion, is Jaime mad? Why is he doing this?”
It was a good question and all three Lannisters were looking at him. He sighed and spread his hands. “I know not. It made no sense last night and it makes little enough sense this morning. Personally speaking I think… I think that something in my brother has broken, Uncle. I think that perhaps he will be careless with his life today.”
Lancel looked shocked, but Allarion just swapped a troubled gaze with his father. It was then that Tyrion noticed something – Brightroar was not at Uncle Gerion’s hip. He was about to ask why when he spotted movement at the First Keep. Jaime was striding towards him, escorted by the Cassels. His brother had wet hair and had had a shave. Despite the swagger in his stride there was a haunted look in his eyes.
“Do we know who he will fight yet?” Tyrion asked quizzically.
Everyone stared at him. “Do you not know? It’s the talk of Winterfell,” Uncle Gerion muttered. “Wait, you were only briefly in the Great Hall last night.”
“I ate in my room and my squire Pod is not exactly known for his gossiping abilities.” His heart fell into his boots. “Who is he fighting?”
Uncle Gerion opened his mouth – but then his eyes flickered to one side. “Him,” he muttered with a twitch of the chin.
Tyrion looked to one side – and then his jaw dropped. The Demon of the Trident was striding into the courtyard, Robert Baratheon in full armour, holding a shield with the Baratheon stag on it in one hand and his new helmet in the other. Behind him walked Ser Barristan Selmy, holding Stormbreaker.
To be honest he was still stunned at the transformation that had come over the King. He was used to thinking of Robert Baratheon as a fat, red-faced, drunk who liked food and whores in equal measure and who lived off past glories. That had been before the Call. The man had somehow been rejuvenated by that summoning to Winterfell, the fat and laziness sloughing off to reveal… the Demon. The man who had taken on Rhaegar Targaryen single-handed at the Trident and slaughtered him.
Jaime, who had just joined them at the table, froze. “What is this? Why is he in his armour?”
His throat was suddenly very dry. “I have just heard,” he said eventually, “That he is your opponent.”
“The King.” Jaime looked stunned and angry. “I can’t fight the King. How can he fight for Aerys Targaryen? This is madness! And treason as well!”
Jaime’s voice had been steadily rising as he spoke and he all but bellowed half of it. The King tilted his head to one side and smiled, before taking a step forwards. “Treason never stopped you before, did it Kingslayer? Why should it now?” He gestured at the crown on his head. “Is it this? It’s just a piece of metal.” He took off the crown and gave it to Stannis Baratheon, who had arrived next to Ned Stark. “You’re fighting for your honour, Kingslayer. I’m not fighting for Aerys. I’m fighting you because someone has to and because you need some humility beaten into you before you leave for the Wall.” And with that he turned and strode back to the other table, where he spoke with Selmy, Ned Stark and his brother in a low voice.
Jaime stared at the King and then shrugged. “Lancel, my armour,” he muttered as he held his arms up in the air so that his breastplate and backplate could be buckled onto him. Allarion assisted his cousin as Gerion and Tyrion watched, the eldest Lannister with an intent look on his face. As the rest of the armour was buckled onto him Jaime seemed to relax a little – enough to smirk at his uncle a little. “If you were wielding Brightroar, Uncle, I might ask you for a lend of it.”
But Uncle Gerion glared at him. “Jaime, this is no time for levity. Do you think that this is funny? We will be dealing with the impact of what you and Cersei have done for year to come. No, you cannot wield Brightroar. You are not worthy of it.”
His brother all but reeled at this, the blood flooding into his cheeks for a moment, before he went as pale as a ghost. A silence fell as the last pieces were buckled onto him and he took up the shield with the Lannister crest on, Uncle Gerion stepped forwards again, this time with a Lannister tabard in his hands.
“You’ve worn white for a long time,” he said quietly. “Soon you’ll wear black. For this fight though you’ll wear the colours of your family. Wear them with pride.” And with that he placed the tabard over Jaime’s armour and secured it.
“Are you ashamed of me uncle?” Jaime asked in a low voice.
Uncle Gerion looked at him. “I spoke harshly, nephew. We’ll talk later.”
Jaime nodded, took up his helmet and placed it on his head, and then took his sword from Lancel. Only then did he nod at Tyrion and then the others, before walking into the middle of the courtyard.
Quite a crowd had assembled by now, a surprisingly quiet crowd, but as the King strode forwards to meet Jaime they cheered. Robert Baratheon was holding Stormbreaker in one hand and Tyrion wondered just what the sword was made from.
“Should we not have your Maester declare this a trial by combat, your Grace?” Jaime asked lightly.
The King just laughed at that. “This is the North, Kingslayer! Ned, what do you normally do up here, under the eyes of the Old Gods?”
“We just get on with it, your Grace,” Ned Stark rumbled, words that made many in the crowd laugh. “If you’re going to fight, then fight.”
“That’ll do me,” the King replied, before settling into a fighting stance, shield raised, Stormbreaker held at the ready. Jaime seemed to sigh but then copied his opponent.
It was Jaime who started the fight. He feinted a dart right but then went left – not that it fooled the King, who tracked his every move and who parried Jaime’s blow with Stormbreaker. They broke apart and then circled each other, before the King attacked with a wicked slashing blow that Jaime barely deflected with his shield. He counterattacked, but the King used his own shield to withstand his attack.
It was only then that Tyrion realised that the courtyard was silent as everyone watched the fight. He could see Dacey standing with Caitlyn Stark on a balcony to one side, along with her children and Domeric Bolton.
The King launched another attack, one that Jaime parried with his own sword before striking back – but there was something wrong. The noise seemed discordant. Jaime’s eyes flickered to his sword, but then Stormbreaker hammered down again and again. Jaime parried the first – but on the second his sword shattered into a dozen pieces.
Jaime was caught totally off-balance by this and went sprawling, whilst the King just staggered a little, whilst a moan of astonishment rose in the courtyard from the crowd. The pieces of what should have been good steel skittered on the flagstones and one slid to a halt next to Tyrion’s foot. He picked it up. The inside of the blade was rusty. Which was impossible.
His brother scrabbled to his feet and then braced himself – for a blow that did not come. The King just stood there. “I don’t think that Stormbreaker likes you, Kingslayer,” he said. “Go get your other sword then.”
Lancel held out Jaime’s spare sword and Jaime took it. His eyes were very wide all of a sudden and as Tyrion caught his eye he realised that his brother was stunned. But then he seemed to recover, because he turned and then launched an attack that forced the King onto his back foot for a moment, a high overhand strike that was caught on the yellow and black shield and then a strike with the shield itself towards the King’s face.
It never got there and instead Stormbreaker hammered into the top of the shield and actually sheared away a part of the iron frame that edged it, before the King slammed into Jaime and sent him backwards.
Somehow Jaime kept his balance, but then barely parried another slash from Stormbreaker, and then another. The King was using a combination of brute force and genuine skill and Jaime seemed to be rattled. He barely dodged a blow that clanged against his helmet, before taking a step backwards and then trying his own version of an overhead blow.
It was met by Stormbreaker – and once again Jaime’s sword shattered on the impact, pieces flying everywhere. Once again Jaime went clattering to the ground and as he passed the King Stormbreaker flickered down, as quick as lightening and the flat of the blade slapped against the backplate of Jaime’s armour.
When Jaime came back to his feet he swayed a little – and then looked about in desperation. “Sword – someone give me a sword!”
There was a muttering in the crowd, before Lancel drew his own sword and darted forwards to hand it over to him. Jaime hefted it for a moment – and then stared at his shield. There was brown along its edge and it looked as it was warping in some way.
A hoarse shout heralded the arrival of the King’s next attack, a blow that Jaime just about absorbed on his shield, but the next one sent him staggering back again. He raised his sword and tried to counter attack, but the King met each blow with almost contemptuous ease and then struck at Jaime’s head again, this time sending him reeling from a blow to his helmet.
Tyrion stared at this. Something was very wrong with Jaime’s shield as well as his helmet – the former looked increasingly warped whilst the other seemed to be brown in places and lurching a bit as Jaime moved. Oh and there was the brown mark on the backplate. Was that rust?
Things went totally to the seven hells in the next few moments. The King attacked again – and once again Jaime’s sword just shattered, at about the same time that his helmet fell off his head, the metal corroded in places. Jaime reeled back, blood on his face from a shard of his sword, losing his balance completely and then staggering to one knee. His cheek had been sliced open and his eyes were very wide now.
“Sword!” It was not a call, it was a cry of despair. “Someone give me a sword!”
A white-faced redcloak drew his sword and slid it across the flagstones at Jaime, who took it with a nod, before standing and then launching himself at the King. They came together with a clash of armour, shield on shield, but the Lannister shield was looking the worse for wear by now, warped and broken, and the King stepped back and smashed it to one side before hammering down three great blows that Jaime barely parried.
The fourth blow did the inevitable. Jaime’s latest sword shattered and he flew backwards to slam into the ground. There was a new wound to his forehead and when he shook his head in what must have been an effort to clear it, the blood spattered on the flagstones next to him.
There was now utter despair on his face, but still he called out: “Sword! Someone give me a sword!”
The courtyard was utterly silent now. Jaime staggered to his feet, the blood running down his face. His shield was a wreck and his breastplate looked askew, as if it was barely holding in place. The whole thing seemed to be covered on rust now.
“Oh, Stormbreaker really doesn’t like you,” the King muttered. “Come on, someone give him a sword.”
Another pale-faced Lannister guardsman handed over his sword with shaking hands. Not that it mattered much. Jaime threw his shield away and then rushed at the King, who met his first blow with his shield and then parried the second with ease with Stormbreaker, before attacking again. One blow, another – and then once again Jaime’s sword shattered, sending him to his knees before the flat of Stormbreaker came down onto Jaime’s breastplate. He slammed into the flagstones, looked about with a combination of despair and bewilderment – and then his breastplate seemed to just cave in, fissures of red rust appearing all over the place.
“Sword,” Jaime all but sobbed. “Someone give me a sword.”
No-one said a word in that ghastly silence, or even moved.
“No,” said King Robert as he loomed over the prostrate figure of Jaime. “You’re done.”
Jaime stared up at him. “Kill me,” he said eventually. “Kill me!”
The King eyed Jaime from head to toe, before curling a lip. “No. Gods, you can’t even defend yourself and I’ll not kill such a man, despite what you’ve done. No. You’ll go to the Wall. You’ll defend us all. And no more smirking.” He smiled a bitter smile. “We need you, Kingslayer. And I keep my word. You’ll go to the Wall. Learn from my example.”
And then he walked away from him.
Chapter Text
Domeric
Robert Arryn trotted Surefoot around the carefully laid out course. The lad was a fast learner and Surefoot was a perfect fit for him. The little pony was reacting to his nudges of the foot with aplomb and an immediate understanding of what his rider wanted.
Hopefully those two would go far together, as they grew up together.
He sighed for a moment. The future. What lay ahead?
“Young Lord Robert looks as if he’s learning fast,” said a very familiar voice behind him and he turned with a smile. Lord Redfort was standing there, watching the heir to the Vale with a careful look on his face. Then he smiled at Domeric. “You’ve done well, lad.”
He bowed respectfully and then clasped Lord Redfort’s proffered forearm with a grin. “Thank you, my Lord. It’s good to see you again.”
“And you Domeric,” came the reply, along with a hand on his shoulder. “Congratulations on your impending marriage. She’s a very pretty girl.”
He flushed a little but then nodded. “Thank you my Lord. She’s a remarkable girl.”
Lord Redfort nodded and then looked back to young Robert, who was still riding with a look of deep concentration on his face. “Lord Arryn would be proud of him. I’ll write to him of all you have taught him. Knowing Jon Arryn you can count on his gratitude. Young Lord Robert has a good bearing in that saddle.”
“The second thing I taught him,” Domeric said wryly. “The first thing was the same thing you taught me – the health of your horse is paramount. Hooves, feed, coat, tail.”
The older man nodded at him and then slapped his shoulder. “Well said.” He looked at Domeric carefully. “Have you told your betrothed of your plan?”
Domeric nodded seriously. “I have.”
“And her thoughts?”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the precious piece of cloth that never left his presence, before handing it over. Lord Redfort peered at it curiously and then raised his eyebrows as he spread it across the back of his hand – before chuckling slightly. “A favour – of the new banner you plan for House Bolton?”
Domeric smiled a little and then nodded as he looked at the red on white diagonal on a black background on the piece of cloth. “A break from the past,” Domeric explained. “Red instead of pink as well.” Lord Redfort looked at him quizzically and he sighed. “I cannot ask Sansa to marry me and take up that old banner. Not… not given the fact that the original flayed man on it was a King of Winter. A Stark. It would be an insult to her.”
The Lord of the Redfort looked at him gravely for a long moment – and then nodded gravely. “Who made it?”
“Sansa. Her needlework is most impressive. As is her Direwolf. I imagine that by the time we marry Lady will be quite large. I wonder what my father will say?”
“Does he know?”
“No.” He took the favour and folded it very carefully, before putting it away. “But I think he suspects. And after the death of my half-brother… it’s me or my cousins, the Boltons who were with the Company of the Rose. They don’t hold to the old ways. I know, I’ve talked with them.”
Lord Redfort pulled a face. “I heard about your half-brother. A bad business.”
That familiar sense of sadness enveloped him. “He hated me. I never suspected. We had never met, but he hated me nevertheless, just for existing. How could he have such hate?”
“From what I’ve heard, Domeric, he was a lunatic.” Lord Redfort looked back at Robert Arryn. “I’ll write to Lord Arryn today. He’ll be grateful, as I said. The Vale – the Redfort – will support the future Lord of the Dreadfort.”
Domeric clasped hands with the man he had been fostered to – and then he sobered. “Winter is coming. We have a storm to survive first.”
“Aye, but we are as strong as stone,” Lord Redfort replied.
“And our… minds are sharp.” He looked at Robert Arryn and Surefoot, still determinedly trotting. “There’s much to do.”
Theon
He waited outside the room, sitting on a bench. He felt nervous. But then he’d been nervous ever since Robert Baratheon had loomed into sight in that gatehouse, that huge form that he had first seen at Pyke all those many years ago. The Demon of the Trident had devastated the Iron Islands and become the Demon of Pyke, at least in his dreams and nightmares in those weeks after the fall of his family home.
But then that why he was here, now. His father had started a war that he had no hope – not the slightest hope – of winning. His father, in one of oh so very many miscalculations, had ruined the lives of so many on the Iron Islands.
Including his. Especially in that future that would never come to pass.
The door opened and Ser Barristan Selmy stepped out. He looked at Theon gravely, who repressed the need to swallow convulsively and instead stood up. “His Grace will see you now,” the old Kingsguard said quietly. “He has a suspicion about what you wish to talk about with him.”
Theon nodded and followed the older man into the room. There he saw the King of Westeros, clad only in breeches and rather damp about the torso as he towelled himself off briskly. His Grace was powerfully built, heavily muscled about the shoulders – and with sagging skin about his stomach. He looked like a man who had once been fat but who had lost weight in some places whilst gaining muscle in others, and that his body was still coping with the changes. To one side sat Stannis Baratheon, who was reading raven messages with a scowl.
“Theon Greyjoy,” Robert Baratheon rumbled as he pulled a shirt on. “You wished to see me? Ned said that you’d approach me. And he thought he knew why. So – what do you want?”
He stood there, staring at the King for a long moment. “Your Grace,” he said hoarsely, “I wish your permission to change my name. I no longer wish to be a Greyjoy.”
The King sat on the end of a table and stared at him shrewdly. “As Ned thought. Very well – why?”
He took a deep breath. “My family’s legacy – no, Father’s legacy is one of… one of foolish decisions. Madness. He ruined the Iron Islands when he declared independence from the Iron Throne and then attacked Lannisport. He thought that… that your hold on the Iron Throne was tenuous. He was wrong. And my brothers and so many others paid the price for his mistake. He holds to the Old Way. The Iron Price. The Drowned God. And I… I do not.”
Stannis Baratheon swapped a keen glance with his brother before staring at him. “You deny what your father believes?”
“I do,” Theon nodded. “I deny it. Especially the Drowned God. I worship the Old Gods now. And that’s why I can’t be a Greyjoy. I can’t lead the Iron Islands if I don’t worship a…” He struggled for the right words. “A mad creature that claims to be a god.”
The other two men stared at him. “The Drowned God is mad?” the King asked, carefully. “How do you know this?”
And so he told them both. About the dreams. About the shades of his brothers, and where they had tried to take him. About the… thing on the throne of bones, on the isle of bones. About the mast. And the voice. By the time he finished talking about it all he was hoarse and red eyed – and the King and his brother were both staring at him as if they’d seen a ghost. Perhaps, based on his face, they had.
“Let me see that pendant, lad,” the King rumbled as he walked up to him, and Theon tugged the weirwood pendant into view. He always wore it, day and night. Just in case the dreams ever happened again. “A gift from the Old Gods, eh?”
“Yes, your Grace,” he muttered. “And a worshipper of the Old Gods can’t rule Pyke. Not that I want to. I’m of the North now. I have a direwolf. I want to stand besides House Stark.”
“It means giving up your birthright,” Stannis Baratheon grated. “Are you sure about that? Truly?”
He wanted to laugh bitterly, but held it back. “I care nothing for my birthright. Or my father. I have been a hostage here at Winterfell for years now, but the Starks have given me far more affection than my birth father ever did. Balon Greyjoy…” He paused for a long moment, bitter words on his lips. “My father never showed me much affection. He only liked my brothers once they were old enough to reave. And I’m told that he’s even more bitter now than he was before. If I returned to Pyke tomorrow then he’ll scorn me as a Greenlander. Especially because I have Mist, my direwolf. He’d probably order his murder.”
The King didn’t say a word, but just stared at him with his head tilted to one side. as he assessed him. “Gods,” he said eventually, “I never thought about what it would be like to be raised by that sour streak of vinegar, Balon bloody Greyjoy. You poor bugger.”
He searched for the right words but ended up just shrugging. “It’s what I was used to at the time your Grace. When I arrived here at Winterfell, even though I knew that I was a hostage, it was… different. Better.”
The two Baratheons swapped another look before the King sighed mightily and then returned to the desk. “Bloody hells,” he muttered. “Good for Ned.” A large set of fingers drummed on the table for a moment. “Alright then. So what do you want to be called?”
Theon cleared his throat. “I thought - Greymist. House Greymist. I want to find a holdfast somewhere here in the North and be a sworn banner to House Stark. I want to build something here your Grace. Something worthwhile. Something far better than what my father would have me do. I want to be of the North.”
The corpses of the men and women of Winterfell that had haunted his dreams, the shadow of that future that would never now come to pass, danced before his eyes for a moment – and then he blinked as it all vanished. Something of that must have flashed across his face, because the two Baratheons both looked at him carefully and then swapped another look with each other.
“Giving you permission to change your name will not please your father much,” the King said eventually. “Not that I give a fuck about that, as your father is an idiot. But you are his heir and this is not something to be done lightly, lad. There will be implications. And perhaps even complications.”
“I know, your Grace,” he sighed. “And I am sorry for it. But I do not do this lightly. Because I worship the Old Gods, if I ever returned to Pyke and tried to rule, well, I’d die in my sleep inside a week. Or fall from one of the towers. By accident of course.”
“The Ironborn would not accept you?” Stannis asked the question carefully. “Worshippers of the Drowned God are that jealous of their god?”
“I doubt that many would admit that their god is a mad twisted thing,” Theon muttered, his mind going back to those gibbering screams and the smell on that isle of bones.
“You’d be surprised, Theon Greyjoy,” Lord Stannis replied as he looked down at the messages. “It seems that the war on the Iron Islands has spread. Victarion Greyjoy tried to take Harlaw some weeks ago. He lost. Your uncle, The Reader, beat him and is in open revolt against your father. And it’s said that there are supporters of the Old Gods amongst his supporters. Oh and it’s said that your sister fights with Lord Harlaw.”
He straightened a little. Asha always had been the clever one. “Then she can rule the Iron Islands. With my uncle Rodrik’s support. They’d be far better than my father. They’re needed there. I’m needed here.”
There was a rasping noise as the King rubbed his chin with one calloused hand. “I’ll think about it,” he said eventually, before raising his other hand as Theon opened his mouth to protest. “This is a decision that will affect many, as I said. Given the situation on the Iron Islands, the news that you’ve renounced your father’s name might have some impact – or none. I need to talk to a few people. Think it over, just to be on the safe side. There’s no need to rush. Come back in two days. Don’t get me wrong lad. If you want to stay in the North, I’ll not stop you. I think better of you for saying that you want to be a banner to Ned and fight the Others. But I need to talk to a few people.”
The door was opened behind him by Ser Barristan Selmy and Theon bowed to the King and then strode out. Mist had somehow found out where he was and was sitting there waiting by the bench outside. He smiled and ruffled the fur between the direwolf’s ears. “It seems I’ll have to wait a bit longer, Mist. But that’s alright. We’re staying in the North.” The direwolf yipped and then bounded down the corridor ahead of him. He had some plans to make. Greyjoy or Greymist, he was of the North now. And there was nothing that his damn father could do about it.
Robb
He was in the Godswood, staring at the carved face on the Heart tree and wondering, yet again, who had created it. Man? Green Man? Child of the Forest? How old was it? He sighed and then looked at the pool, watching how a blood-red leaf was drifting on it, blown by the wind. To one side sat Grey Wind, who was watching him carefully.
“I thought I’d find you here,” said a voice on the other side of the pool and he looked over to see Jon approaching, Ghost padding at his side. “Best place to sit and think in Winterfell.” He sat down next to him and a companionable silence fell. The two direwolves sniffed at each other and then both sprawled out next to them and seemed to fall asleep.
“I wasn’t expecting to feel sorry for that bloody man,” Robb said eventually. “Odd, that.”
Jon frowned slightly but then nodded. “I know what you mean. The moment I laid eyes on Jaime Lannister I hated him. Him and his swagger and his smirk. And knowing what he did in that future that you saw…”
“He pushed Bran out of that window,” spat Jon. “I can’t forgive something like that.” Another silence fell. “That said, seeing him like that… begging on the floor to be killed after being humiliated like that… I felt sorry for him. First I delighted in seeing him beaten like that, but in the end…”
“Aye,” Robb agreed, reluctantly. “I felt the same way. Delight at first and then… pity. Odd, that. I remember seeing him in a cage after I smashed him in battle, but he was never as broken as he was at the end of that ‘fight’. He never stood a chance did he?”
“No,” Jon muttered. “Stormbreaker broke him. It judged him. And it found him wanting.”
Yet another silence fell as the two sat there and stared at the Heart tree and the pool respectively, whilst the direwolves started to snore slightly. Robb looked at Grey Wind and smiled slightly. “Has Arya talked to you about warging?”
“She has.”
“Make any sense to you?”
“A little. The thing is though that she’s young and believes things more easily than we older siblings. We still think that some things are impossible. She didn’t. Which is why she can warg and Bran is starting and we… we still think that somethings aren’t possible.”
He looked at his ‘brother’. “That made sense.”
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
“Good point.” He paused. “In that other future… I would have dreams sometimes. About seeing the world through the eyes of a direwolf. And just before I was murdered Grey Wind was very restless. Almost as if he knew something.”
Jon shivered. “That other future of yours… thank the Gods it will never happen now. The thought of Ironborn here in Winterfell…”
He nodded. “Father talked to Jojen Reed. He had a greendream, or something like that. He remembered being in the crypts, escaping Winterfell when they came – with Bran and Rickon. It might be that Theon didn’t kill them in that other future.” He smiled slightly. “I never told you that one of the last things I did before that wedding at the Twins was to make you my heir did I?”
Eyebrows raised, Jon just stared at him. “Why did you do that???”
“I thought Bran was dead. I thought Rickon was dead. Sansa was a prisoner of the Lannisters and Arya was just… missing. We never knew what had happened to her, she just vanished from King’s Landing when… when Father was executed.” He said the last words as quietly as he could. They were alone there, but the words were still… horrifying. As was the thought. The memory of the moment that he heard the news of what had happened before the Great Sept of Baelor still made his blood run cold.
Jon shook his head in astonishment. “Your mother must have been furious.”
“She… coped. I had no choice at that time. And then I died.”
The silence that followed was the longest one of all. “I’m glad you came back and warned us,” Jon said eventually. “Thank the Old Gods.”
“Aye. And we know what’s important now. The real war.” He paused and then smirked a little. “We’ve both seen the Wall. How do you think the Kingslayer will cope with life there?”
Jon smirked back. “Badly.”
Ned
He found Robert in the Crypts the next morning. He’d left his old friend alone after his fight with the Kingslayer, as he could tell just by looking at him that Robert had some demons to exorcise. Apparently he’d staggered around the training yard with that log until he almost collapsed, eaten an entire roast chicken with his bare hands, drunk a yard of ale and then vanished off to his bed.
And now he was here, looking at Lyanna’s tomb again. Somehow he registered Ned’s arrival without even looking at him. “Morning, Ned.”
“Robert.” He joined his King at the tomb. “You’ve been quiet.”
“I’ve been thinking.” A ghost of a smile came and went. “Not used to it.” And then he went back to staring at the tomb. Just before Ned could ask what he was thinking about Robert finally said: “I keep dreaming about her, Ned. It’s the oddest thing. She’s in a forest of weirwood trees, in the snow and she’s trying to tell me something – but then there’s this noise and something keeps pulling her away. Last night I dreamt I almost caught her, I almost grabbed her, but then… ach. Just a dream. But it’s such a real dream. I’ll confess that the more the years passed the more her face… blurred in my memory. This time last year I could barely remember what she looked like. Now, I could describe every inch of her face.”
Robert had mentioned that dream before, but the way that he was talking about it made Ned pause for thought. “Do you think it might be more than a dream?”
This made Robert pause himself. “I don’t know, Ned. I just feel… different.”
He eyed the hulking King to one side. He was holding Stormbreaker against his chest, where it was almost hidden in the darkness. “Robert, that sword rusted everything metal that it touched on Jaime Lannister. What else can it do?”
Robert looked down at it slowly and then shrugged. “I don’t know, Ned. I knew that it might break the Kingslayer’s sword – that happened in the Red Keep months ago. But I didn’t know what else it might do. When his armour, helm and shield fell apart, well, I was flabbergasted. Tried not to show it though. As for what else it might do… I don’t know. You said that the Fist of Winter killed Bootle stone dead – what else can that do?”
It was a good question and all Ned could do in reply was shrug. “Luwin’s combing through the archives with my cousin Dacey.”
“Aye, and Ser Barristan’s looking through the archives left by the Selmys. They were the swordbearers for the Durrandons.” He paused, his jaw working as uncertainty crossed his face for a long moment. “I need to know if bearing this sword has changed me, Ned. I’m thinking about a lot of things.”
“Like what?”
“Like… like how I’ve been a piss-poor king so far. Don’t deny it, Ned. Not to me. We’ve been through too much together. I have been a bloody awful king. Jon ruled the Seven Kingdoms as Hand whilst I just… drank and ate and whored my way though my life. You know what? I never realised what it would be like to be King. When you all knelt and proclaimed me King I thought… well, I did know what I thought. Perhaps that if we won it would be like being Lord of Storm’s End, only on a greater scale. I never dreamt what it would really be like. Never really thought about it.
“And then, when we won – and I lost at the same time, when she was taken from me – I never really stepped into the role, did I?”
“You led us to victory against Balon Greyjoy.”
“Aye, but that was war Ned. And I like war. War’s easy compared to the piddling boredom of peace, of running a Kingdom full of the proud and the pompous and the stupid.”
“Is it? Robert, you remember that meeting when you hammered out the strategy for winning the war? You and me in that room with Stannis, Tywin Lannister, Paxter Redwyne and Mace bloody Tyrell? You dominated that room!”
“It was war, Ned-”
“No, it was politics too. Never forget that Robert. We crushed those Ironborn thanks to you.”
Another pause fell. Then Robert finally smiled slightly: “You’re too kind Ned. But still… I’ve been a bloody awful king, even then. And since I’ve held Stormbreaker… I’ve had these thoughts. Small ones at first. Doubts. But now, greater ones. This is my birthright, but I need to be better, Ned. But I don’t know how to be.”
“Lead us in this war, Robert,” Ned urged. “You are our King. There’s so much to do. You know what’s at stake. There’s nothing that’s more important than this war that’s coming. If you think that you should be better then learn. Just don’t turn your face to wall and give up.” He couldn’t bring himself to tell his old friend that yes, he was right. He could be a better king.
Robert set his jaw a little and then looked back up into the face of Lyanna’s statue. “Gods, she would have been ten times the Queen that that treacherous whore was. She cared about people. She didn’t have her nose in the air, thinking that she was better than anyone.” He paused for a moment and then he opened his shirt a little and pulled out a little pouch that hung around his neck on a leather cord. “I’ve never shown this to anyone else, Ned. The man who made it for me died in the siege of Storm’s End.”
Frowning, Ned took the proffered pouch, tugged it open and then upended it. A golden locket with a long, fine, gold chain slid out of it. The face of the locket was split in half, with a Stark direwolf on one side and a Baratheon stag on the other. “It’s beautiful, Robert. This was for Lyanna?”
“It was. I was going to give it to her on our wedding day. There’s a lever on the side. Open it.”
There was a lever and it was a fiddly one to operate, but it opened eventually. When it did his heart seemed to stop for a moment. Inside was a little etching of a very familiar symbol. A laughing tree. There was a pause as he struggled to speak. “You knew then. That it was her.”
“I knew. I worked it out. The Knight of the Laughing Tree cinched his saddle the same way that she did. Held the reins the same way. The length of the stirrups… I’m a good horseman Ned. I notice how good others are. I knew it was her by the end of that day. I knew why she did it too – to punish those fools who beat young Howland Reed. She did what was right.”
Robert sighed gustily and smiled sadly. “If she had been at my side from the start as Queen… Gods she would have pushed me to do the right thing. She wouldn’t have let me drift, or lose myself in food and wine and… other things. As I said I was going to give her that locket on our wedding day and then laugh with her about what she did at Harrenhall and tell her how proud I was of her.”
Ned nodded mournfully and handed the locket back to Robert. But unexpectedly Robert did not return the locket to the pouch. “I couldn’t give it to her in life, but I can in death. Ned – with your permission?”
Another nod and then Ned watched as Robert carefully hung the locket around the neck of the statue, before smiling wistfully. “It looks good on her, does it not?”
“Aye,” Ned muttered, the old grief rising like a black tide in his throat for an instant. “It does.”
Robert wiped his eyes for a moment and then turned. “Come on then. Back to your Solar. We’ve got to wait for a lot of news, plus my former goodfather. His face should be a picture when he hears about just what his bloody children have been up to. All of them.
Asha
“Well that’s a surprise.”
Asha looked at the man next to her. Old Gregor’s words had been flat and frankly rather stunned. She didn’t blame him. She was a bit stunned herself.
“I thought Moat Cailin was supposed to be a ruin.” She peered at the fortress. Once there had been three semi-derelict towers. Now there were five, with a sixth being built. The curtain wall had been rebuilt in most places and there was a wooden keep rising up. “That’s not a ruin.”
“Where’d they get the fucking stone?” Robar asked.
Old Gregor laughed shortly. “Don’t be a fool lad. It was here all the time. It takes time and coin to build a castle. You need to dig the foundations and ship in the dressed stone. But they don’t have to do either here. The foundations are already dug and there’s all the stone they need from the fallen walls and towers. They just needed the men to dig it up, clean it off and then start mortaring it all together. To a plan, of course. Someone must have told them where the floor went.”
She nodded and then led them down the causeway towards the fortress on their freshly purchased horses. They’d bought them at the first inn they had found, from a very suspicious innkeeper who had made them pay more than they probably should have. She didn’t mind, this was too urgent. They’d been lucky with the weather – a stiff wind from the South had gotten them into Blazewater Bay in record time, before they’d benefited from the winds from the West that often blew that far North that had taken them as far up the Fever River as the Black Wind could take them.
Robar had hinted that he could double back, knife the innkeeper and get their money back, but she’d told the fool not to bother. She had had that odd scratchy feeling between her shoulderblades that meant that they were being watched by some unseen person or persons ever since they’d landed, which was why she’d told the rest of the crew to head back to High Harlaw as quickly as possible.
She’d mentioned it quietly to Old Gregor, who had looked about the trees around them and then sniffed mightily. “Crannogmen,” he’d whispered. “And more of them than us. They’re on alert.”
“How can you tell?”
“My mother was from the Neck. A merchant. Taught me the signs.” And then he’d shut up, eyeing an inoffensive tussock of grass that seemed to have absolutely nothing behind it but air.
It certainly explained why six guards in armourrode out to meet them, wearing the colours of House Reed, all Crannogmen. “Ironborn do not normally travel by horse in the Neck,” the leading man said suspiciously. “Who are you and what is your business at Moat Cailin?”
“Asha Greyjoy, daughter to Balon Greyjoy, on urgent business for Lord Harlaw in Winterfell,” Asha replied. “Very urgent business there – we are travelling to see the King in Winterfell.”
The man who had questioned them stared and then stirred a little in his saddle. “Torrhen Reed, cousin to Lord Howland Reed,” he said nodding slightly. “Very well, given your task – and how small your group is – you may pass. Word was passed of your arrival. Had you ordered the murder of that innkeeper who sold you the horses, Lady Asha, you would be dead by now by the way. Pass on.”
They rode on, Robar’s face flaming with a combination of anger, embarrassment and fear, eyeing the towers of the fortress as they rode past it. As Old Gregor had noticed everywhere there were men working on stones, digging them out, cleaning them, chiselling some, breaking up others, whilst yet more were mortared into place at the stern direction of a couple of men who seemed to be builders.
“This place couldn’t be taken easily before, and it’s impregnable now,” Old Gregor muttered to her. “From the South – or from the North. They’re getting ready for a war, Asha. And look at how hard they’re working. The Call was strong here.”
She nodded reluctantly. The place made her feel… uneasy. The war in the Iron Islands was important, it was why she was here, but this place… this was where the real war was, she could feel it. The pull that had been nagging at her for months now was… diminished here. Not gone, never that, but lessened. The others seemed to feel it as well, especially Old Gregor, who was looking about the place with eyes that seemed to be full of emotion.
“I should have fucking listened to me Ma,” she heard him mutter at one point. “I should have listened to her. She said I was touched by the trees.” But then he noticed her sharp look and shut up.
They rode on, leaving the fortress behind them and all the time the sense of being watched never left her, that tickle between the shoulder blades. The causeway was in good repair, with the bogs all around it and then the sea in sight to the East. A nasty shore that, a bad place to be caught by a change in the wind. As for the bogs… they smelt. And looked as if they could suck down anyone on a horse.
But there were paths here and there, because she could see a figure on a horse in the middle of one bog. A man in a green cloak. As they passed him he reached back and pulled at the back of his cloak, so that a hood was raised onto his head. A hood with antlers on it.
It took a moment to realise that Old Gregor was no longer riding at her side, but had reined in sharply and was staring at the man in the bog, his face as white as a bleached sail. “What’s wrong?” Asha called, feeling worry as she tugged on the reins. The old sailor looked as if he had taken an arrow to the heart.
The others stopped as well, but after a long moment Old Gregor swallowed and kicked his horses’ ribs, making it break into a trot. “A Green Man,” he muttered as he reached her. “It’s a Green Man. Out of the bloody legends. They’ve left the Isle.” He looked at her and there was something in his eyes that made her feel faint herself. “The Call is true. The Others are coming. The Stark calls for aid. We are fucking well needed.”
And so they galloped North.
Brynden
They rode hard up the Kingsroad after that… interesting time at the Twins. The Green Man had been silent after their time there, quiet and almost bitter. He had come close to asking why, but then had remembered what the older man had said about Walder Frey’s father being ashamed of him.
The memories must have been thick for the man who had once been Ser Duncan the Tall. There were tales of his travels with the young Aegon V, of how they had criss-crossed much of the Seven Kingdoms when the King had been nothing more than a young Prince who was far down in the succession.
He looked at the road ahead and then found his thoughts skittering around Brienne of Tarth. She was down to earth, did not babble and she could fight. Gods, could she fight. They’d been attacked by one group of bandits a week before and it had been brutally one-sided. The Evenstar of Tarth had done a superb job with his daughter. He repressed a sigh. He had finally found a woman who intrigued him and who he could imagine being at his side. But he was older than her. A lot older. The Gods seemed to like piling irony on his head.
Well. Enough of that. The road stretched ahead and they were now in the Neck. The Green Man had sent a rider to make contact with the Reeds, who were somewhere to their North-West with their mysterious stronghold of Greywater Watch. He didn’t like to think of a stronghold that floated.
Then he paused and sniffed at the air. Something was… different. Not wrong, but different. He looked at Brienne, who was also sniffing at the air, and then at the Green Man – who was no longer to one side. All the Green Men had stopped their horses dead in the tracks and were staring North.
He tugged on the reins and came to a halt himself, before swapping a baffled look with Brienne, who shrugged at him.
After a long moment the Green Man seemed to shake himself a little and then looked around. “Well,” he said eventually, “Rickon Stark’s mission has finally been completed, as was foretold. Or perhaps it might be better to say, as it was hoped.”
This made so sense. “Rickon Stark? The only living man of that name is my great-nephew, who is just a small boy.”
A smile came and went on the face of the Green Man. “Your pardon, Ser Brynden. The Rickon Stark I was referring to was born centuries ago.” He seemed to take note of the confusion on their faces. “It’s a long story, but one that I will tell you when we stop at mid-day. For the mean time let me just say that a great blow has been struck in our favour. That said, the enemy will know it and I do not know how he will react. We need to ride harder.”
As they rode at a faster pace along the road he found himself thinking very hard and very quickly about the Stark family tree. A Rickon Stark who had been born centuries ago? What did that mean? Who were they talking about?
Tyrion
His mind felt… fuzzy. Gods, he was tired and when he was tired then he had trouble thinking clearly. The fuzziness just took over, making it hard to consider all the things that he needed to think about.
He ran his hands over his face. Well, things could be worse. Jaime could be dead. After a moment he pulled a slight face. Physically and mentally Jaime was still alive. In terms of his spirit however, something was gone from his brother’s eyes, some spark or fire.
He’d watched the previous day as Maester Luwin had first cleaned and then sewn closed the wound on Jaime’s cheek, which had been a deep one.
“I’m afraid that the scar will be with you for the rest of your life, Ser Jaime,” the old Maester had confessed. “Even with fine thread and small stitches.” Jaime had not said a word – he just nodded in response when he could.
And since then Jaime had just continued to withdraw into himself. Tyrion knew why – he had not just been beaten, he had been humiliated. Many of the Lannister guards were still talking about it – the judgement of the Gods, some called it, without really saying which gods. In a way it was helpful – his worst nightmare had been some loyalist idiot trying to free Jaime and Cersei by inciting the others to do something stupid. Fortunately, that did not look as if it was going to happen, especially with Uncle Gerion ruling over them with a rod of iron – or more like the voice of a Lord.
As for Cersei – no, he had no concerns over her. She’d always influenced Jaime, she’d always been a creature of hate and whim. She had been stripped of what she wanted most – power. She was no longer Queen, and some might say that that alone was punishment enough. He was undecided, but then her fate was not in his hands. No-one knew what was going to happen to her.
Jaime on the other hand would be sent to the Wall and the Night’s Watch as soon as news came through of the truth about the wildfire. He was sure that Jaime had told the truth though – it wasn’t the kind of thing that his dear but unimaginative brother would ever make up. No, a raven would come with confirmation – and then Jaime would ride for the Wall. Never to return.
His mind swooped like a drunk swallow for an instant and he clenched his fists for a moment and did his best to concentrate. Damn it, he was tired. Not enough sleep, too much to think about, too much to worry over.
In the past when he’d worked himself into this kind of state then the answer tended to be to retire to a high-end brothel, the kind with silk sheets and very clean girls and then book a room, a wine rack and a couple of very nubile female companions. That option was closed now, as Ned Stark would look at such behaviour with extreme disfavour.
Damn it.
No.
He sighed wearily and then looked at the report that he had been writing for Father. It was… extensive. He just hoped that Father would read it and not throw it away with a snarl and a growled question as to just what had he done to prevent the catastrophe that had just hit House Lannister.
Gods, Father was going to be furious when he arrived. This was the kind of scandal that not even Father could stamp out. The ravens were flying, with their tale of incest and treason and bastard children… and dishonour on a monumental scale. Worse – people would do the one thing that Father really hated. They would laugh at House Lannister. Make fun of them. Perhaps, oh the horror, make up a mocking song about the Queen who loved her brother so much that…
A chuckle left his lips and he shook his head a little. Woolgathering. No, this would never do. He had too much to do, although a nap might help. His head felt heavy, along with his eyelids. Gods, no, there was too much to think about. All the things that had happened over the past month, the Wall, the Nightfort, the battles, the Others, the Wights, the prophecies, the rides, the bruises…
Sleep was overcoming him and he really wanted to sleep now. Just a nap. Just something to stop the thoughts from swirling about, like pieces in a puzzle, but he didn’t know what the shape of it was…
And then he came bolt upright in his chair, as awake as it was possible to get. “Robb Stark is the Boy who died and fell through time!” He didn’t shout the words, but he said them forcibly, before looking around his room slightly wildly. Then he frowned. “Damn it, I should have worked that out weeks ago.”
Sam
This place was an absolute paradise. Books. A sea of books. Books as far as the eye could see. Stacks of them, shelves of them, all over the place, on the tables, on the floor in some places, as people studied at their desks.
And they weren’t dusty. Which still surprised him, but then there was a small army of acolytes who seemed to be always brushing things out of the doors.
He peered at the pile of books around him, ignored the gurgle of his stomach yet again and plunged back into the hunt. He was close, he hoped. Maybe today he would find what he was looking for?
The books were all about the earliest carvings and other paintings found in the Seven Kingdoms, especially the Reach. They were not the ones that he’d thought he’d need at the beginning of his time at the Citadel. The first books he’d read had been about Garth Greenhand, but he was such a murky creature, surrounded by legend and myth.
He had soon concentrated on everything that the Citadel had about the earliest history of the Reach – and the physical evidence that remained of it. And that had meant the carvings. The runes of the First Men, the cave paintings by the Children of the Forest, the first records, everything.
Of course a lot of it made no sense whatsoever. Many Maesters had written many books with their interpretations of how some of the runes could be read and few of them agreed on anything, so he’d looked at the original runes himself.
The problem was that runes were not the best way to express certain concepts, some of which were ones that could not be expressed in modern terms, and he suspected that there was just no way to properly translate those. Which worried him.
For instance there were the runes that told of some kind of burial of something that might not have been entirely dead. Whatever that was about, it seemed important. Then there were the runes about a hand of the… dog? But the ones that really interested him was the very oldest carvings. They had been found in a cave near Highgarden and they told of some kind of pact between the First Men and the Children of the Forest.
He peered at the book that had the best drawings of the runes and frowned. They were old, very old. And very… peculiar. The dialect, the language… Perhaps it was the original language of the Children?
He pulled a slight face. He had always had a fondness for the tales that surrounded the Children of the Forest. They had been here first – long before the First Men. They had carved the faces on the Heart Trees. And… they might have smashed the Arm of Dorne. How, well that was a mystery, and a very interesting one at that, but magic had to be involved. And now they were gone.
Oh, there were legends about them. A sighting here, little more than a rumour, surely, a whisper there. There were those persistent mutterings about the North and even the Isle of Faces, but no confirmed sightings, not for centuries. And that made him sad. They had been a part of the land for thousands of years and now they were gone. He’d always hoped that perhaps, somewhere, in a deep part of the forests of the Reach, there might be a small group clinging on. Somewhere.
He’d once made the mistake of mentioning that hope to Father. It had earned him a clip about the back of the head and a snarl not to be such a fool.
There had been no such blows after the Call. Or the discovery of Otherbane. The look on Father’s face when that hidden door had opened with a creak and a groan that had made him wish for some oil... and the moment that they had opened that chest to see the spear... Well, that made up for so many things. So very many things.
A door opened to one side and he looked over to see as Archmaester Ebrose walked in. “Lord Samwell,” he said, somewhat distractedly, before walking over to look at the books that Sam was reading. “Ah. Interesting. How goes your research?”
“I might have an idea about these runes, Archmaester,” he said carefully. “What if they are in the language of the Children of the Forest?”
The older man stared at him for a long moment and then sat down with a grunt and a grimace. “Perestan had the same thought. Sadly we do not have any idea of what that language was.”
He pulled a slight face of his own. “I’m not so sure. These cave paintings... there’s these runes on them. But some are older than the First Men, so they have to be by the Children of the Forest. In which case the First Men might have learnt runes from them, see? In which case there might be runes that we can’t read because we don’t know the language.
“But, then there’s these runes that were carved in that cave near the Isle of Faces, that Archmaester Peronistan wrote about centuries ago. They had two sets of runes, one under the other. And we know that they refer to the Pact between the First Men and the Children of the Forest. Now, I have heard that there’s another set of twin carvings in the Hightower. If I am right, if the second set of runes is in the language of the Children of the Forest, then that might be enough to give us the beginnings of a start to work out the language that they spoke.”
Ebrose peered at him and then at the books and then at the ceiling and then back at the books and finally back at him again. “Interesting,” he said eventually. “Tell Perestan at once about this idea of yours.” Then he paused. “It’s a shame that you’re the heir to Horn Hill, my boy, you have a very scholarly mind indeed. You’d make a fine Maester.”
If Father had been there he would have been horrified by those words, but to Sam they were high praise indeed and he nodded with a touch of embarrassment. “Where is Archmaester Perestan?”
Ebrose’s brows came down into a scowl. “Like so many others, he’s puzzling over that message of Luwin’s from Winterfell.”
Sam’s eyebrows went up. “What message?”
The old Archmaester looked at him again as a pair of bony fingers tapped the table. “How strong was the Call at Horn Hill?”
He remembered the moment that... that voice had boomed in his air and had near made him widdle himself. “Very strong,” he muttered hoarsely, and something of what he felt must have shown on his face, because Ebrose nodded.
“How do you think it was sent?”
That was a good point and he had to admit that he didn’t know, so he shrugged. “I don’t know Archmaester.”
“According to Luwin, the Maester at Winterfell and who has sent in a long and detailed letter about events there, it was sent via an artefact in Winterfell. Two to be precise. A stone called the Hearthstone and a bowl that has no name, just a rune. Those two simple things sent out the Call that made everyone who heard it look to the North. It has to be magic.”
There was a certain twist to his mouth at that last word, one that made him curious – and cautious. “Is there a problem with it being magic?”
Ebrose let out a sigh that seemed to come from so far deep inside him that it might have originated in his boots. “Magic... a strange ephemeral word. It intrigues and irritates in equal measure.” He waved a hand in the air. “Lord Samwell, the Citadel was created to keep the light of knowledge alive in these and other, darker, times. We are lanternbearers of knowledge. And it’s hard to carry a lantern for magic, because it’s unpredictable, unstable, hard to describe let alone to quantify... It ebbs and flows, waxes and wanes according to no discernable rules that anyone has yet been able to ascertain. It is, in short, annoying. Many here in the Citadel ignore it. But this Call – and the gate under the Hightower – cannot be ignored.”
Somehow an even deeper sigh emerged from the Archmaester. “Marwyn wants to write a letter to Lord Stark, demanding that this pair of artefacts that sent out the Call be brought to the Citadel and studied, to be returned at some other, unstated, time. As he is Marwyn, and is a rude, uncouth, intemperate man, the other Archmaesters will do everything short of sitting on him to stop him from writing such a letter, as he would do little more than annoy the Warden of the North.”
Sam thought about Marwyn, and his tongue, and paled a little. “Yes, that wouldn’t be a good idea.”
There was a scuffling noise and then a head peered around the door. “Ebrose! There you are. Perestan’s looking for you!”
Ebrose stood with a grunt. “Well, that’s a co-incidence. We’re looking for him. Young Lord Samwell here has a theory that Perestan needs to hear.”
The other Maester waved his hands in the air. “It’ll have to wait! Lord Tyrell is in the city – Lord Mace Tyrell – and there is some kind of trouble at the Hightower!”
Willas
They started down the Roseroad again before dawn, in that eerie half-light that gave them just enough to see the path ahead to Oldtown. They’d stayed in yet another small holdfast, the guests of a rather stunned minor lord who had been torn between fretting at the lack of hospitality that he had been forced to offer and being happy that they had chosen his hold to stay that night.
They were a small party, just ten guards, along with Garlan and Loras. His youngest brother had been worrying him of late, due to his attitude, but Loras seemed to have picked up on his increasing urgency as they rode down that road.
There was a reason for that. With every mile that passed his unease increased. He had the feeling that something was terribly, terribly, wrong in the world somewhere and as the Sun rose in the sky as the closer they got to Oldtown the more that feeling increased.
As the walls of Oldtown appeared on the horizon, and the shapes of the Hightower and the Citadel beyond, he took a deep breath and hoped that the ravens that he had sent ahead had gotten there. He had sent some very specific instructions to the authorities of the city.
To his relief as they approached the Roseroad gate a group of horsemen rode out to meet them, some in the livery of the Hightower. To his relief he recognised the man who led them. “Uncle!”
Ser Gunthor Hightower smiled and nodded at him. “Willas – or should I say Lord Willas? It’s good to see you nephew. All of you.”
He smiled and was about to ask the question that was on the tip of his tongue when his uncle said words that made his heart sink: “Your Lord father is in the City. He arrived some hours ago.”
Damn. Father had made good time. He sighed and sagged in the saddle a little. “Where is he, Uncle Gunthor?”
“In the Starry Sept,” was the grim reply. “Willas, your Grandfather is very angry about this. Thank the Gods you’re here. We’ve heard how you have been taking the reins of the Reach from your father. He has no right meddling in this matter.”
“And yet he is here,” Willas said through gritted teeth.
“Father is the Lord Paramount of the Reach, Willas,” Loras muttered. He was still more than a little sullen about Willas’s decision to break with Father’s ambitious – and to Willas ludicrous – plans. “It is his right.”
“No, nephew,” barked Uncle Gunthor, “Not in this case. The gate below the Hightower is the responsibility of the Hightowers. It is our duty to guard it.”
Willas thought about the fact that it would have been a good idea to tell a few people about that duty, but bit his tongue. Then he paused. “Uncle, did the Gardener Kings know about it?”
“Of course.” Then Uncle Gunthor wilted a little. “But the Tyrells did not. Damn it.”
It could not be helped. “I must see Grandfather at once. I have to beat Father to the Hightower. If he is already at the Starry Sept then there is no time to lose.”
Uncle Gunthor nodded. “Follow me!” He heeled his horse around and then galloped for the gate, with Willas and the others following. Down the streets they clattered, sliding and slowly here and there on the cobblestones, until they reached a larger road that had had a lot of wood chips laid down. “My idea,” Uncle Gunthor shouted. “I thought that you might need to get to the Hightower in a hurry.”
By the time that they reached the nearest jetty, where a boat manned by oarsmen was waiting, all in Hightower colours, Willas’s feeling that something was terribly wrong with the world was redoubled. As he dismounted he pulled Otherbane out of its sheathe and slung it over his shoulder by its strap.
But as he sat down in the stern of the boat, with Garth, Loras and Uncle Gunthor around him, he could see that they were now in a race that they were doomed to lose. A small flotilla of boats were already on the way to the Hightower from the other side of the Honeywine – and one was flying the flag of the Reach.
“To the Hightower – stretch out! As fast as you can!” Willas said urgently and the men pushed off and then obeyed orders. The oars dipped on one side of the boat to align it with the current and then they were off, the oars flashing up and down at the barked commands of the grizzled little man at the tiller.
The boat was fast, the oarsmen were good, but there was too much of a lead on the part of those other ships. They made it to the main jetty of the Hightower first. Willas scowled a bit but there was nothing to be done. “Two silver stags for every man if you get us there as fast as you can row!”
The men cheered and then they redoubled their efforts, grunting as the oars hit the water and then pulling as if their very lives depended on it. The man at the tiller stepped up his shouted command of ‘Stroke! Stroke! Stroke!” and the boat sped through the waves.
By the time that they moored at the Hightower’s small harbour the men were panting at the oars and he pulled out a pouch of silver stags and handed them all two stags as promised. “My thanks,” he said and then jumped onto the jetty, his brothers and Uncle behind him. Up ahead he could see a group of men at the main gates to the Hightower – and some were very familiar. Father was there, next to Septon Alyston, a man in very white robes that seemed to have something silver faintly visible on it. And then there was Grandfather.
Leyton Hightower was much as Willas remembered him, if with more white in his hair, but he could tell at once that his grandfather was furious. He was standing there, red-faced, speaking intently and jabbing with a bony forefinger at Father and the Septon. Father looked more than a bit abashed, but the Septon of the Starry sept looked like a man who was angry himself but trying to hide it. Behind Grandfather stood Septon Norry, a dignified man that Willas had always liked, whilst behind the Septon – were those stars that had been sewn into that robe? – there were a pair of rather large Septons who looked as if they had been chosen for the size of their fists rather than their piety.
“-this is the Hightower, Goodson, and the matter of what lies beneath our feet is the business of House Hightower,” Grandfather said furiously, with another jab of the finger at Father. “This is not the business of the Starry Sept, nor of Highgarden.”
“Lord Hightower,” Septon Alyston replied as his nostrils flared, “You have a blasphemous and dread object at the base of the Hightower that has reduced many of your men to abject terror. It is, from all accounts, a thing of evil that must be cleansed.” Willas narrowed his eyes as he walked up to the group. The Septon of the Starry Sept was a man who liked to stress words in a way that got up his nose. He’d never liked the man.
“Grandfather, Father, Septon Alyston.” His words caused various reactions. Grandfather smiled at him, Septon Alyston scowled a little and Father… Father jumped a little, flushed and then looked both guilty and annoyed. “I heard heated voices on my way here. What is going on?”
“Willas – what are you…?”
He cut Father off with a nod to Grandfather. “Mother alerted me to the letter from the Starry Sept asking for help about this... gate. Apparently the Hightowers have been guarding it for centuries at the very least.”
“More like thousands of years, Willas,” Grandfather said carefully. “Your mother told you about it?”
Willas nodded sombrely, which seemed to reassure Grandfather whilst puzzling Father. The Septon on the other hand came very close to curling a lip – and then rounded on Grandfather. “Lord Hightower, whatever this thing in the Hightower is, it must be sanctified in the Light of the Seven. All of Oldtown is now talking about it – people are terrified of it! I insist on be allowed to cleanse it!”
On the word ‘insist’ the two Septons shifted slightly forwards – and then stopped dead in their tracks when a bristling Grandfather laid a hand on the hilt of his sword and then glared at them both. “Insist is it? You insist at the Hightower do you? You…”
The Septon paled a little as he seemed to realise that he had crossed a line – but then Grandfather’s snarl faded a little. “Very well. Down you go. I’ll allow you to try. I will watch you… try.” And with that he nodded to a pale-faced guard. “Take the Septon down.”
“Lord Tyrell, please join me as I cleanse this object,” the Septon said after a slightly surprised pause, before sweeping off towards the Hightower, Septons in tow and followed by Father and his own men, some of whom looked rather uncomfortable. As for Father, he was starting to look like a man who had made a mistake – especially when he passed Grandfather, who eyed him grimly and then muttered that he would see him in his Solar afterwards.
As he followed Grandfather had a muttered word with Septon Norry, who had been looking at the Septon of the Starry Sept with something very close to open scorn and who then nodded and followed the main group. Grandfather gestured at Willas and the others to wait a moment and then led them into the Hightower as well, hanging well back from the others.
“My thanks for coming, Willas,” he muttered. “Your support could be important. I knew that people were worried but, fool as I am, I never suspected that this idiot would use their worry to do this.”
“The Septon?”
“Aye.”
“He’s been looking at raising the profile of the Starry Sept. There have been whispers of the Faith Militant here and some of the whispers have been leading to Oldtown. I will support you in all that you decide here Grandfather.”
Grandfather nodded in thanks as they started down a long set of stairs. “The taller of the Septons behind that idiot in white? He has ties to the Faith Militant. I am heartily glad he came today, I will have him watched until he goes mad with nerves. As for your father… I thought that he was ‘hunting’?”
“He was,” Willas sighed. “It seems that he too is trying to raise his profile a little.”
“Then he chose the wrong cause,” Grandfather replied as they started down new and equally long staircase. “A pity. He normally is cleverer than this. I remember the wisdom of his Siege of Storm’s End. He preserved his options by doing very little.”
His eyebrows rose for a moment. Yes, he’d always wondered about that. “My discovery of the statue of Garth Greenhand and then the Tarly’s own discovery of Otherbane… changed Father. I have placed him in the shade.”
Grandfather looked at the spear at his back with an upraised eyebrow. “I am proud of you Willas.” They had reached a new staircase, one with black stone – and it was then that Willas stiffened a little. He had the sudden feeling of imminent dread. Grandfather placed a hand on his shoulder as they walked down into the base of the Hightower. “You feel it then?”
“What is it?”
“The Gate. And we are not even there yet.”
“Grandfather,” Loras said uncertainly from behind them, “What is the Gate?”
“No-one knows,” Grandfather said simply. “The Citadel is researching the history of the Hightower, but no-one knows.” As they reached the bottom of the staircase he paused and looked at them all. “Be wary when you are here in Oldtown. I do not think that it is a co-incidence that the Septon decided to insist on this visit at a time when the Call is roiling Oldtown so much.”
“It was strong here?” Garlan asked.
“Your uncle Baelor has left for the Shadow Tower, leading a small fleet of the best that the Hightower – and Oldtown! – can offer the North and the Wall. Knights, men at arms, builders, carpenters, farmers, loggers, hunters, cooks… Answering the Call.”
There was a gate ahead of them, guarded by pale and sweaty guards, and the others had paused there. The Septons from the Starry Sept all looked at his grandfather with narrowed eyes at the mention of the Call. “Pagan superstitions,” the tallest of the supporters – should they really be acolytes? – sneered, before Grandfather’s angry face made him swallow and step back.
“Open the gate,” Grandfather snapped at the guards, who leapt to obey him. “And you are relived.”
The guards bowed and then all but ran from the room. Willas wondered why – and then he looked through the gates into the room inside and paled. There was a… a green and glowing mockery of a gate at the end. It was huge. And it filled him with dread. It filled everyone with dread, based on the look on the faces of the others. Everyone except for Grandfather, Uncle Gunthor and Septon Norry, who both set their jaws and looked at the damn thing with resolution.
They all walked – of in some cases shuffled – into the room. Willas stared at the... thing. There were runes carved into it and there was also a noise like… “Is there something on the other side of that thing?”
“We do not know,” Grandfather sighed. “But it seems prudent not to allow whatever it is access.”
A silence fell, a silence broken only by the faint boom – boom of whatever it was beyond the gate. Loras was very pale, as was Garlan. After a long moment Septon Alyston seemed to rally a little. “Ah,” he quavered. “A heretical blasphemy of the First Men!”
“We do not know who made it, or what it does!” Grandfather snapped. “Do not be a fool man! There is no congregation here for you to bluster to!”
The Septon glared at him but then pulled out a multi-coloured crystal, which he held up in the air. “Brothers,” he said to his attendants, “Attend me! I will cleanse this dread object with the power of the Seven-Who-Are-One!” And with that he started to intone a prayer to the Seven whilst stepping forwards almost ceremonially.
“This should be interesting,” Grandfather said as he watched. “The closer to that gate you get, the more fear you feel.”
Willas took a step closer to the gate himself and then swallowed. Yes, the sense of dread did indeed increase. Then he frowned. “Grandfather, what is that wooden marker on the floor for?”
“That? That marks the closest you can get to the damn thing before you void yourself these days. A year ago you could walk up to it and touch it with no more than a vague sense of unease. Now – the closer you get the more you want to piss yourself with fear.”
The Septons seemed to hear him and then pick up the pace a little as they walked slowly towards the gate. The Septon of the Starry Sept was still praying rather theatrically, his voice booming in the room. But then Willas noticed something. As they got closer to the gate the higher the Septon’s voice seemed to be getting. And the prayer was getting faster, some of the words starting to bump into each other.
As they got to within six feet of the wooden marker the prayer was in danger of becoming a gabble. All three of them were pale and white-faced, with sweat starting to pour down their faces as their eyes started to take on a slightly wild look. Another step. And another. The hands that held the crystal were shaking opening now and the prayer was almost incoherent.
Another step. And another. Almost to the wooden marker. The prayer was now just a random jumble of words. And then the taller of the acolytes stopped dead in his tracks, his head twitching violently. There was a sudden spatter of something liquid – and then he turned on his heel and ran for the doors, a look of utter terror on his face, slipping and sliding on the foulness that was dribbling down his legs.
“Follow him and keep him safe!” Grandfather bellowed. “And bring mops and water for the floor!”
Willas paid the flight of the man no mind – he was staring at the remaining two Septons. Both were trying to shuffle forwards, their heads twitching. The Septon of the Starry Sept rallied for a moment, because all of a sudden a few coherent words emerged from his mouth. Another step, beyond the marker. Another – and suddenly Grandfather had a hand on his shoulder and was squeezing almost painfully.
Another step took the two men forwards. And then the other acolyte seemed to bend in the middle and then sink to his knees, sobbing at first and then letting out a long wail as he collapsed bonelessly in a heap and clawed for a moment at his head, before he seemed to shake like a leaf, his head thudding against the floor until the blood spattered everywhere.
Willas took a horrified step forwards, but then Grandfather pulled him back. The Septon of the Starry Sept was still upright. Another step – and then the crystal fell from his hands and smashed into a thousand pieces on the floor. The Septon reeled, his impetus taking him forwards – and then he screamed and clawed at his face with his hands. He was making horrible, horrific noises as something spattered on the floor, and then even more noises that seemed indistinct, as if the man was chewing off his own tongue. And then he stiffened like a board and fell face forwards onto the flagstones with an audible crunch of something or something breaking.
That noise broke the spell on the room. Screams went up from various guards. Willas darted forwards – and then reeled back as fear rippled through him like a black wave. Garlan and Loras also moved forwards and then back.
As Willas swallowed and tried to regain his nerve someone else moved forwards. Father did not stride, he ran towards the Septon, his face set in a look of the utmost resolution. He did not waver, he did not seem to even think about what he was doing – he just ran. As he reached the wooden market though he reeled for a moment – but then he pressed on, his hands over his ears. What was he hearing?
As he reached the motionless form of the prone acolyte Father seemed to stumble and went down onto his knees, but then he reached out with violently trembling hands, grabbed the leg of the man and pulled him with a strength that surprised Willas. The Septon slid backwards, past the wooden marker, and that seemed to snap Grandfather and Septon Norry out of their paralysis enough to run forwards themselves and pull the motionless man back to safety.
Father turned to Septon Alyston and then reached out again. Just short. He leant forwards again – and then he screamed and slammed his hands over his ears again, before collapsing and shaking.
“Father!” Willas shouted and tried to dart forwards again, only for the fear to roil through him again. He snarled at his own weakness and then reached back to shove Otherbane into a more comfortable position – and then as his fingers met the shaft the fear vanished like a wave receding. He froze in shock – and then he pulled the weapon off his back. No fear. What was this?
No time to think about this. He ran forwards himself, ignoring the cries of fear and warning from the others. He reached Father and pulled him up. Father’s face was drawn with horror – but he was alive, if palsied. Willas pulled him back towards safety, making sure that he never let go of Otherbane, back to where Grandfather and the others could grab Father, who pulled him even further back.
“Is he alright?” Loras asked. “He saved that other Septon. What about the Septon of the Starry Sept?”
Willas turned back and walked back to the damn fool who had caused this disaster – and then he paused. The pounding noise had stopped. And then someone wailed in horror. The bloody man was starting to stand jerkily. He was alive? And then the world seemed to pause and stand still for a long moment as the Septon of the Starry Sept turned his head in a way that no living man should have, as if his backbone was made of jelly. His eyes were gone, bloodied holes in his face above a smashed nose and shattered teeth. And yet, something seemed to glitter, like wet and malformed eyes, deep in those bloodied sockets just for an instant.
The mouth of the Septon gobbled something before the head wobbled back towards the gate – and then the body of the Septon took a shaking step towards the glowing artefact.
“What in the Seven Hells is that thing?” Someone shouted the words that Willas was thinking. The walking corpse took another step forwards – and then the gate seemed to shake so hard that dust fell from it. Boom came the noise from it, Boom, BOOM.
Willas gripped Otherbane in both hands as he looked at the gate – and then he blanched as something seemed to press against the stone that made up the face of it, as if solid stone had suddenly become like cloth. The shape of a hand appeared on it for an instant – skeletal with long nails. The thing that had been Septon Alyston gobbled something again and then stepped forwards again, bloodied hands reaching towards the gate.
“Willas – kill that thing!” Grandfather shouted.
He swallowed and then strode towards the shambling figure. Otherbane was in his hands and as he approached the Septon it seemed to be shining in a strange way. Something was pressing on his forehead and he blinked a bit. And then he drove the head of Otherbane into the back of the Septon.
The bloodied figure screamed – and then a face appeared in the gate. A face out of a nightmare. Cadaverous and yet with something that writhed under its chin. The face seemed to look at him and then it made a noise that was a cross between a noise and a scream. Willas pulled spear back and then struck again, deeper than before. The thing that had been the Septon of the Starry Sept screamed even louder – and then it collapsed bonelessly before the threshold of the gate.
Willas pulled the ancient weapon free, his brain filled with fire as he looked at the face in the gate. “Go back to the abyss that you were thrown into!” He bellowed the words without thinking, the words appearing in his head from somewhere deep within him that he had never known even existed. “You belong with the dead!”
The face in the gate screamed in a way that he could not describe – and then he grasped Otherbane in both hands and drove into the head of the Septon. The head burst apart into a puddle of foulness, as if the man had rotted to pieces at a gallop.
Something shuddered below his feet – and then the face in the gate vanished. The gate flickered for a moment but still kept glowing. Willas sighed, looked down at the rotting remains that were suddenly at his feet and then stumbled back to the others. All of a sudden he was terribly tired. And then as he reached his grandfather the sound of pounding at the gate started up again.
Chapter Text
Tyrion
If Jaime had looked bad before then he looked worse now. He had dark circles around his eyes, which seemed to have lost their old sparkle and life. He sat there at the table and carefully – almost laboriously – wrote out his confession, taking his time over it. He had some notes to one side that he would consult now and then, and his tongue sometimes protruded from his lips ever so slightly, something that Tyrion hadn’t witnessed for some time, not since they had been a lot younger.
He knew how much Jaime hated writing. He’d come to learning it later than Cersei and far later than Tyrion had. Father had had to take personal charge of teaching Jaime to write and it had not been easy for his brother.
From the sheen of sweat on Jaime’s forehead he was very likely reliving some of those lessons – memories of Father’s dry tones and caustic comments of ‘encouragement’.
On and on it went, agonisingly so. The scrape of the quill on the paper, punctuated by the subtly different scrape of the quill being dipped in the little bottle of ink. Sometimes Jaime would pause and frown and then go on to write again, as if he was concentrating on the next word.
And then, finally, it was all over. He placed the quill down with a slightly shaking hand and then pushed the confession across the table towards Maester Luwin, who looked it over carefully, shook some sand over it to dry the excess ink and then handed it over to the two silent other men at the far end of the room. Stannis Baratheon and Ser Barristan Selmy had witnessed every moment of Jaime’s confession. Now they read it and contempt radiated off them. Selmy looked as if he wanted to rip Jaime’s head off with his bare hands there and then, but was somehow restraining himself with a monumental effort. It seemed to pass muster, because Stannis Baratheon carefully folded it, jerked his head at Selmy and they both then stalked out, still grim of face.
Luwin sighed as he picked up the writing implements and then peered carefully at Jaime. “Ser Jaime,” he said carefully. “How is your wound?”
“It hurts,” Jaime said shortly.
“It is early yet, but it looks as if it is starting to heal. Does it hurt enough to stop you from eating?”
Jaime pulled a slight face. “No.”
“Yet your guards tell me that you eat next to nothing.”
His brother looked as if he was tired of this conversation. “I have little appetite.”
“You must eat, Ser. Your body is healing and it cannot heal without food. And I will not see you starve yourself.”
“I will talk some sense into my brother,” Tyrion interjected. “Thank you Maester Luwin.”
The old man nodded to him, looked at Jaime, and then left on quiet feet. As the door closed Tyrion looked at Jaime and suppressed a groan. Jaime was sitting there with a haunted expression on his face. “What is wrong, brother?”
But Jaime did not answer. Instead he stood and went to the nearest window, where he just stared at the horizon. Eventually he finally said: “I need a favour, Tyrion.”
“Name it.”
“I want to go the Wall as soon as possible.”
He paused and then frowned. “You do?” Then inspiration hit. “Ah. You want to leave before Father arrives.”
A sigh escaped his brother. “Yes. Can you blame me?”
“Given that Father will arrive here in a rare rage… no, Jaime. I don’t blame you. Do you want me to talk to Ned Stark?”
An odd look crossed Jaime’s face, a combination of shame, anger and humiliation. “Yes,” he ground out eventually. “Please, Tyrion.”
There was a pause. “I’ll talk to Ned,” Tyrion muttered. There was a lot he needed to talk to him about anyway, things that Jaime would never understand.
“’Ned’. You sound almost like a man of the North already, brother.”
“I know what faces them. What faces all of us.” He looked at Jaime. “Ned Stark will demand that you swear your oath on the Fist of Winter.”
“Ah, yes, Stark’s new mace. Or old mace. What of it?”
“An oath on the Fist is not something to take lightly.”
Jaime looked at him oddly. “How so?”
“I was there when the Fist killed Ser Willem Bootle, Jaime. He laid his hand it, swore that he was innocent – and then he flew across the room, to land stone dead and smoking lightly. Ned Stark did not lay a finger on him. It was all the Fist. It is old, brother, and it has power. An oath on it has… meaning.”
Jaime looked away. “Do you doubt my word,” he said thickly, “Even you?”
“No,” Tyrion replied quickly. “I know you.”
There was another silence. “The guards vary in their names for me,” Jaime said eventually. “Some call me Kingslayer. Others call me Oathbreaker. They think that I scorn oaths.”
Tyrion pulled a face. “I know that you do not. You killed Aerys because there was no other alternative. No raven has come from King’s Landing yet, but I do not need one. I heard it in your voice.”
A long moment of silence fell. “And my second oath?”
Ah, here was a time to tread carefully over very thin ice and for once words failed him. “Cersei… you always… I mean that…”
“She led me astray,” Jaime said tiredly. “I never could refuse her.” He looked about with a tired smile. “And here I am, as a consequence. Broken on the wheel of foolishness. Bound for the Wall. You have seen it. Will I need fur linings for my smallclothes?”
“You will need advice in what to wear,” Tyrion replied, his eyes searching every inch of his brother’s face. “Jaime, you must not give up.”
“Give up what?” Jaime asked tiredly.
“The fight to live. There’s going to be a war at the Wall. A war that we must win.”
“Your war against the dead? And legends? Against snarks and grum-”
Tyrion smashed his fist down against the table, making his brother jump. “Don’t be a fool! You saw that cage! You heard the tales, from me, and the Starks and Uncle Gerion! Wights are real! The Others are real, Jaime. When you join the Night’s Watch you are not going into a cold and dull exile, you will be entering a war zone! War marches on the Wall, war brought by enemies that are terrible in a way that you cannot imagine! Do you think that what I saw, what I fought against, what I killed was a trick? Forget whatever poison Cersei dribbled into your ears, Jaime! You are going to the Wall and there you will be defending all of us. All of Westeros. So you will eat and not waste away, you will fight at the Wall and you will not take the chance to throw yourself off it. You want to die at the moment brother, I see it in your face. No – enough of such foolishness. You are the best warrior I know of. You must fight to defend us all.”
And with that he stormed out, without a glance back at his astonished brother. Right. He needed to talk to Ned.
Catelyn
Luwin was pleased with the progression of her pregnancy so far. He peered at her, prodded gently, asked the usual questions, drew his eyebrows down in thought once or twice and generally looked satisfied. And then he coughed slightly and slid his hands into the arms of his robes.
“My Lady, Lord Stark has asked me to request that you take it as easy as you can in the coming months.”
It was a familiar request and she smiled a little and replied with the familiar response: “I shall do if I can – Winterfell must be run.”
“I recognise that, my Lady, especially with his Grace the King here along with the Court. Perhaps if you could involve the Lady Sansa a little more? She is of an age, and will need to learn how to run a great house when she marries Lord Domeric.”
That was a good point. “It is time that she learnt these things, I will admit that Luwin. I will talk to her. In the meantime I will try to rest as much as I can.”
Luwin beetled his eyebrows at her for a moment and then smiled that little smile of his. “Very well my Lady.” And then he looked over her shoulder and blinked a little. “Your pardon, Lady Baratheon, I did not see you there.”
Surprised, she turned to look at the doorway. Selyse Baratheon was standing there, clutching her skirts and looking strained. “Lady Baratheon,” she said, as she stood up and pulled her dress straight. “How may I help you?”
The tall woman with the large ears swallowed visibly and then nodded jerkily at her. “Lady Stark. I was told that Maester Luwin was here. I need to speak with him on… on a matter of a personal nature.”
Luwin blinked a little and then spread his hands. “I am at your disposal Lady Baratheon. Should you need to speak confidentially then I hope that Lady Stark might be able to grant us a place a speak in here.”
Selyse Baratheon visibly wavered on this for a long moment. “Perhaps you might both be able to assist me on this,” she muttered. And then she swallowed. “I think that I am with child.”
Cat looked at her carefully. She wanted to congratulate her, but there was something about the other woman. She was a stiff as a board, her face an emotionless mask – but her eyes kept flickering back and forth whilst her fingers twitched at her robes. She looked as if she was torn between terror and joy.
Luwin cleared his throat to one side, shot her her a glance that showed that he was seeing the same things that she was, and then stepped forwards. “Perhaps, with your permission, I might be allowed to ask you a few things?”
Selyse nodded choppily, before walking over to one side where she talked quietly with Luwin. Cat watched for a moment and then bustled to her little desk to one side, where she made some notes about what needed to be done in terms of feeding the court over the next week. Fortunately the presence of so many men who liked hunting meant that meat was not a problem and then in fact they would end up in a better place than she had planned.
As she put the quill down and stopped the little bottle of ink she looked up. Selyse Baratheon had an odd look on her face, one where joy was just ahead of terror. “I think, my Lady,” Luwin said carefully, “That you are indeed with child. Congratulations.”
She looked at him with a slightly wild expression. “Congratulations? Maester Luwin… I have only ever brought one child to birth successfully. Shireen. The others… I have had miscarriages. And… and… stillbirths. I have had my heart broken again and again, I have not been able to give my husband a male heir and… and now…” Her face twisted in a look of anguish, before she seemed to recall where she was and seemed to force her face clear of any emotion.
Luwin slid his hands into his sleeves and shot Cat a quiet look of concern under his eyebrows. “I understand, Lady Baratheon,” he said gravely. “Perhaps I might ask some more questions, on a confidential basis?”
Another choppy nod and Cat returned to her list as the other two carried out a conversation in low tones. She could tell that Luwin was doing his best to be quietly supportive. When the voices finally fell silent again she looked up. Luwin was deep in thought. “Lady Baratheon,” he said eventually. “You had your stillbirths on Dragonstone I believe?” A nod. “Various maesters have long debated the impact of noxious humours from the volcano there. I would strongly suggest that you remain here in Winterfell for the duration of your pregnancy. No travel that might tire you, no stress and only gentle exercise. Lady Stark here has delivered five children to term, with a sixth on the way, and I can assure you that I will do my best to assist you in a successful pregnancy here in Winterfell.”
Selyse looked at him for a long moment and then nodded jerkily. Then she looked at Cat with a complicated expression on her face, one that combined envy, admiration, shame and hope. “Thank you, Maester Luwin. And to you Lady Stark. I will pray in the Godswood later, to beseech the Old Gods for a healthy boy. As strong as his father.” Another choppy nod and then she swept out.
Cat watched her go and when the door closed she sighed. “I almost wanted to hug her, but I feared that she would take offense.”
“Yes, my Lady. She will be… difficult. But I think that she will listen to me. To have had so many stillbirths… well, I would blame the environment on Dragonstone. I would also suggest that we keep a close eye on who serves her food.”
Her eyebrows went up. “You suspect poison?”
He pursed his lips for a moment. “I would rather not take any chances. Environment is one thing, possible poison is another. Some women, regrettably, have more trouble than others in bearing children. Lady Baratheon might be one of those. I will observe her closely and let you know my thoughts on this.”
“Thank you, Luwin. Now. What of the former Queen and the children?”
“Cersei Lannister has stopped throwing her food at the guards. I suspect that she realised that unless she stopped doing so she would remain hungry. She also remains… angry. Her threats have been most inventive.”
She closed her eyes for a long moment and sighed. “Wretched woman. I have always disliked her. Does she still regard herself as being Queen?”
“She does, my Lady.”
“I will have a word with Ned and the King. And the others?”
“Young Tommen is disconsolate, but I have been able to entertain him with some rather weighty tomes on cats. He seems… very interested in them. As for Myrcella… I was going to ask you to talk to her, my Lady. She realises with a clarity that I thought was beyond her years just how much all this will affect her future. She is a cleverer girl than I had thought. A kind girl too.”
She sighed again. “I will talk to her. None of this is her fault. And Joffrey?”
Luwin’s face tightened. “An unpleasant boy. He is almost as delusional as his mother. He refuses to believe what has happened to him. He still gives orders and then has a tantrum when they are not obeyed. I beg your pardon, but I am heartily glad that he will not be King. His behaviour… well, I am minded of the history that Lord Robb remembers from that other time.”
That made her shiver a little. The boy had ordered the death of Ned in that other history, something that made her feel a chill even now. “I am most glad as well. Keep the boy fed and warn the servants about him. There is a cruelty about him and an arrogance that I don’t want to see inflicted on anyone.”
The old Maester bowed to her and then left. She picked up her list and looked at it. Winterfell wouldn’t run itself – she had much to do.
Willas
He had always liked Grandfather’s solar. It was big and airy and had a lot of books in it and he had promised himself that when the time came to take over Father's solar he'd model it after Grandfather's one.
That time was now looming closer than he wanted to think about. In fact he would give anything to postpone that moment.
He rubbed his hands over his face and stared out of the window at where the Honeywine met the sea. Every hour at the moment was an additional gift. He clutched at those hours, embraced them. Father was not dead yet.
The Septon that he had rescued was dead. He had died within an hour of that... incident, that horrible encounter at the gate. The poor man's skull had been broken, along with much of his face, with the sound of his breathing being a horrible groaning gurgle, until the moment that it had ceased completely.
As for the Septon who had run, well he had been found in the lowest level of the Hightower, gibbering with fear and caked with his own filth. He had been screaming something about the voices in his head and was now restrained, having been scrubbed from head to toe and then dosed into unconsciousness with a massive dose of the milk of the poppy.
And then there was the Septon of the Starry Sept. His... bones, if they could even still be called that, given that they were little more than slimy pieces of rotted filth, had been burned and then returned to the stunned senior priests of what had once been the most important Sept in Westeros.
But Father still lived. He was shrunken, palsied, attended by Maesters, but he still lived and Willas wanted to cling to that fact.
Feet scuffed at the doorway and then a pair of knuckles rapped at the door. He looked up tiredly to see Loras standing there. His brother was red-eyed and almost shaking with tiredness. "You need to come," Loras muttered. "Father is awake."
He stood at once, eagerly - but then he saw the look on the face of Loras. "What's wrong?"
Loras stood there, his face working with misery prevalent on his face. "They say... they say that Father is dying. That he does not have long left to live. It... it might be true. Father is desperate to see you. You... you should hurry."
For a long horrible moment he stood there - and then he grabbed Otherbane and he ran. Various guards watched him go and he cared not what they thought of his passage, but he knew that he had to get to the room where Father had been taken as fast as possible.
When he finally arrived he could tell at once that the situation was grave. Grandfather was standing at the doorway, talking in low and intent tones with Maester Olwin, the healer who had been sent over by the Citadel in a desperate effort to find out what was wrong with Father. When Grandfather saw him his face went taut. "Your father wants to see you," the Lord of the Hightower said gently as he walked up to them both. And then he looked at Willas and placed a hand on his shoulder. "You must be strong," he muttered. And then: "I'm proud of you my boy."
He nodded at Grandfather and then walked with trembling legs into the room, which was dominated by the bed that Father had been placed onto. He was staring up at the ceiling, blinking only occasionally, and his face was thin and lined. Willas looked back at Maester Olwin. "How is he suddenly so thin?"
The older man shrugged helplessly. "I know not Lord Willas. 'Tis as if whatever he confronted sucked the life out of him. It drained him. How he kept his sanity and life when the others did not... I know not. He is a strong man, your father. But he is coming to the end of his strength. He does not have long left. You should talk to him."
Willas closed his eyes for a long moment. This was the moment that he had been dreading since the confrontation at the Gate, but he did not want this to happen. He did not want to take over from Father at all. Who would? But he steeled himself and then walked over to the bed.
Garlan was already in the room sitting by the bed and he stood up, as red-eyed as Loras, yielding the chair to Willas. He hugged his brother gently and then sat down and took Father's hand in his. "Father? It's me. Willas."
Slowly, oh so very slowly, Father turned his head to look at him and he did his best not to blanche at the look in those almost lifeless eyes. But then the eyes seemed to focus and then come alive. "Willas?"
"It's me Father."
Father's shaking hand clutched at his. "Good... that you are here. I... heard. About the Septon. So sorry. So... sorry. Shouldn't have come..."
Willas shook his head. "You've nothing to apologise for, Father. You couldn't have known."
But Father seemed to disagree, because his face worked for a long moment as he seemed to fight off a bout of tears. "I should... should have never come here. Stupid... of me. Prideful of me. I wanted... to lead the Reach again."
"Father..."
"You need to stop him."
He paused and peered at his father. "Stop who?"
"The... the thing behind the gate. I... I heard him. He is... he is... a terrible creature. He is dead... but cannot die. He wants to die but keeps... living. He is... a mad creature. A terrible creature. The Call... it woke him. He is... mad. Enraged. You... beat him back. I know why... you wield Otherbane now. It... repels him. For a while."
Willas stared at his father for a moment. "For a while? What do you mean Father?"
Tears started from Father's eyes. "Because... because he will fight you. Blight... you. Beware. Blight. His influence... brings blight..."
Horror stole over him. "Father... whatever is behind the gate will blight the harvest? Afflict the Reach?"
Father nodded jerkily. And then he clutched at his hand again. "He's afraid. Afraid... of the Stark. Of what the Stark wields. You... must call him. Only way... to kill him. To kill a god."
This was madness. He stared at Father. "There is a... a god behind the gate?"
This time Father flailed at his hand. "Yes! Yes! I heard him! Madness! He is... beyond mad! You must hold him... hold him back. The Fist. The Fist will... kill him."
"The fist? Whose fist?"
Father's face worked for along moment. "Ned... Stark. He... has... it..." And then he slumped back onto the bed, his face slackening - as did his grip.
Willas stared at that slackening hand - and then at Father's face. And then he took it his hands and wept as he realised that Father’s eyes were lifeless.
Oberyn
The stink of Kings Landing was something that could be smelt far out to sea, like a miasma of corruption that really said everything about the wretched place. He leant against the railing of the ship and stared at the city with a certain amount of wry loathing. It would always be the place where Elia had died, at the hands of the Mountain. One day his vengeance would come. One day.
He looked up at the Red Keep and pulled a slight face. Well, at least Robert Baratheon wasn’t there. The Fat King was up in Winterfell, investigating this Call business with the Toothgrinder and Ned Stark, who was probably back there now after his trip to the Wall. He wished that news of Sarella was more up to date. The last he’d heard was that she was on her way to the Nightfort, along with that astonishing new that she was on the trail of Gerion Lannister. Interesting.
Well, perhaps there would be a letter on its way to him. He’d sent a raven ahead of him to warn his personal agent in this stinking shithole of a city, and if Sarella had sent any letters to him by ships that stopped at King’s landing they would be there waiting for him.
The first thing that struck him as the ship moored at the jetty was that the Goldcloaks that he could see seemed… different. Less slovenly than the last time he had visited the city. They did not lean on their shields, they did not have rust on their spears and they did not seem to be taking bribes openly from people. He raised a languid eyebrow and then peered at the city itself. That, at least, was still the same.
Gods, it stank.
“Will you go to the Red Keep?”
He looked at the captain of the ship, who had once again displayed that uncanny ability of sneaking up on him, and who was once again dressed in those tight breeches that showed off her slim, almost boyish, arse. Sylva Sand was of determinedly mixed parentage, could out-swear an Ironborn, was nowhere near as pretty as Ellaria, who was back at Sunspear, and was an absolute handful in the bunk of his cabin. It was like fucking a snake at times.
“Depends on a few things,” he muttered, as he watched a new Goldcloak appear, an older man with a tough of grey in his brown hair and one oddly foreshortened hand. He was looking at the ship with a knowledgeable squint. “The Goldcloaks seem to be much changed.”
“The Onion Knight has knocked some honesty into them,” Sand replied, before glowering at a nearby sailor and snapping at him for not coiling a rope correctly. Then she looked back at him. “That’s him down there.”
“The famous Knight of Onions?” He straightened and then looked at her. “I’ll be back in a bit.”
As he strolled down the gangplank and then reached the wharf he sobered a little. Ser Davos Seaworth had been one of the men who had been there when Lord Dayne had died and he owed him his thanks for that at the very least. “You are Ser Davos, I have been told?”
The other man nodded and then bowed awkwardly. “Prince Oberyn Martell I believe? I heard that you had arrived. Be welcome to King’s Landing. If you are not too much in a hurry Lord Arryn would like to see you.”
He raised both eyebrows for a moment, brushed his moustache languidly, inspected the sky, his boots, the nearby inn where there was a women with astonishing large breasts leaning out of a window and then back at Seaworth – who was just stolidly looking back at him. “Oh, very well. Do you have a horse?”
Yes, there was a horse, and not a bad one, and as they rode up the hill towards the Red Keep he looked at the main gate. There was a rotting head there on a spike and as he passed under it he stared at it and then gave it a mocking little salute. Petyr Baelishs’ features were just about recognisable under a layer or three of pitch.
“You knew him?” Seaworth asked curiously as they drew rein and then dismounted.
“I met him once,” Oberyn replied as he handed his reins to a groom. “And I distrusted him at once. But since he died he has given Dorne so very much gold after we were allowed to appropriate his holdings on our land.”
“The bloody man had tendrils everywhere,” Seaworth growled as he led him towards the Tower of the Hand.
The entrance there was guarded by a pair of guards in Arryn colours, who knocked at the door as they approached, resulting in the appearance of what looked like a steward of some kind who bowed at him. “Prince Oberyn? Lord Arryn will see you at once.”
The inside of the tower still had a very much Vale appearance – Arryn colours, clunky furniture, the general Andal solidity and, well, boring stolidity. That said, there were a few other things that stood out. It looked as if many things had been packed up and not replaced with anything just yet.
As for Arryn himself, he was standing up from behind a desk and walking towards him. The old man did not look as bad as he had heard, but there was a hitch in his step and something about his eyes that spoke of something that was more than tiredness. “Prince Oberyn,” Arryn said quietly as he bowed slightly to him and then held out a hand. “Welcome to King’s Landing.”
“Thank you Lord Arryn,” Oberyn replied as he bowed a little himself and then shook hands with the older man. “You wished to see me?”
Arryn nodded and then waved a hand to the entirely nondescript man who was standing to one side of the room and who immediately bustled about, pouring wine from a flagon that had obviously been airing for some time. A look and a sniff at the proffered goblet soon told him why. “You have some of the ’53? A noble vintage – Dornish wine at its finest!”
A slight smile played around Arryn’s lips as he sipped from his own goblet. “I admired it at the time and it has only matured with age. I laid down quite a bit of it.”
Oberyn sipped himself, resisted the temptation to smack hi s lips and instead sank into the nearest chair and then put his feet up upon the edge of the desk in front of him. Arryn’s servant scowled. Arryn merely looked slightly amused as he sat on the other side of the desk.
“You do not mind?” Oberyn asked with a wry smile and a wave of the hand at his feet.
“It’s no longer my desk,” Arryn replied. “I am merely helping out until Lord Stannis Baratheon, the present Hand, returns from Winterfell. I am… tired. Recent events have rather underlined the fact that I need to the Vale and begin to muster its resources.”
The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end for a moment, but he hid it by sipping more wine and glancing about the place. “I was sorry to hear about the attack on your person,” he replied, using quite a bit of equivocation. Frankly he did not care a jot about Arryn’s health. “I understand that your wife has been caught?”
Arryn leant back in his chair and flickered an eyebrow briefly at him. “She has,” he said flatly. “A trial will be arranged. It is all… most unfortunate. But such is life. In the meantime, may I ask you why you have come to King’s Landing?”
Ah, now here was the moment. He took another sip. “The Call,” he admitted eventually. “I am here on behalf of my brother, Prince Doran. This… Call… has been heard by many of the Stony Dornish who have the blood of the First Men most strongly within them.” He sighed a little. “Lord Dayne was one of them. On behalf of Sunspear I would like to thank you for what you did to ease his passing.”
“Thank Ser Davos Seaworth. He was at the docks when Lord Dayne’s ship came in and arranged for him to be brought to a comfortable room in a nearby building at once, whilst Ser Jaime Lannister, who was also there, sent a guard to get Edric Dayne at once. He was barely there in time.”
He suppressed a snarl at the mention of the word ‘Lannister’, and instead nodded. “We heard that he passed Dawn on to his son before he died. And that the new Lord Dayne had departed for Winterfell.”
“Like so many others,” Arryn sighed. “I take it that you have questions about the Call?”
He sipped more wine and then pulled a slight face. “Oh, only several dozen, many of which can be boiled down to a few, such as how it was sent out, not to mention why it was sent out. The words are echoing all around the land, my Lord. ‘The Others come. The Stark calls for aid. You are needed.’ The ‘Others’, Lord Arryn? Surely they are nothing more than a myth. But as to how the Call was sent out… magic must have been involved, and that makes me… curious.”
Arryn looked at him with hooded eyes – and then he sighed a little. “A long-overdue message came in from Winterfell a day ago. Apparently Lord Stark’s ancestors created, or inherited, an… artefact. An object. It sent out the Call. As to why it sent out the Call… well, there is something you need to see. Your timing is excellent. The previous… object was replaced by another one.” And with that he stood and gestured at the door, before walking to it. Confused, Oberyn drained the last of the excellent wine and then followed the old man out of the door, down the stairs and then out into the courtyard.
By the time they reached the throne room Oberyn was truly baffled, especially by the look on the faces of the men who had passed them in opposite direction coming from the room with that accursed chair. All had been pale and a few looked as if they were trembling.
Arryn had a word with the guards at the door, who nodded at him, and then led Oberyn in. Before the Iron Throne there was a small table and on that table there was a small cage. And within that cage was… the severed head of a woman? It was hard to see, the head was facing away from them and there was something odd about it. It was not a fresh head – but there was no smell that normally accompanied such a thing.
He was about to ask when in the name of the Seven Hells was going on when two things happened. The first thing was that he noticed that the head was that of a woman. The second thing was that her eyes were open and she was watching him – and then the head opened its mouth and hissed at him.
Despite himself he flinched for a moment – and then he drew on every ounce of self-control, every scrap of proud restraint, and forced himself to smile. “Very interesting,” he drawled. “Is it real or a toy from Myr?”
“Take a closer look at it. You can pick the cage up if you like. Just don’t stick your finger in anywhere near its mouth. An idiot from the Vale did that. He lost the first joint of his hand.”
Oberyn raised a languid eyebrow at the old man and then picked the cage up and shook it slightly so that the head fell over. And at it’s base… were severed tendons and the gleam of white bone where the spine was. The mouth hissed again and the eyes swivelled furiously around to try and glare at him.
No wires. No levers.
No metal.
It was real. He suppressed the sudden need to swallow as his mouth and throat were suddenly extremely dry. A slight tilt of the cage restored the head to an upright position and then he placed the cage back down on the table and backed away from it. “The head of a wight,” he said eventually. “I have never seen anything like it.”
“Few have,” Arryn replied tiredly as he sat on a stool that a guard had brought for him. “Our friend over there brought the cage down from Castle Black. The cage replaces another one that had the head of a male wight that is now being taken down the Roseroad to Highgarden.”
He looked to one side and saw the silent figure in black that had been standing in the shadows to one side. Then he turned back to the cage and inspected it closely. “What metal is this made from?”
“We do not know,” the man from the Night’s Watch rumbled in a low voice. “The cages are the work of the First Men. They slow the rotting of what is placed within them. There are runes on them my Lord.”
He peered at the cage again. Yes, there were indeed runes. “Proof of… wights?”
“Aye,” said the man in black, before stepping back into the shadows.
Oberyn studied the head for a long moment, taking in everything about it. He had to write to Doran immediately about this. If wights existed then what of these Others? The Call had been sent out for a reason. This was important, vitally so perhaps. It was no wonder that the Stony Dornish were reacting in the way that they were. His feet twitched a bit and he repressed the need to pace restlessly. Instead he walked slowly around the table, thinking hard.
“I will write to Sunspear,” he said quietly. “My brother must know of this before I leave for Winterfell.” Then he smiled crookedly at Arryn. “Dorne has not had much of a presence at King’s Landing since Robert Baratheon took the throne. That might change.”
Oberyn looked back at the head in a cage. “I have travelled far and seen many odd things, Lord Arryn. I have seen the House of the Undying in Qarth. I have seen the flashes of light on the horizon that show the location of where the Fourteen Flames used to be. I have had my fortune told by a mage whose face seemed to change even as she spoke to me, who told me that if the wind stayed from the South I would die when a mountain fell on me but that if it changed and came from the North that I would live to see the sun rise in front of me. But I have never seen anything like that. Wights do indeed exist.” He shook his head in astonishment. “A strange day. Strange times.”
Arryn nodded slowly and was about to open his mouth and say something when they both heard the sound of hurrying – almost running at times – boots, and then Arryn’s man from the Tower of the Hand burst in, his eyes searching for Arryn. The moment he saw him he all but ran over and then held up two raven scrolls that had red ribbons at the top. “From… from the ravenry… in the Tower of the… Hand, my Lord,” he panted. “They arrived almost at the same… time.”
Something happened to Arryn’s face the moment that he saw the scrolls, a mixture of hope and fear. But then he reached out with a steady hand and took the scrolls, broke the small seals on them and then read each one quickly. “Identical messages with the seal of Stannis Baratheon,” he muttered, before pausing. “They did it.” The three words were said in almost a whisper. Then the old man looked up and there was something in his eyes that made Oberyn straighten almost to attention for a moment. “Quill?”
“My Lord?”
“Has the number of Redcloaks in the Red Keep and City changed at all since your report this morning?”
“No my Lord.”
“Tell the men to get ready at once. Lord Baratheon has succeeded.”
The other man bowed and then ran out again. As he watched him go Oberyn felt his scalp prickle. Something was happening, something important. And it sounded as if some Lannister soldiers were about to have a very bad day. The question was – why? What was going on? It wasn’t every day that anyone connected with the Tower of the Hand admitted that it had a ravenry for a start.
Arryn seemed to be lost deep in thought for a long moment, tapping his upper lip with one of the scrolls – and then he looked up and fixed Oberyn with a commanding gaze. “It seems that you will have a great deal to write about in your letter to Prince Doran,” he said softly, before looking around carefully and then handing over one of the scrolls.
Frowning, Oberyn unrolled it and then squinted at the tiny writing – and then as he read each word he found his eyes widening. ‘Cersei Lannister discovered fornicating with Jaime Lannister,’ he read. ‘Witnessed by Lords Stark and Baratheon and Ser B. Selmy. Doubt cast on parentage of royal children. C & J Lannister arrested on charges of treason. King Robert has divorced C. Lannister. Tests on parentage of children to commence via Stormbreaker.’
Once he had read it he then reread it, because he could not believe it. No, the words were still the same. A thousand emotions ripped through him, ranging from total incredulity to utter glee.
“Oh, I think that my brother will be very interested in this,” he said eventually, keeping an iron control over his features. “Very interested indeed.”
Arryn paused and then seemed to look at one area of the room by the Iron Throne. When he looked back his eyes seemed to be hooded with some undefinable emotion. “You are, I believe, a man of combat ability?”
“I have been in a few fights. I am not known as the Red Viper of Dorne for no reason.”
“Then perhaps you might agree to lead the party that will disarm the few Lannister forces remaining in the Red Keep?”
Oh now this was going to be… good. He nodded. “I don’t think that a spear would be a good choice in this case. I wonder if I might be allowed to borrow a sword?”
But first he had to go to the privy. Where he laughed so hard and so long that his face hurt and the tears poured his face.
Ned
The arrival of Robert and Stannis had had one good effect in terms of the tidal wave of paper from the South that was threatening to engulf his desk these days – much of it could be signed and then passed quickly on to the Hand of the King to be dealt with.
But there were other issues all the same, ones that only he could handle, albeit with much grumbling. It was increasingly obvious that he would have to ride down to Barrowtown soon to deal with Barbrey bloody Dustin and the fog that still lingered on the barrows there.
Luwin had gone through the records twice now and had found nothing but hints of fragments of bits of legends. The problem was that the fall of the Barrow Kings had been before the rise of the Maesters, not to mention the rise of records that were not carved on rock. Written records were… scanty at best.
Legend had it that the Great Barrow held the body of the First King, the very first king of the First Men, the man who had led them into Westeros. According to legend the barrow was also cursed. He didn’t like the sound of that. If old things were waking up and old legends like the Others were walking the land, then what about old curses?
He sighed and then scowled a little. Right. After this business with the Lannisters was settled then he’d travel South. With the Fist. And Lord Brandon Dustin, the sandy-haired and rather diffident man who had been with the Company of the Rose, would go with him, along with his three sons.
And if Barbrey bloody Dustin objected to the presence of a cadet branch of House Dustin then they would have… words.
Knuckles rapped on the door and he looked up. Tyrion Lannister was standing there, dressed in dark grey clothing and with a look of extreme seriousness on his face. “Lord Stark, may I speak with you?”
Ah. There were a number of possible topics that might require a face that serious, and he stood and gestured for the other man to enter. “Please close the door behind you Lord Tyrion.”
Tyrion nodded, shut the door and then walked over and took a seat in front of him. He then paused and stared at his feet, the wall, the ceiling, Ned’s face, his feet again and then back at Ned. “I need to talk to you Lord Stark.”
“I’d gathered that,” Ned said dryly and Tyrion blushed a little. “What exactly do you want to talk to me about?”
There was a long pause as Tyrion seemed to literally brace himself as if he was about to face an onslaught. Aha. Ned suspected that he knew what this was about now.
“Lord Stark,” Tyrion finally said after an excruciating pause. “I would like to ask if I might be allowed to talk to you about the, erm, marital circumstances of your cousin, the Lady Dacey Surestone?”
It was indeed as he had suspected. “You may.”
Tyrion seemed to suppress the need to flex various joints in his fingers – and then he stared at Ned. “I would consider it a high honour – the greatest honour of my life – if I might be considered as a prospect for her future husband. I mean, as a candidate for her hand.” He seemed to be very nervous and he actually stumbled over his words for an instant.
“You mean you would like to marry her?”
Tyrion stopped still – and then he nodded. “I would. I know that there are many factors that… that would argue against it. I am a dwarf. And I am a Lannister, a family that is now not in high favour in Westeros. And-”
Ned cut the poor bloody man off with an upraised hand. “Dacey had a word with me beforehand, as you well know. I am fully aware of what your family is like. I am also aware of what you are like. That you fought next to my sons not once but twice, at the Nightfort and beyond the Wall. You have killed wights. You have killed an Other. And, above all, you saved Dacey at that inn.”
Tyrion straightened a little in the chair and then looked at Ned with a little nod. “Thank you, Lord Stark. Dacey is… is a remarkable women. She is intelligent. She is wise with the knowledge that she has from our shared love of books. She is beautiful.” He struggled for a moment with some undefinable emotion. “I love her.”
Ned regarded him thoughtfully. The man was deeply earnest. “I think that you need to know that I am deeply fond of my cousin, Lord Tyrion, and that I will not be very happy with anyone who upsets her. Should I agree to her marrying anyone, I would want certain assurances that she will be happy in her marriage. I know that such a thing is hardly a normal condition of betrothal, but given what happened with Bootle I think that I am within my rights to do so.”
A ghost of a smile crossed Tyrion’s face. “I was told on the ride to Castle Black by Lord Umber that many Northern Lords would be… cross… with anyone who acted incorrectly around her.” And then he nodded. “I would be willing to swear an oath on the Fist of Winter that she would never have reason to regret marrying me.”
Ned forced his eyebrows to stay in place at such bold words. Instead he nodded in recognition. He was about to ask the question that had been lurking in the back of his mind when Tyrion flushed a little and then said: “In terms of prospects I have to admit that I do not have very many. I may be Tywin Lannister’s son, but I have never been acknowledged as his heir. I am a dwarf. And my mother died in giving birth to me. Father has never forgiven me for either, erm, ‘crime’. It has therefore never been a secret that my Father wants Jaime to inherit Casterley Rock when he dies.”
“I always wondered about that,” Ned muttered. “Members of the Kingsguard cannot inherit.”
This time the smile that crossed Tyrion’s face was a bitter one. “Father always hoped that Jaime would somehow at some point be released from his white cloak.”
“And now that your brother is swapping his white cloak for a black one?”
A shrug was the response to that question. “I don’t know. Father’s wrath will rival that of the Doom of Valyria, if on a small and more terrifyingly quiet scale, but I would be lying to you if I said that I could predict what my father will do now. I might be appointed his heir. He might make my Uncle Kevan his heir. He might marry again. I do not know. But it is possible that should I marry Dacey I might not inherit land or title or even coin. You need to know that.”
Ned looked at the Lannister who sitting opposite him for a long, long moment. “If,” he said eventually, “Your father appoints anyone but you as his heir then he is a far greater fool than I ever thought him to be. That or far more petulant. You have finished the report you were working on for him?”
“I have. Drawings and all.”
“Good. I must think about this matter, for the sake of propriety and custom, but she wants to marry you and I think the match to be a good one, so I have to tell you now that I will look on your proposal most favourably.”
Tyrion seemed to freeze in place. “You will?” The words came out as a squeak, and he then repeated them in a deliberately low and gruff voice. “You will?”
“I will.”
“I expected more... questions.”
Ned coughed slightly. “I do have a few. There has never been any stories of your fathering bastards, despite your… reputation.”
Tyrion sighed a bit. “I make no excuse that I do have a reputation, Lord Stark. I am fond of ale and wine and I have frequented my fair share of… establishments. Such things were often done out of boredom or even just to have some friendly – so to speak – company. My father, as I said, does not like me. Parental affection has always been beyond rare. He has also always made it very clear that should I disgrace the family with bastards then… then I would have to… dispose of them. Before he did. As a result the very best Moontea has always been at my disposal.”
Ah. That explained that. “I suggest that you never get bored around Dacey then. She will expect children.”
Tyrion seemed to struggle with his face for a moment and then he nodded curtly. “Japing about that sentiment would, it just stuck me, be a bad idea.”
“Very bad,” Ned frowned – and then he smiled, stood and held his hand out. “I will talk to the family. Oh, and you can call me Ned in private. Would I be right in thinking that you need to talk to your own father?”
“You would,” Tyrion said as his answering smile and handshake gave way to a frown. “He will be surprised but he… well he should have no reason to refuse this.”
“He’d better not. His sails have been sighted off Flint’s Finger two days ago. There’s no word yet on which way he’ll come – to Moat Cailin and the Kingsroad or up the rivers to Torrhen’s Square or even Barrowtown.”
Tyrion’s head nodded jerkily. “He will be angry when he hears about all that has happened here.”
“I know,” Ned replied. “I will talk to him as soon as he gets here. I am not responsible for what has happened though – and neither are you.”
This seemed to wryly amuse Tyrion. “Oh, he’ll find a way to blame me somehow. But thank you for agreeing to talk to me – and to my father.”
Ned nodded and returned to his desk – and the paperwork. After a moment he realised that Tyrion had paused by the still-closed door. “One last thing Ned. We do need to talk about how your son Robb died and fell through time. That’s rather important.” And with that he opened the door and left the room, leaving Ned staring after him in shock.
Kevan
The further North they sailed up that wretched river the more unsettled he became at what he was seeing all around them. The glowered at the river ahead of them. The Wolfsriver some called it around here, whilst further South it was called Wolfspear.
Bloody Northerners. Why couldn't they give a river a single bloody name and stick with it?
He looked back at the East side of the river and the activity there that was still unsettling him. Everywhere he looked he could see activity of some sort. People were lopping trees down, ploughing, sowing, reaping, building... preparing. He could see a cart over to one side that had stone stacked in it, stone that was being used to help repair a stone wall that divided two fields. And in the distance a windmill was being repaired as another one on the horizon worked steadily, its sails rotating in the wind.
The North was preparing for Winter. Preparing for the kind of winter that came once in a thousand years. And more than that - they were preparing for war at the same time. War with what winter would bring. He shuddered for a moment and then he sighed and returned to his cabin.
The five ships were just about alright on this river. There was just enough room to tack up them and once in a while the wind was from the South enough to let them shake out a reef and fly up it North-East. He was not much of a sailor, but even he knew that they were making damn good time.
The lack of Ironborn ships, thanks to the civil war that they were fighting that amused Tywin so very much, had been a surprise. What had also been a surprise had been the sheer number of ships heading North. Ships from the Reach, from Dorne and, yes, from the Westerlands. One of those ships was owned and commanded by Gawen Westerling, Lord of the Crag, and the head of an old and proud family, and that ship now followed them, after orders from Tywin that Lord Westerling provide him as much information as possible as to what was happening at the wall.
According to Westerling his son Raynald had gone to the Wall earlier that year with a small group of men in answer to the Call - and what he had seen there had so unsettled him that he had sent an immediate message back to his father. Something about Wildlings fleeing South, chased by something worse than the Stranger.
Something about wights. About heads in cages.
Someone shouted on deck, something about the lake being ahead and he stirred himself, pulling on his jerkin and walking up on deck. Yes, they had reached the lake that was the origin of the river. The Northmen here had a very original name for it - The Lake.
But that lake led to Torrhen's Square, the home of House Tallhart and the start of a road that led straight to Winterfell. All five ships set all sails and used every scrap of wind to beat their way up the Lake. That was a good idea. Kevan had a bad feeling that something was in the air. There had been something about the way that people had been pointing at their banners the past day and a half, as if they were uneasy about them, or certainly unsettled.
By the time that the sun was starting to set they were all tied up at the wharves and jetties of Torrhen's Square, small as the harbour there was.
What was not small was the castle there. The walls were thirty feet tall at least and thick. A nasty place to try and take on the fly, not that such a thing was surely possible after that passage up the river.
Helman Tallhart, the Master of Torrhen's Square and apparently the equivalent of a knight in the South, was not there to great Tywin and the others as they disembarked. Instead there was his young and at first rather flustered wife, Gemma Tallhart - who, unless he was mistaken, had formerly been of House Caswell in the Reach. Pregnant too, given the slight swell of her stomach. Very interesting.
However surprised she might have been, Gemma Tallhart soon settled down, had her steward bring bread, salt and wine for her guests, apologised for her husband, who was apparently off dealing with a minor dispute between two sets of smallfolk about new grain, or some such nonsense, and then offered Tywin guests quarters in Torrhen's Square itself.
Tywin had, of course, accepted as graciously as he was able to - with a slight bow and a quirk of the lips that was not quite a smile - and then had retired to his room and started to snap out orders about the journey to Winterfell.
"Tell Westerling to send word to his eldest son as soon as possible," Tywin started off. "I want as much information as possible as to what is happing with regard to that. And then, Kevan, find out what has happened about Baratheon and his arrival at Winterfell. I'm sure that a small flock of ravens are on their way to me from Cersei about the way that she claims she has been mistreated, or about what Baratheon has been doing. There were some odd reports from King's Landing before they left - something about the King becoming far more active. I want to hear the latest information. I detest sea travel at times - it makes it hard to know what is happening."
Knuckles rapped on the door and they both turned. "Come!" Tywin barked, and the door opened to reveal Lord Westerling in company with a pale Maester who was clutching a message that looked as if it had been carried by a raven. "What is it?"
Westerling strode in looking grim to say the very least. "News has arrived from Winterfell. It came two days ago. Lord Lannister... you must prepare yourself for bad news."
Kevan stood at the same instant as Tywin, as dread roiled through him. "What news?" Tywin barked, and the Maester handed over the scroll with a shaking hand.
"Fell news, my lord," the man said and then he fled, closing the door behind him.
There was a pause, and then Tywin unrolled the message and his eyes flickered over the words. And then he froze in place, his eyes unmoving and his chest barely moving. After a long and terrible moment blood seemed to suffuse his face, as a look of the utmost rage spread over his visage, before he scowled, controlled his expression and then bent over the message again.
"Westerling," he muttered after another moment. "You know what this says?"
"I do."
"How far has this... message spread?"
Lord Westerling winced a little and then sighed. "A long way. I would be surprised if King's Landing does not know this by now."
Another ripple of rage crossed Tywin's face, before being quashed rapidly. "Very well. Leave us. Now."
Westerling nodded and then all but fled the room. As he did so Tywin held out the message for Kevan. "Read it."
Deeply confused - but filled with dread - he reached out and took the message. It read: "King Robert, the First of his name, has divorced Cersei Lannister on charges of treason, incest and adultery, in that she was discovered fornicating with her own brother, Ser Jaime Lannister. This was witnessed by Lord Eddard Stark, the Hand of the King Lord Baratheon and Ser Barristan Selmy. Both arrested."
For a long moment he stared at the message. This was madness. It made no sense whatsoever. Cersei would never do anything as... insane. As... disgusting. No. It was impossible.
"This is madness," he said eventually. "No. Beyond impossible. Brother, say the word and I will set sail today for Casterley Rock to call the banners. This is an insult."
But instead of agreeing Tywin just stood there, staring at the fire, his eyes almost as ablaze as the grate. And then he finally passed a hand that shook a little over his eyes. "No," he said eventually. "We will go to Winterfell and ascertain the truth of this."
Utterly bewildered he looked at his brother. "I don't understand. This is... revolting. It has to be a mistake. Cersei and Jaime would never do something as revolting as that. Incest? Treason? Never!"
There was another pause. "Did you read the list of witnesses?"
Oh. He looked again. And then he blanched. "Stark, Stannis Baratheon and Selmy." He paused. "They are not men known for lying. Just the opposite in fact. Oh Gods. Tywin, this is bad. But why-"
His brother interrupted him. "All men with ridiculous standards of 'honour' and other things. Not liars. Never liars." Tywin said the last words slowly. "And then there is the thing that I sent Westerling out of the room for."
This was bewildering. "Which was?"
"Just before Tyrion was born... Joanna came to me. Said that she had ordered that our twins be separated into rooms on the opposite sides of the Rock. That... that they were too... close."
He froze in place. "No. Not that."
"She said that... they'd been found... being intimate."
"Tywin, surely they were too young for that!"
"That is what I thought too! Foolish perhaps but too young to know!" More fury on his face, leavened with... something else. Uncertainty. "After Joanna died, Cersei... begged to have her old room back. Next to Jaime. Begged me with tears in her eyes."
There was a long pause as Kevan thought through the horrifying implications. "But then... what are we to do?"
Tywin's face worked again, as rage, incomprehension and indecision all warred within him, and Kevan had the sensation of being present at a battle that came down to a decision balanced on the blade of a knife.
"We go to Winterfell," his brother said eventually, in a hoarse voice that spoke of something close to desperation. "We go to Winterfell and we find out the truth about this."
Kevan stared at his brother for a long moment. "What if this is false news?"
Tywin stirred slightly. "Then we will call the banners and raze the North from the Neck to the Wall."
He nodded. But there was still a question that had to be asked. "And what if... what if this... is true?"
But Tywin merely hunched his shoulders and shook his head for an instant.
As Kevan left the room his brother was still standing there, staring out of the window. Staring North.
Robb
“I wish I had a Valyrian steel sword,” Theon griped as he looked at the remains of the training dummy that Robb had just decapitated. “It would make life a lot easier.”
“I wouldn't say that,” Robb panted as he hefted Ice in both hands. Yes, the blade was far lighter than anything else that size that was made with normal steel, but after a while the effort did have an impact. “You need to rethink how hard you should swing the damn thing. I'm having to re-evaluate every bloody thing, every time I fight anyone. Or any thing.”
“You’re right,” Jon groaned as he looked at the remains of his own training dummy. “I'm having to restrain myself. If I put the full force I’m normally used to into my blows I'd spend half my time staggering whenever I bloody fight.”
Theon raised an eyebrow and then shrugged. “Well now, if I’m to found a new House here in the North, I’d better try and earn a Valyrian steel sword from somewhere. I can’t exactly inherit one.”
“Earn one?” Robb asked. “They’re rare enough as it is!”
“I know,” Theon replied slightly forlornly. “Well, you never know. Enough bizarre things have happened that I might stumble across one of the lost ones.”
Jon coughed in a meaningful manner and Theon’s eyes widened for a moment as he realised what he’d said. Dark Sister was still a secret and those who had noticed the blade had been told that it had been a gift. Which was true, but they were all doing their best to deflect any such questions.
They shut up and concentrated on more practice after that. A new pair of practice dummies were brought out and after a while they too were in pieces. As he picked up a piece of one of the arms Robb suddenly noticed that Father was standing to one side, watching them. And he had an odd look on his face.
“Are you alright Father?” Jon asked, looking at him seriously.
“Yes and no,” Father replied as he walked towards them and then looked around carefully. “This is not a conversation for idle ears.”
They all looked about, but there was no-one nearby, with the exception of a trio of small direwolves and the larger shape of their mother – who sniffed the air and then looked at Father with an air of utter unconcern.
“Firstly, Tyrion Lannister has asked if he can marry Dacey. I am minded to allow the match, as your cousin has already told me that she wants to marry him. I think that they would be good for each other. And there must always be a Surestone in Surestone.”
Robb pulled a slight face but then nodded. “Very well. What has disturbed you though?”
Father coughed slightly and then grimaced. “At the end of our conversation, as he was leaving, he said that he and I need to talk about how you died and fell through time.”
Three sets of eyes turned to Father at once. “Ah,” Robb said eventually. “He must have finally worked it out. Mance Rayder did say that a Child of the Forest told him that he had to go to the Nightfort with the man with the golden mind and the boy who died and fell through time. Tyrion’s not stupid. Eventually someone would have worked it out.”
“Interesting that he mentioned it after talking to you about Dacey,” Jon said thoughtfully. “Not before.”
Yes, that was interesting, and Robb scratched his chin in thought. “I can talk to him if you like Father. He knows that much. And with his Father coming… well, we need to avoid any chance of people jumping to conclusions, especially if they don’t have enough information. We need to know what Tyrion will tell his father. We need the Westerlands, Father.”
Father looked at him… before eventually nodding. “Very well. Talk to Tyrion. Be cautious.” He laid a hand on his shoulder. “You know the stakes. Especially with Lannisters. Tyrion is not like his faithless brother or sister, but he is still a Lannister.”
“I won’t let you down Father,” he said. “I’ll need to talk to him today.”
Father nodded and then strode off. Robb sighed a little as he watched him and then hefted Ice before walking over to where its scabbard and slid it in. Then he smiled at the others. “I’ll be careful,” he grinned, noting their looks of exasperated patience. “I can be diplomatic, you do know that don’t you?”
Jon just raised his eyebrows at him, whilst Theon smiled and shrugged a little. Robb laughed and strode off to his room, Grey Wind going on ahead of him like a small furry guardian. The little direwolf was growing fast, but he was still quite small compared to the Grey Wind of his memories. He also seemed to be sniffing something in the wind, because twice he stopped and paused, furry nostrils quivering.
Robb looked about at both times, but there was no-one there. Odd. He shrugged and strode into his rooms, where he hung Ice onto the hook by the door. It still felt odd to have it for himself. He looked at the sword for a long moment as he stood by the bed and scratched Grey Wind just behind his ears. He often wondered just what had happened to Ice in that other world. It had vanished in King’s Landing, lost in the catastrophe that had overtaken Father’s forces when Cersei bloody Lannister had moved against him.
He shrugged internally. Things were very different now. He moved to the doorway and then looked back. Grey Wind was still sitting on the bed, his head tilted almost quizzically – and then he stiffened and started to growl. Danger, Robb heard the warning from the direwolf, danger.
Alarmed he looked around – and then, sensing something that he couldn’t describe, he leapt back as a knife swished through where he had been standing. A boot connected with the door, which slammed in the face of an approaching Grey Wind, who was snarling.
As Robb recovered his balance he finally caught sight of his attacker. It was that brat Joffrey. He looked unkempt and unshaven, he was dressed in a stained doublet and he was weaving more than a bit – he stank of stale wine and Robb realised with a sinking heart that the brat was drunk. He was also holding a dagger that looked extremely sharp.
“Stinkin’ wolf boy,” Joffrey slurred. “Stark bastard. Y’r father ruined my life. ‘m a prince. Gr’nfather will reward me f’r killing you and presenting him with… with your head. I’ll be…. Be a prince ag’in.”
The bastard was drunk and mad. Robb slapped at his belt for his knife – which was, of course, on the other side of the door, behind which Grey Wind was howling and clawing at the door. I need to get this fool out of the bloody way, he thought desperately.
Joffrey swung again, with a wildness that made his eyebrows go up and Robb danced back. Another swing, with a wobble in the middle and Robb repressed a curse as the knife sliced through his doublet as if it was made of paper and nicked his arm. Valyrian steel, the bastard had a knife made from Valyrian steel and there was something about it that looked familiar. Another swing, another dance back, but this time Joffrey stumbled slightly, off balance, and Robb backhanded him about the head with a vicious blow that the GreatJon had taught him before Oxcross.
It seemed to stun Joffrey, who ran his spare hand over his face and then stared at the blood from his bleeding nose. “I… I’ll kill you for that,” he blustered, but there was something in his voice that spoke of rising fear. “Kill you.”
“Robb, catch!” Someone shouted the words and he quickly looked around and then caught the scabbarded knife that had been thrown in his direction. In the blink of an eye the scabbard was on the floor and he turned on Joffrey with fire in his eyes.
“Drop the knife, Hill,” he spat.
The name was a mistake. Joffrey quivered with rage and then leapt at him again. This time Robb was ready – he dodged the blow and then stepped in and grabbed his attackers knife hand with his left as he stabbed with his right. A wide-eyed Joffrey barely caught his arm in time – his knife left a red line on the bastard’s wrist and then they stood there quivering with exertion.
Joffrey opened his mouth to say something, but Robb acted first. He heaved Joffrey’s knife hand around so that it smashed into the wall and then at the same time he headbutted the drunken fool full in the face. The collision left him seeing stars, but he was ready for it. Joffrey was not. There was a crunching noise as his nose broke and he reeled back from Robb, the knife clattering to the floor as he brought both hands to his face and wailed in agony through a broken nose.
Robb kicked the knife away to one side and then stepped forwards – but someone else got there first. A booted foot lashed out from behind him and crunched into Joffrey’s crotch. There was a moment of utter red-faced stillness and then Joffrey made a noise that reminded Robb of the time when he had heard a pig being butchered by a novice butcher, before collapsing in a sobbing, bloodstained heap.
He bared his teeth and restrained the impulse to cut the little bastard’s throat. Instead he stepped backwards and looked at his helper – before blinking. Val was standing there. She had a dagger in each hand and she looked angrier than he had ever seen her before.
“This little prick deserved that,” she spat, before looking at him. “Should we kill him?”
Joffrey made an inarticulate noise of further distress and Robb looked down in disgust as a certain smell came from the sobbing form on the ground. Gods, they’d have to scrub that spot.
Boots thundered in the hallways as guards and others approached at a run, drawn by the noise. Grey Wind was also howling in protest and Robb sighed and opened the door for the direwolf, who darted out and then snarled at Joffrey, before sniffing the air and then backing away, his hackles rising.
“What in the name of the Old Gods is going on here?” Father did not bellow the words, but the way that he spoke commanded instant silence. He looked at Robb. “You’re bleeding.”
Robb looked down at his arm. “It’s just a scratch Father.” The words ‘I’ve had worse’ hung in his head for an instant, until he bit them back.
Father sniffed the air and then looked in disgust at the sobbing Joffrey on the floor. “Best not take any chances. Have the Maester clean it. And someone take this idiot to a cell. I thought that he was confined to his room.”
A roaring noise boomed down the hallway and every man – and woman – with a weapon made ready to fight. After a long, tense, moment the figure of Sandor Clegane appeared. He was staggering from wall to wall and the side of his head was covered in blood. “Where… where is that little bastard?!?”
Father looked at him, his eyebrows raised, before pointing at the human puddle on the floor. “He attacked my son, Clegane.”
“He hit me on the fuckin’ head with a bottle. Little shit’s drunk.” Clegane seemed to finally think about what else had happened – and then he threw his back and laughed. “The little shit attacked your son! Only one sentence for that! Well, two. Let me be there when you take his head off Stark!” Then he clutched at his head. “Gods, my head hurts.”
As two guards picked up a keening Joffrey and Clegane staggered off again Robb reached down picked up the dagger that the bastard had used to attack him with. It was familiar. Very familiar. He looked at Father and then at Val, who were both watching him. “I wonder where that little shit got a Valyrian steel dagger?”
Jon
He was out of breath by the time he got to Robb’s room, preceded by a silent Ghost. As he hurtled around the corner and approached the doorway he could see that several servants were scrubbing at the floor, and at a trail that led off the other way, and that the Cassels were standing guard outside. Their swords weren’t drawn, but their hands were on the hilts and they looked as alert as it was possible for them to be.
Robb was inside, stripped to the waist as Luwin carefully examined a shallow cut to his arm and then cleaned it with what looked like wine. Robb wasn’t even wincing, even though it must have hurt.
Father was standing to one side with a scowl on his face that did not bode well for Robb’s attacker, whilst Lady Stark sat next to Robb. She was pale and shaking – and judging from her eyes deeply, deeply, angry.
“You’re alright?” Jon gasped the words when he could. “Where… where is that little… little sh-” He bit the word off as he caught sight of Bran and Arya arriving. “Idiot?”
“Dragged off to a cell,” Father grated. “Under guard. Luwin will go to see him once he’s finished cleaning Robb’s wound. Apparently Mance Rayder’s goodsister Val kicked him quite hard in the…” His eyes flickered at the two young Starks. “Crotch.”
Jon snorted with amusement. Good. Serves that little shit right. Then he paused. “Val was here?” He raised an eyebrow at Robb, who shook his head.
“Not what you’re thinking brother. She was in the corridor. Not my room. Without her help I’d have had to face him without a knife. And given the way that he screamed, she put all she had in that kick.”
He sounded part bemused and part proud, and Jon looked at him and then at Father, who had an odd look on his face, one that combined amusement and exasperation.
There was a noise at the door, a barked command and then King Robert strode into the room. He looked as if he was ready to rip things limb from limb and he seemed to crackle with fury. The moment he saw Robb he stopped in his tracks and blinked.
“Gods,” he said in a tight, perhaps overly controlled way. Then he saw the children. “Ned, perhaps your youngest should be sent away. They shouldn’t see this.”
Father sighed and then nodded. “Bran, Arya, you should go. This isn’t something for your eyes.”
The two younger Starks looked deeply affronted at this and Arya glared at the King in a way that predicted that she was about to say some words that Lady Stark was probably going to be horrified that Arya knew. Fortunately at that point Father cleared his throat. “Bran – Arya. Please go to your rooms. Robb’s fine. I’ll talk to you later.” There was a collective indrawing of breath from the two and Father quashed any words by glaring a little at them. Both pouted and then left, dragging their feet more than a bit. As they left Arya looked sidelong at Bran, a look that made Father add: “And do not use your direwolves!”
Another sulky look and then they were gone.
The King watched all this with an amused eye – but then as he looked at Robb the amusement vanished in the blink of that eye.
“Gods, Ned, I’m sorry. I know that he’s not my blood, now at least, but I’m sorry. That little shit. That useless little shit.”
“Not your fault, Robert,” Father sighed. “It seems that Joffrey did not take kindly to being proclaimed a bastard.”
“Aye, but getting drunk and attacking your son? Gods, I’m sorry.” He sighed and then peered at the wound. “Doesn’t look too bad.”
“The wound looks clean Your Grace,” Luwin muttered with a slight smile of reassurance for Lady Stark. “The knife was Valyrian steel, so it’s lucky that the cut is so shallow. It could have been very nasty indeed. I’ll sew it shut, Lord Robb, so you will need the juice of the poppy.”
Robb smiled slightly. “I’ve had worse,” he muttered. “Do what you have to.”
Father looked at him quickly, with what might have been a warning look, but the King was too busy frowning to notice. “Valyrian steel knife? What Valyrian steel knife?”
There was a pause as Father reached for his belt and pulled out a curved knife in a scabbard, which he handed over to the King.
The hulking other man took it and stared at it. “But this is mine! I won it off Baelish a year or more ago. Wait… this went missing a while back. SELMY!”
The white-cloaked Kingsguard came in, nodding in recognition at Father and Lady Stark. “Your Grace?”
“According to Lord Robb here, Joffrey Hill attacked him with this. Look familiar?”
Selmy looked at the knife. “That’s your knife your Grace.”
“When did it go missing?”
“Some months ago, your Grace. But Joffrey had it you say?” He peered at it. “You’re a lucky man, Lord Robb. This knife is wickedly sharp. I wonder how Hill got hold of it?”
“The little shit stole it,” the King said heavily. “There can be no other explanation. Gods damn it, he continues to shame me. He tried to stab young Robb in the back when he was unarmed.” He closed his eyes and seemed to be struggling with something. Finally his shoulders slumped and he handed the knife back to Father. “I’d handle it myself, except that he’s not my damn son anymore. I leave it in your hands Ned. I’ll approve whatever judgement you feel fit to administer. Even if you want his head for a spike on the gatehouse here.”
Father swapped a glance with the others and then nodded. “Thank you your Grace. I’ll let you know when I make a decision.”
The King nodded back and then stamped off, muttering something about needing a log and then some sword practice. Father watched him go and then looked at Luwin. “You’d best sew it shut as soon as you can.”
“Aye, my Lord,” Luwin muttered as he unrolled his instruments and then offered Robb a small vial, which he sipped from with a grimace.
Father had a word with one of the Cassels and the n closed the door and turned to Robb and the others. “Right, now what were you all but gurning about when I arrived?”
Robb pointed at the knife. “I’ve seen that knife before Father,” he said grimly. “It’s the knife that was used by the man who tried to kill Bran and Mother in that other time.”
Everyone stared at Robb, and then at the knife. “You’re sure?” Jon barked, an instant ahead of Father.
Robb nodded and then winced slightly as Luwin started to sew the wound shut. “It cut Mother’s fingers, almost to the bone. She had scars afterwards and Luwin said she was lucky not to lose the use of some of them. The blood…” He paled. “You don’t forget something like that. Yes, that’s the knife.”
Holding it in the air Father scowled at it. “The knife that Baelish said he’d lost to Tyrion Lannister, not Robert? I’ve had my doubts about that tale ever since you told me about it. It made no sense. But if it was another of Littlefinger’s endless lies… Aye. I’d believe that. So. It was, we think now, passed on to that scoundrel by Joffrey. But why?”
There was a pause that was broken by Maester Luwin, who looked up from his careful sewing. “My Lord, I have observed the boy since he was disinherited. He is tall for his age, but more physically mature than mentally. And the mental aspect concerns me. Joffrey Hill is instinctively cruel – his brother and sister are both afraid of him – and I fear that the boy also has more than a touch of madness about him.”
“He is inbred,” Lady Stark said, slightly shakily as she looked at her fingers, obviously trying to imagine what such scars must have looked like. “Madness can be the result of that.”
Which, of course made Jon wince a little. There was a lot of inbreeding in his own family tree, to the point where at times it was more of a family plank.
“There can be only two possible sentences for him,” Father rumbled after a moment. “Death or the Wall.”
“Kill him,” said Lady Stark instantly. “He tried to kill our son, Ned!”
But it was Robb who objected to that. “That would be too quick, Mother. Plus Tywin Lannister is coming. We can’t afford to alienate him any further. He must know that his children have been discovered committing incest and that Cersei is no longer Queen. By the time he gets here he will be humiliated enough. If he sees Joffrey’s head looking down on him from a spike on the gateway… well, it will not go well. We need him. We need the gold of the Westerlands and the men that he commands. I loathe the bloody man but he is a great commander.” He looked at Lady Stark. “Mother, I know how angry you are with Joffrey Hill, but we need to look at the bigger picture. I want him dead too, but exile to the Wall will suffice for me.”
“I doubt he’d last long there,” Jon muttered. “Given what we know what’s approaching… being sent to the Wall would be a death sentence in itself.”
Father hummed for a moment in thought. And then he grinned. “Aye. What a shame.”
Daenerys
She was growing to hate the Magister’s visits. They were always polite – just – and most of their attention was on her dragons rather than her. They peered at the trio, asked questions about how fast they were growing – and how long it would be before they started breathing fire.
She knew what they wanted. Braavos in flames, the Titan – was it even still there after that mad story about it bellowing a warning? – melted down, the Sealord a charred corpse and the Iron Bank a looted ruin.
All thanks to her. Or rather all thanks to her dragons. She wanted to be sick at times. They were holding her in a gilded cage, she lacked for nothing whatsoever, but it was still a cage.
She looked at her dragons as they dozed in their cages. They were growing and she needed to find names for them soon. But what? She’d been brought books about Valyria’s dragons, book after book after book, some ancient and more modern. The names of many of the dragons had been in High Valyrian, although some of the later Targaryen dragons had had some rather odd names. She was not going to name any of her dragons something like ‘Sheepstealer’.
So what then? The black dragon looked like a second Balerion. Could she call him that? What about the green one? Rhaegal perhaps, after Rhaegar, the brother she had never known? Perhaps that might not be a good idea. Rhaegar’s actions had started the downfall of her family. She’d never name any of them after Father or Viserys. The first had been a monster and the second had tried to murder her. She bit her lip for a moment. She really needed to think about this in more detail.
A throat was cleared delicately behind her and she jumped a little. When she turned around she could see Lord Varys standing there, dressed in what looked like a merchant’s clothes. He bowed a little in greeting. “I am sorry if I startled you my dear, but haste takes precedence over courtliness.”
She stared at him – and then her heart sank a little. “What has happened?”
A small smile flashed across his plump features for a moment. “Always wise to assume the worst my dear,” he said. “But in this case you were wise to. I have taken the liberty of ordering your maids to pack as many of your things as fast as possible. You must prepare your dragons at once. We need to flee Pentos and we must do so at once.”
Icy water seemed to flow down her back for a moment but she made herself stand a little taller. “What has happened?” As she asked the question she walked over to the cages and covered each one with a thick cloth, making each dragon chirp a little in protest, before settling down to sleep.
Varys sighed as he walked to the window and stared out at the harbour. “You have met the Magisters of Pentos and doubtless you are not impressed. When Illyrio died defending you the level of their collective intelligence took a sharp dive downwards. They have spent a great deal of time talking about how they will use you and your dragons to conquer Braavos. They have spent far less time wondering how Braavos will react to that attack. Such as a pre-emptive strike.” He turned from the window. “They are coming. An army carried on a fleet. They will be here before sunset, perhaps sooner. So – we must go.”
She stared at him in horror. “The Braavosi are coming here? For me? No – for me and my dragons.” The last words were not a question.
The older man nodded and there was sympathy in his eyes. “I fear so. As I told you before – you are a piece on the board of the Game of Cities for many people. A valuable piece.”
A shudder of horror went through her. “So I must flee?”
A nod. “Yes.”
“Where to? If I go to another city will not the Braavosi follow me there?”
This time the smile was slightly larger. “I know of a place that is safe. I will explain on the way. But we must go – and go now.”
Which made her frown. “How? There are guards downstairs – on the gates and in the grounds.”
“Ah, but many of the Unsullied here were once owned by Illyrio. In addition he had some… contingency plans, shall we say. There is a tunnel out of here, in the cellars. It leads to a place that I own. There are horses there and we need to get to a certain place on the Northern walls. There’s another tunnel there.”
She looked at him helplessly, memories of previous flights ahead of the Usurper’s assassins running through her head. But then she nodded tiredly.
When she opened the door into the corridor she could see her maids scurrying about with boxes and clothes. They were surprisingly organised and she watched as they quickly packed her things up. Her more practical clothing was in the boxes, her prettier dresses were left behind. Which was probably a good thing. She looked at the clothes that the Magisters had brought her and then sighed and joined the general exodus for the stairs downwards, with three guards carrying her dragon’s cages.
Down they went, until the windows vanished and the light came from lanterns, until they reached a doorway that Varys unlocked with a key. When the doors opened it was to a long narrow tunnel that they rushed through, the way illuminated with lanterns, until they saw another doorway ahead of them that Varys again unlocked.
On the other side was a stairway that spiralled up to another door that opened into a courtyard, where there was a carriage waiting for them with horses behind it and a waggon.
Before she could step towards the carriage and see to her dragons Varys turned towards her, a cloak in his hands. “Tie your hair back and put this on. When we leave this carriage you need to lean on my arm and use this.” A stick was handed to her. She stared at it all and then sighed and did as he requested before finally seeing that her dragons were carefully secured within the carriage.
The packing seemed to take very little time and the next thing she knew she was in the carriage, alone with her dragons, with the blinds drawn. Varys had pulled on a hat and somehow made his face look rather different and was next to the driver. She heard a creak of gates, a snap of the whip and then the carriage lurched as they started forwards.
It seemed like a long trip, that carriage drive through Pentos. There were times when they literally walked and other times when they cantered. More than a few curses were thrown at them, but from the sound of it – and her eyebrows few up more than a few times – Varys cursed back just as loudly and with a lot of… invention.
Eventually they came to a stop. She waited in the darkness for a long moment and then the door opened slightly. “Are you ready My Lady?” Varys asked the question deferentially and she pulled the hood of her cloak over her head and picked up the walking stick. She remembered to lean against him and to use the stick as if – presumably – she was either old or sick. They passed through a doorway and into another courtyard.
As the servants and guards thundered past her and the gates closed behind everything she looked up at Varys, who nodded. As she took the cloak off she looked at the cages with her dragons she paused. Far off in the distance a bell was tolling. Five strokes. A pause. Five more strokes. Another pause. And then again. Another bell started to toll and then another and as she stood there she heard the sound on the street outside turn to cries of alarm. She looked around, feeling the beginnings of panic stir.
“Have they discovered that I’m gone?”
“No,” replied Varys grimly. “That’s the warning bell. The city is under attack. The Braavosi are here. We must hurry, we have been lucky so far.”
They passed through another door that Varys had to unlock and then the party, some twenty five strong now, went down a long winding staircase that eventually led to yet another gate, this one wider and older than the previous one, judging by the stonework.
“An old way out of the city, built by someone long dead,” Varys explained as he used a tinderbox to light a lantern. “I rediscovered it and refurbished it. It leads North out of the city, under the walls. It is long – and we must hurry.”
It was indeed long and as they passed down it she started to feel weary. The walls were damp in places and here and there the floor was uneven, so she had to watch where she was walking. On and on they went on that seemingly endless trek, and once she had to calm down the little black dragon, who was calling for her under the covering of his cage, until eventually she could see a light ahead.
It was a lantern by a doorway. Once again Varys had a key and as the door opened she held her hand out to shield her eyes from the daylight that was almost blinding her. They seemed to be in another courtyard, in a rundown shabby looking manse that had yet more horses and a two waggons in it.
Once again they loaded up the chests and the cages that the guards and servants had brought with them. She fed her dragons and stroked them to reassure them and then as she mounted the horse that Varys had brought over for her she looked at the bald man. “Lord Varys, where are we bound for?”
He looked at her. “Andalos.”
She stared at him. “But… there’s nothing in Andalos. No-one. Nothing.”
A slight smile crossed his face. “Not… entirely true my dear. You will see. Now – we must ride.”
And ride they did, once everything was stored away, down a long valley and then up a ridge that had what passed for a trail on it. As they rode she looked at Varys again. “With me and my dragons gone, what will the Magisters of Pentos do?”
He shrugged. “Sadly, as I said, after the death of Illyrio the level of their collective wisdom went down a great deal. I have no doubt that once the Braavosi were sighted then various Magisters went to your quarters in a vain effort to find out if your dragons had miraculously gained the ability to fly and also breathe fire overnight.” He sighed. “If they were sensible they surrendered quickly. If they were stupid then they fought.”
They continued up the ridge, which twisted a little to the West and the setting Sun. It was then that she looked South at Pentos and her heart leapt into her throat for an instant. There was smoke billowing from the city, black and greasy. Smoke and flame in places.
“Ah,” said Varys sadly. “They were stupid then.”
Chapter Text
Jon Arryn
It had been a long meeting of the Small Council, enlivened mainly by the presence of Prince Oberyn Martell, who had been sitting at the table with his feet up on one corner of it, lounging almost offensively as he drank wine from a silver goblet.
Most of the others had been astonished at the news that had come from Winterfell, with the exception of Renly, who had sat next to Jon and scowled a lot at Pycelle, who seemed to still be in denial about the whole thing. The Lord of the Stormlands would sail on the next tide to Storm’s End with yet another head of a wight.
The old Maester had started off denying that it was impossible for the whole ghastly accusation to be even credible. Jon had merely glared at him and then pointed out who had witnessed it all. Pycelle had been thrown by this, but had then rallied and pointed out that it was possible that Lords Stark and Baratheon, as well as Ser Barristan, had somehow misinterpreted what might have been perfectly innocent horseplay.
This had made everyone stare at him, and then Oberyn Martell had laughed until he was out of breath. “Of course, Maester Pycelle,” he eventually said mockingly, “Based on the latest raven from Winterfell they innocently both stripped naked and then she somehow fell onto his erect cock repeatedly. How could that possibly be misinterpreted?”
Pycelle had spluttered and muttered. And then he had vociferously objected to the King’s disinheritance of his children, saying that this was folly, that it would weaken the Crown, House Baratheon, Westeros. What reason could there be for this? The colour of a bastard’s hair meant for nothing and what was this nonsense about the sound that Stormbreaker made? Magic? Pah, magic was gone from this world and-
It had been Velaryon, oddly enough, who had snarled the words “If magic is gone then explain the Call, Grand Maester!” that had shut the old fool up again. Ah, no, perhaps not old fool. Lannister loyalist morelike. Jon had no doubt that the only reason why a raven would not fly to Casterley Rock as soon as this meeting was concluded was that Tywin Lannister was already on his way to Winterfell.
As the meeting of the Small Council meandered its way to a close – where in the Seven Hells was Varys? What kind of ‘sudden crisis’ was he dealing with? – Jon looked at the men around the table and sighed internally. Pycelle was still distracted, Velaryon was deep in thought, Merryweather was frowning and the High Septon, whose presence he had insisted on, was busy frowning and probably mentally writing a sermon on the mortal sin that was incest.
As for Oberyn Martell, he was still amused and drinking from that silver goblet of his. The man had commanded the dismissal of the Lannister forces in the Red Keep with both competence and swagger, but Jon was fairly sure that he had been a bit disappointed that the Redcloaks had been too stunned by the news from Winterfell to really object in a violent manner. They were not under arrest – strictly speaking – but they were isolated in their barracks and in a day or two they would be on their way back to the Westerlands.
As he looked around the table again and opened his mouth to dismiss them, the door to one side boomed open and then Quill ran into the room, panting as he held out a handful of messages. As he skidded to a halt in front of him he panted: “From… Winterfell… my Lord… most… urgent…”
A glance at Quill’s face was enough to send dread roiling through him. Something terrible had happened in Winterfell. Damn it. What though? He took the messages and glanced at them quickly. They were marked with Stannis’s red ribbon. Multiple important messages sent via multiple ravens. Not good.
As he read the first one, conscious of every eye being on him, he found his eyebrows heading upwards in shock. After a long moment he finally drew a breath. “My lords, Prince Oberyn, High Septon, word from Winterfell. The Kingslayer has finally admitted as to why he killed Aerys Targaryen.” The words were spoken hoarsely.
“To please his father, surely?” the Dornish Prince stated through narrowed eyes. “Why else?”
“According to this, no.” He cleared his throat, which was suddenly tight. “According to a confession heard by Lord Robb Stark, Lord Tyrion Lannister and Ser Barristan Selmy, confirmed later by his Grace King Robert, he killed Aerys because… because the Mad King had ordered that caches of wildfire be hidden around King’s Landing in order to destroy the rebel army when it arrived. Caches under every gate. Under the Dragonpit. Under the Great Sept. In many other places. And… under the Red Keep.”
Silence fell as they all stared at him, before that silence was broken by the sound of a silver goblet hitting the ground as Oberyn Martell went from lounging to bolt upright on his feet in the blink of an eye. “What?” He darted over and then took one of the messages from the shaking hands of Quill, before glaring at it. “Wildfire? Here? Under here?”
“So it says,” Jon replied, still in a hoarse voice, as he felt his legs tremble. The others were all white-faced with shock, whilst Pycelle’s mouth was open as he gaped at him. He couldn’t blame any of them. Then he pulled himself together. “Quill, summon Ser Davos Seaworth. And assemble as many men as you can. We must search the cellars and tunnels below the Red Keep to find out if this tale is true.” The High Septon caught his eye and he added: “The Great Sept too. High Septon, we will need members of your Order who are familiar with the tunnels under your building.”
“Wait,” Martell said. “Your men should use lanterns. No brands – wildfire is filthy stuff that matures over time. One spark in the wrong place could ignite a batch. And if it has been down there since the Rebellion….” He went even whiter. “Then any containers might be leaking. Your men must be very careful. If they see green liquid they must stop, note the place and then leave at once without touching a thing.”
Jon peered at him. The Dornish Prince’s voice had a sharp note of command. “Prince Oberyn, you seem familiar with this… substance?”
Oberyn Martell shrugged. “I studied it in the Citadel. It was dangerous but interesting.”
Interesting. He didn’t think that he could ever use that word for that disgusting stuff. He had never forgiven Aerys Targaryen for murdering Rickard Stark in such a disgusting manner. Then he made his decision. “Prince Oberyn, given your familiarity with wildfire I would like to ask if you could lead the search parties under the Red Keep.”
The Dornish prince, who was also dangerous but interesting, in an ‘observe from a distance at times’ sort of way, paused to thin, before nodding tersely. Jon looked at Quill and flickered his eyes at Martell. His servant tilted his head in recognition before following the Dornishman as he swept out of the room barking commands for Seaworth to meet him at once.
Jon returned his attention to the table. Pycelle was standing and for once his back was unbent and his shoulders were straight. “I will lead the search in the Great Sept,” he said very firmly. “I too studied wildfire at the Citadel. I know what to look for as well.”
As the Grand Maester strode out – not shuffled, not now – Jon sighed and sat down. And now all they could do was wait. Wait – and think about just how mad the Mad King had been.
Tyrion
He stared at the wall in the library and suppressed the need to throw things at it. Damn Joffrey to every one of the Seven Hells. He hoped that whatever demons existed there would gnaw on his face and bugger his arse, the little shit.
His family. His bloody family. Every time he took a step forwards they dragged him two steps back. First Jaime and Cersei were found committing incest, throwing the family name into the nearest privy and then Joffrey compounded everything by trying to stick a knife – a stolen Valyrian steel knife at that! – into Robb Stark’s back.
He closed his eyes and ran his hand over his forehead tiredly. Would Ned Stark honour the talk they had had about Dacey? Would he want anything to do with him now? He almost wanted to bloody well cry.
No. This was not the end. He was not Jaime or Joffrey, he was Tyrion Lannister, bearer of Rocktooth and a good friend to House Stark. He hoped.
Someone cleared his throat in front of him and he opened his eyes and looked at Jory Cassel, who nodded formally at him. “Beg pardon Lord Tyrion, but Lord Robb would like a word with you in the Godswood. He says that he has something important to talk to you about.”
His eyebrows rose and fell for a moment as he considered that. Oh. What was this about- Ah. He thought about everything for a moment and then he stood and nodded back. “Of course. I will go there at once.”
As he waddled down the corridor he sighed a little. Life had been somewhat complicated of late. A little too packed with events that raised the pulse from a trot to a gallop. It was all a bit busy and Pod hopefully wasn’t learning too many... interesting... new words.
The Godswood loomed ahead of him before he knew it and he paused and adjusted his jerkin a little. There weren’t too many lions on it, which was important. No, House Lannister really was not in very good standing right now in the Court, although Uncle Gerion was still cheerfully wearing what he had always worn, whilst pointing out every now and then that he was of House Lannister of the Summer Isles and that there was a difference.
Robb Stark was sitting in front of the pool by the Heart Tree. He was dressed in a cloak that concealed his left hand and from the way that he was holding himself he was in a bit of pain. As Tyrion approached he looked over and then smiled slightly. “I’m afraid that all I can offer you for a seat is a tree root,” he said quietly. “Better than nothing though.”
After a moment of careful inspection he found a spot that wasn’t too intrusive and sat down. “You sent for me?”
“I did.” Robb paused and looked into the pool. “I am indeed the boy who died and fell through time. The Old Gods brought me back from the moment of my death.”
The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end from the matter of fact way that the younger man said those words. Then he added: “I would have died about... almost two years from now. Will have.” A frown. “The tenses get me a bit muddled up.”
That was understandable. But disturbing. “And what happened in that time?”
Those unsettlingly old eyes focussed on him. “Why, I fought a war Tyrion. And then I was betrayed and I died.”
He stared at the heir of Ned Stark. “You fought a war? Against who – surely it was against the Others? Wait. You fought a war? I’m not altogether sure I like the way that you worded that.”
Robb sighed and ran his right hand through his reddish hair. “This is complicated. I come from a time when Jon Arryn died and King Robert came North to ask my Father to go to King’s Landing with him and be his Hand. Much that has happened in this time did not happen in that other time. Father went South because there was no warning about the return of the Others. The Call was never sent out. Father never had a vision from the Old Gods because of me, the GreatJon never checked the Hearthstone, Father’s solar was never searched and the room was not found, so the Call was never sent. The Others still came... but we knew nothing of them.”
Something like horror rooted him to the spot. “But... but if the Call was never sent then who were you fighting against?”
A ghost of a pained smile flashed across Robb’s face. “Your father mostly. I should tell you that I came from a time when Joffrey was King. And the truth of his birth was first not well known and then heartily denied by your father.”
No, this time it was outright horror. The idea of that little shit being King was just... horrifying. “Joffrey... was King? What happened to King Robert?”
“He never found Stormbreaker, he was...” Robb seemed to search for the right words. “Old. Drunk. Fat. Defeated. Apparently he went hunting and was gored by a boar. Sounds odd I know, but rumour had it that he was drunker than he thought. Father was Hand, but he was betrayed and... Joffrey ordered him beheaded at the Great Sept. So I called my banners and marched South. It was complicated. Your father was already attacking the Riverlands to get you back.”
“To get me back?”
Robb sighed again and then he recounted a tale of utter madness that made Tyrion’s eyebrows fly up and stay up. No Call. Bran’s mysterious fall. Him at the Wall because he wanted to see it, not because he had been summoned there by the Old Gods. Cersei being a bitch on numerous occasions. An attack on Bran.
Robb pulled his left hand free of his cloak when he got to that part, which was holding the Valyrian steel dagger that Joffrey had attacked him with. As he handed it over, he said: “The cutpurse had that on him. Now I know that it was Joffrey’s. But at the time we did not know that. Mother took it South to King’s Landing and Petyr Baelish told her that it had been his – before he lost it to you.”
Baelish. Bloody buggering Baelish. What had that maggot been up to, truly? He took the dagger with a frown. “A deadly thing. And... you therefore thought that I had given it to this man as payment to kill Bran? Why?”
Robb shrugged. “Lysa Arryn told Mother that your family murdered Jon Arryn. Mother later found out that her sister was as mad as a spring hare.” He winced. “We did not trust Lannisters. And with the odd circumstances of Brans’ fall – he had always been so surefooted before – we leapt to some hasty conclusions. Mother especially. She ordered you arrested on the road to King’s Landing and taken to the Eyrie. And your Father called the banners for you.”
“My,” he said, more than a bit astonished. “I never knew that Father cared so much for me. Ah. Wait. It was the Lannister name he was truly fighting for, of course. Still, I am just a trifle touched.” He leant back and then winced as a nodule of wood pressed against his back. “So, there was a war.”
“The War of the Five Kings, the smallfolk called it.”
He stared at Robb. “Five? That sounds a bit much. Joffrey was one, obviously, but... ah. Stannis was another? Then who were the three other kings?”
“I was proclaimed the King in the North and the Riverlands.” Robb said it with a look that was partly sad and partly proud. “Balon Greyjoy proclaimed himself King of the Iron Islands. And Renly Baratheon proclaimed himself king as well.”
Tyrion tilted his head and removed some wax from one ear, to make sure that he had heard properly. “Renly Baratheon? Did Stannis die?”
“No.”
“But he’s the youngest of the Baratheon brothers. He had no claim to the Iron Throne after Robert’s death.”
“He had the Tyrells on his side. And he thought, I suppose, that might made right.”
Might made right. He made a note of that term. Not bad. But still... Ah. Loras Tyrell. Oh dear. “So there was a five-sided war. I presume that my father was in charge of his faction, rather than Joffrey.”
“Aye. But he made the mistake of placing Jaime in charge of the forces besieging Riverrun.” A wolfish smile crossed Robb’s face. “I beat your brother and captured him. I relieved Riverrun. And I attacked into the Westerlands. There was a battle at Oxcross.” A complex mixture of emotions crossed his face. “I regret much of that, given what I know now. Given that I know what’s coming. So much death. What was coming then as well. The Others were coming and I didn’t suspect a damn thing. And then... well, the Ironborn attacked the North. They could have had their pick of the Westerlands and the Reach, but no, Balon Greyjoy wanted his revenge against my dead father.”
There was a pause as Tyrion watched the other man. He could not think of a word to say that would help against that further complex combination of emotions on his face. “And then?” He said the words as gently as he could.
“Father was not around to tell me who to trust and who to distrust. I had made mistakes. I’m good at war Tyrion. I’m very good at war. But politics is more complex. And I trusted the wrong people. Your father found that out. And... I was betrayed. And I died. And then I woke up here.”
He looked at Robb for a long moment and saw the pain that was stored in those eyes. “I sense that there’s a lot that you’ve skipped over.”
“I have. Everything’s different now. We know what’s coming. The incest has been revealed. Joffrey will never be king. The Call has gone out. Stannis is different as well – he was never going to be Hand of the King in that other world. And he was... different.”
“Different how?”
“Mother met him and Renly and tried to get them to reconcile. But Stannis was being... advised by a shadowbinder priestess from Asshai. Before the two could meet in battle near Storm’s End, Mother saw a... a shadow slay Renly Baratheon. A shadow with the face of Stannis Baratheon.”
If he sat here rooted in horror for much longer then there would be a chance that he’d turn into a tree. Instead he stood and then peered at the Heart Tree. “Your tale is all of woe,” he said eventually. “I am guessing that various armies slaughtered the smallfolk as if they were worth nothing?”
“Aye,” Robb sighed. “And before you ask, crops ravaged, homes burned, barns destroyed, flocks slaughtered or scattered. Folly.”
He straightened a little. “Then it is no wonder that the Old Gods sent you back. I cannot imagine the bloodbath that must have followed on the Wall after the Others assaulted it.” He paused and then remembered that dream from the road to Winterfell. “Or perhaps I can. I had a terrible dream on the way here. The Iron Islands lost, Winterfell besieged by the others, the Westerlands lost, the King vanished in the Riverlands, Dorne having closed its borders... Yes, we must avoid that.”
He looked back at Robb. “I want to marry your cousin Dacey. That will make us kin. Could you stand to be related to a Lannister?”
Robb smiled at him. “We fought together at the Wall. You killed an Other. And Dacey likes you. You are not your Father or your brother. So – yes. I can stand to be related to you. You’re a good man Tyrion. And you know what’s coming. You know what’s at stake.”
There was another pause – and then they shook hands.
Chapter Text
Chapter Text
Robert
The trees shook with the howl of whatever the fuck that thing was, trembled almost in fear. Lyanna’s face contorted in terror as she stared at the treeline – and then she was trying to shout something over the wind that had sprung up as he ran after her. She was hanging in mid-air, pulled by something. He screamed her name, stretching out his hand, so close to hers, just a little further and he’d be able to touch her, but she kept moving away from him, faster and faster, and then –
He woke up suddenly, coming bolt upright, his chest heaving as if he had been running. After a long moment he ran a shaking hand over his face. That damn dream again. He’d been so close to catching her…
He shook his head and then got out of bed and padded to the window. Dawn was breaking over Winterfell and he stared out as the guards were relieved on the walls. The walls of Winterfell were thick and old and he had a feeling that the fortress had been built on the hot springs for a reason. If the Wall ever fell then Winterfell would be the logical place to retreat to.
Hmmph. ‘Winterfell’. Why call it that? How could winter fall? A King of Winter perhaps? Perhaps a King of the Others had died here? He needed to talk to Ned.
He walked back to the bed and stared at it. It was odd waking up alone these days. Oh, there were more than enough willing women here at Winterfell, judging by the sultry looks and the magically loosened bodices, but now that he wasn’t in his cups every night he felt… different. It didn’t feel right to roll in the sheets with some girl when he was over Lyanna’s grave, or close enough to it. She wouldn’t have approved. He felt closer to her now than he had for many years. Those damn dreams though…
Dressing did not take long and then he picked up Stormbreaker and opened the door. Selmy was there waiting for him.
“Your Grace,” the Kingsguard said with a respectful nod. “There are no urgent messages for you from the Lord Hand, or from King’s Landing.”
“Good,” he replied as they strode down the corridor. “Anything from the Wall?”
“No, your Grace.”
He nodded and then continued on towards the Great Hall and breakfast. The Starks were arriving as they entered the hall, along with others, and he suppressed a smile as Bran Stark waved enthusiastically to young Edric and Robert Arryn – who waved back and then mouthed what must have been plans that presumably must have made sense to Bran, who nodded back at them and then started eating his food at a speed that was not healthy. Messy too.
He greeted Ned and Cat, nodded at Robb and Jon and then sat down started his own breakfast, sparing the odd glance for the Terrible Threesome, all of whom seemed to be eating at the same furious pace.
After a while he looked at Ned, raised his eyebrows and then jerked his head at Bran. Ned looked, rolled his eyes and then had a whispered word with Cat, who then muttered a stern warning to her son about the perils of eating too quickly. As she did that he caught the eye of young Rickon, who was sneaking a piece of toasted bread off of his mother’s plate. He winked at him. The little boy giggled and then winked in an exaggerated manner back at him.
He watched Ned and his family for a while, with a certain wistful sadness running through him. It was obvious that his old friend was very close to his family and his wife, in a way that Cersei had never been. No. Thinking about Cersei was a bad idea, it just left him angry at the damage that that selfish bitch had inflicted to the Realm.
He needed an heir. He had one, Stannis, who was glaring at his porridge as if it had wronged him somehow, but that wasn’t good enough. He needed an heir born from his own loins, otherwise certain lords would think that he was weak, or, even worse, infertile.
Of course the irony was that he knew full well that he was a fertile as a herd of bulls, it was just that his children were – thanks to that bitch – all bastards. He looked at Edric, who was being told off by Penrose for eating too fast. He was a good lad, but too young. To one side Gendry was sitting there, looking uncomfortable, talking quietly to Mya. They looked so much like him.
He needed to talk to Stannis about this.
After breakfast he strode out into the main courtyard, where his log was waiting, and as he hoisted it onto his shoulders he made a note to add another two circuits of the courtyard that morning, to walk off the bile that he could feel in the pit of his stomach. Right. This was important. He would return to his old fitness, the best form of his life, and let that cold bitch choke on the knowledge that he had been inspired to do so by her behaviour.
By the time he had done his 25 turns around the courtyard he was sweating like a pig and aching in his shoulders and legs, but as he lowered the log to the ground and stretched until his spine popped he felt as alive as he ever had. He poured a bucket of water over his head to get rid of the worst of his sweat and then strode off to his quarters to change, avoiding the Terrible Threesome as they hurtled down a corridor, chased by a red-faced Septa Mordane.
As he walked into Ned’s solar, which he was sharing with the Lord of the North, he could see that Stannis was already there with a pile of raven messages. “Your Grace,” said his brother formally, “Today’s messages.”
He nodded and then they plunged into it, and as Stannis talked he found himself realising yet again that Stannis was bloody good at this. For one thing he had sorted the messages out into three piles, urgent – like the latest message from Castle Black about condition of the Wall, as well as the latest sighting of the Others by Rangers and Wildlings, moderately important – like the fact that that the fighting on the Iron Islands seemed to have died down a bit, and finally ‘dross’ – like the messages from various lordlings saying that their daughters were available for marriage.
“You’ll be getting a lot of these,” Stannis said as he held one up. “Lord Tendring of the Riverlands says that his daughter Alyse is of an age to get married.”
He paused to recall the woman. “Alyse Tendring is 36 years old, has a flat chest, a nose like a crow and is so clever that she has a tongue like a Valyrian steel dagger. She also from a house that is ludicrously small.”
“Aye, it’s said that she’s still a maid.”
“And likely to stay one. No.” And then they plunged into the important messages again. Again, Stannis navigated his way through them, focussing on the important ones and mentioning the dross only in passing. Yes, Stannis was a good Hand of the King.
Lunch intervened, a relatively simple affair involving crusty bread, a rich stew and well watered wine. Not what he might have eaten months ago, but it was enough.
When they were finished he wandered back out again and eventually found himself on the walls of Winterfell, looking down at the denizens of the place as they went about their business. He watched as Domeric Bolton tutored the Terrible Threesome, observed from a distance by Lords Royce and Redfort. And he also watched as Gendry worked in the smithy, striding out on a regular basis to stack a new wightspear head on a growing pile. He noted that his older son was also being watched by a curious Arya Stark. Hmmm.
After a while Mya came to the smithy to get Gendry for a riding lesson, something that seemed to annoy the lad a bit at first. Robert watched them for a while and then turned and stared North. They were coming. He knew it. He could feel it. There was a threat to the Realm, the greatest threat that it had seen for thousands of years, and he knew it in a way that he had never felt before. Death itself was coming and he had to concentrate on that, but there were so many damn distractions. Damn Cersei. Damn her to the lowest of the Seven Hells. Her father was coming and he had to meet the bloody man and tell him just what was what.
“Robert.” He whirled around to see Ned standing there, a disapproving look on his face. “You are brooding.”
He eyed his old friend. “I can brood if I like. I’m the bloody King.”
“Aye,” Ned replied. “And we need you to stop brooding and be the bloody King. You… must lead us, Robert. You have to stop this brooding and move on to leading us.” He took a step forwards. “I did not tell you the full truth before. Yes, you have not been the best of Kings and I know why. Lyanna’s death hit you hard and you’ve wallowed in depression since. But that needs to be put in the past. You’ve worked very hard to get fit again, but we need you to stop brooding and bloody well lead us. You know what’s coming. You know what’s coming for us all. That statue told you to be the Storm King when you discovered Stormbreaker. That’s what we need. The Storm King, Robert Baratheon. My friend.”
There was a long pause – and then he wiped a tear from his eye. “Damn it Ned, it’s easier said than done. Storm King? How do I become a Storm King? What do I do?”
Ned shrugged and then threw him a practice sword. “I don’t bloody know. You hold Stormbreaker. You’ll find out. Now – follow me. I’m going to thrash some sense into you on the practice yards.”
He followed Ned down off the walls with a sigh, before passing into the practice yards. Selmy was standing there to one side, nodding as he passed, and then Ned raised his own practice sword and they both launched into it.
It was like being in the Eyrie again, under the gaze of Jon, only this time they were older. He was reminded of the fight against the Kingslayer. Although, of course, Ned didn’t have a sword that kept shattering into a hundred pieces.
Ned won the first bout, he won the second one, and then they had a long drawn out third one that Ned barely won. As they both leant on their swords, panting, he chuckled. “I’ve… missed… this, Ned. Gods, it’s… good to see… you again.”
“You need more practice,” Ned wheezed. “Ser Barristan’s… teaching you well… but… you need more. You’re not using a Warhammer anymore these days.”
He grinned at Ned. “Aye. A sword… as old as your Fist.” He straightened and rubbed his back. “There really is something going on here Ned, isn’t there? You finding the Fist, me finding Stormbreaker.” He paused. “Does it make you feel… any different?”
Ned looked at him rather oddly. “Different in what way?”
He was about to say ‘dutiful’, when he realised that Ned had that word written all the way through him. Instead he shook his head. “Never mind. Another bout?”
They fought another, that he just about won, judging by Ser Barristan’s comments, and then a last hard-fought bout that Ned won by the skin of his teeth. Once he caught his breath and slapped Ned on the back he paused. “You’re a good man Ned. Better than me. I always knew that.”
But Ned shook his head. “You always tread the same path as me Robert. You just need to be nudged back onto it once in a while.” Ned’s smile vanished after a moment. “I’ll meet you in the Godswood later for the ceremony.”
He smiled tightly at that, before striding off back to his quarters, where he plunged into the bath that was waiting for him there and scrubbed the stink off him. After he dressed he opened the door and nodded at the waiting Stannis, who strode in with the afternoon list of messages. They were sorted into the same three piles and once again they dealt with the wheat before the chaff. That said, even the dross had to be dealt with, as an ignored idiot might one day become a truculent or even rebellious idiot.
Once the last message was dealt with and Ser Barristan had entered the room and muttered that it was time, they both stood. Robert put his crown on, clasped his cloak on, grabbed Stormbreaker and then strode out, followed by the other two men. Down the corridor they passed, acknowledged by the inhabitants as they passed, and then out into the courtyard, heading towards the Godswood.
As they entered the little wood a hush seemed to settle over the little group, a stillness that came from the trees. He looked around as they strode over the dense moss and luxuriant grass, and he noted that the trees seemed to be a bit redder of leaf and whiter of trunk. But above all he got this overwhelming sense of time, almost pressing down on his shoulders, time of an ancient sort. It made him shudder a little.
Ned was waiting for them at the Heart Tree. He had the Fist of Winter in his belt and was dressed formally, as the Lord of the North. He had a hand on the tree and looked up at them as they approached.
Robert nodded at Stannis and Ser Barristan and they both turned to look back at the way they had came for the party that was soon to arrive. Robert stepped forwards to join Ned. “How old is this place?”
Ned’s eyebrows went up. “The Godswood? Easily as old as the castle. Why?”
He shivered a little. “I can feel something here, Ned. Like the weight of something. Time maybe?”
Ned looked around. “You feel the eyes of the Old Gods, your Grace. They are always here.”
And that was enough to make him shiver. The Old Gods… he’d never really thought about them before, not really, but the weight of age in this place…
“Your Grace, they’re coming,” Ser Barristan called, and he looked up to see Lord Commander Mormont and the Cassells escorting the Kingslayer through the trees, followed by Tyrion, Gerion and Allarion Lannister and then Robb and Jon Stark. The last three Lions were pale faced but composed. The Kingslayer on the other looked terrible. There were black circles under his eyes and he looked as if he hadn’t slept in a week. Oh and the moment he caught sight of his King he flinched more than a bit and then glared around at the trees as if they were about to assault him.
Mormont brought that treacherous sack of shit up before them and then stood to one side. “Ser Jaime Lannister,” he said eventually. “You have been sentenced to join the Night’s Watch. And you will now say your vows, as you have requested. Lord Stark?”
Ned stepped forwards, his eyes in shadow, as he pulled out the fist and held it in front of him with his hands on both ends. “Ser Jaime Lannister, this is the Fist of Winter, the weapon of the Starks of old and the North’s age-old symbol of justice – and punishment. You will swear your oaths with one hand on the Heart Tree and one hand on the Fist. And know this – such an oath cannot be broken. If you do break you will die.”
He shuddered a little at the utter finality in Ned’s voice – but not nearly as much as the Kingslayer, who swayed a little. “I thought,” the blond shit said in a low voice. “That I was going to swear this vow at the Sept.”
“The Old Gods are not in the Sept,” Ned growled. “They are here. Your vow here, in this place, will bind you in ways that a vow at the Sept will not, not in the same way. Let me make this very clear Kingslayer. Break this vow and you will die.”
The Kingslayer’s mouth worked slightly as he seemed to weigh up what to say next. He glanced back at the party of now grim-faced Lannisters and Robert noticed that Tyrion seemed to nod slightly. And then, shoulders slumped, he turned back and nodded at Ned. “I will swear this oath here and now, Stark.”
Mormont gestured at the Heart Tree and the Fist and the blond shit sighed and reached out to place a hand on each. “Night gathers, and now my watch begins,” he said. “It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men. I pledge my life and honour to the Night's Watch, for this night and all the nights to come.”
And then, as he said the last words, red light flared from three places – from where his hand touched the tree, where it touched the Fist and, most shockingly, from Ned’s eyes, which blazed suddenly with red flames.
He stifled an oath, not being the only one given the shocked mutterings from behind him. Stormbreaker felt warm in his hands all of a sudden and he looked down to see that it was shining in a way that he had never seen before. Then he looked around. Stannis and Ser Barristan were standing there, thunderstruck, whilst the Cassels and younger Starks were all falling to their knees hurriedly. Tyrion Lannister was staring at Rocktooth, which was also shining, whilst the other three Lannisters looked baffled.
And then Ned – or whatever was looking through his eyes – looked the Kingslayer. “A Casterley lion! Well – are you of Lann the Clever’s make, or are you as faithless as his father? The Old Gods are here to witness your oath. Should you break this oath then you will die in an instant, as quick as lightning falls from the sky. The Fist has power over your oath, child of Casterley Rock. Hold to it though and your life will change. The Others come. The Stark has called for aid. You are needed.”
Jaime Lannister was shaking like a leaf as he stared, wide-eyed, at Ned. “I,” he said in a trembling voice at last, “I will hold to my oath.”
The red-flamed eyes stared at him. “See that you do.” Then they turned to Robert. “Storm King!”
He cleared his throat to make sure that no squeak would emerge. “Aye?”
“Trust yourself. And your blood. Much depends on you.” And then the red flames vanished, to reveal a rather puzzled Ned. “What just happened?”
“The Old Gods just spoke through you, Father,” Robb Stark called out an instant before his brother.
“Ah,” said Ned, before looking back at the ashen-faced Jaime Lannister, who was now trembling in every limb. “Very well. Lord Commander?”
Mormont shook himself out of his own state of shock. “Ah - Ser Jaime – my new brother. We must talk. And you must prepare for your trip to the Wall.”
It wasn’t until they got back to the Great Hall, where wine was waiting for them all, that his hands finally stopped shaking with shock. “Does this kind of thing often happen to you Ned?” he asked in as jovial tone as he could express as the crowd around them buzzed with the news.
“Three bloody times now,” Ned groused. “Once here, which led to Frostfyre coming to Winterfell. Once at the Wall, where the Old Gods cured Maester Aemon’s blindness through me, and now… this.”
“Well,” he drawled after taking a long gulp of wine and then looking at the place where a white-faced Kingslayer was sitting, still shaking, “It obviously has its uses.”
As the afternoon merged into the evening that moment in the Godswood stayed in his mind – and not just his. He found Stannis staring in the direction of the Godswood a few times, his face working with thought, whilst Ser Barristan seemed to be valiantly fighting off a pervasive sense of shock that was similar to Mormont’s.
Dinner was… subdued. Ned was in a brown study half the time, whilst Cat talked worriedly with Robb and Jon whilst the other children listened with their ears all but wagging in her direction. The Lannisters were in one corner, talking in low and intent voices, their overall aspect one of… again, shock.
As for him… he sipped at his wine again and toyed at his legs of chicken until hunger and thirst made him consume them both. And then he stared at the fire in the great range. He felt as if he was standing on ground that might move under his feet very swiftly, but he could not tell in which direction. And he was tired.
So he gave up. He clapped both Ned and Stannis on the shoulder, made his excuses and left for his chambers, where he brooded for a while in a chair, his fingers drumming on the hilt of Stormbreaker. It hadn’t been his imagination, it had glowed earlier. The sword of his ancestors.
As he eventually got into bed and pulled the sheets over his body he stared at the ceiling for a long time before he finally blew the candle out and turned over to get some sleep.
And, of course, the dream started.
The trees shook with the howl of whatever the fuck that thing was, trembled almost in fear. Lyanna’s face contorted in terror as she stared at the treeline – and then she was trying to shout something over the wind that had sprung up as he ran after her. She was hanging in mid-air, pulled by something. He screamed her name, stretching out his hand, so close to hers, just a little further and he’d be able to touch her, but she kept moving away from him, faster and faster, and then – he reached out just that bit further and caught her. And everything stopped.
Oberyn
It was late, even as he reckoned time. The moon had set but parts of the city were still bustling.
Arryn had unrolled a great map of the city out onto the table, securing the ends with candlesticks, and as men came and went with their messages, some pale-faced and trembling as they handed them over, the old Lord of the Vale added yet another circle of red ink with a number next to it.
The numbers were beyond troubling.
As he stared at the map from his perch on the desk to one side he suppressed a shiver. The memory of the search would stay in his memories for some time to come – and in his nightmares. Especially the moment that he had unbarred that old storeroom door in the very bottom of the Red Keep, filled with barrel after unmarked barrel – and then saw the eerie green glow from the seeping green slime at the base of the barrels. He had told the rest of the men to stay out and had then crept in, on feet as stealthy as he could make them be, to count the barrels. The room had been larger than he had thought. And the number of barrels had been greater than his worst fears.
And now there was a red circle around the red Keep on the map, with the notation ‘350 barrels’ next to it. The thought of it made his skin crawl. The growing number of other red marks made the sensation even worse.
As for the other men in the room… well, Arryn was sitting there and staring bleakly at the map, his nose beakier than even with tension, Velaryon was half-slumped in his chair, his face grey, whilst Merryweather was a red-eyed wraith at a window, looking out over the lights of the city. And then there were the two others. The huddled figure of the head pyromancer at the head of the table and the grim-faced presence of Ser Davos Seaworth next to him, clutching a short sword and eying the pyromancer balefully.
The door opened again and Pycelle strode in with the High Septon next to him. Both looked weary and sombre.
“We have a count of the cache under the Great Sept,” Pycelle said tiredly as they both sat at the table. “At least 250 barrels.”
Arryn blanched but then reached out and dipped the quill in the inkstand and added yet another circle and a notation next to it. “So, then,” he said in an admirably level voice. “That takes the total to a truly disturbing number. There are fifty barrels beneath each of the gates. The Dragonpit contains 300 barrels. The Great Sept has 250. The Red Keep has 350. And there are additional caches of at least 50 barrels under the Streets of Steel and Sisters.”
As the others groaned or looked as if a ghost had walked over their graves, Oberyn stood up, grabbed a piece of foolscrap from the desk and then crossed over to the table, where he pulled out the special little pen that he had designed for himself that used slivers of hard charcoal. He frowned for a moment as he recalled the formulas from his youth and then he started to calculate quietly.
“But why,” Velaryon all but wailed. “Why would Aerys order this?”
“He was called the Mad King for a reason, my Lord,” Arryn replied dryly. “We can only conclude that he did it because he was raving mad.”
“I think I know why,” Oberyn replied as he kept calculating and the others all stared at him. He sighed. “My sister Elia often wrote to my brother Doran and I. Towards the end, after Rhaegar died at the Trident and his cause collapsed, Aerys’s paranoia grew terrible indeed and her letters had to be smuggled out, sewn into the clothes of those passing through Sunspear.
“In her last letter she spoke of how she had hidden behind a statue in a corridor after hearing the Mad King approach. She heard Aerys muttering some madness about Aerion Brightflame, and how he had not gone about it all in sufficient quantities. Given what we know now…”
There was a pause. Arryn had gone as white as parchment, as had Velaryon. Merryweather looked confused however. “I don’t understand,” the Master of Coin said after a moment.
“Aerion Brightflame,” said Pycelle bleakly, “Better known as Aerion Targaryen, thought that by drinking wildfire he could turn himself into a dragon. Granted, he was extremely drunk at the time, but there was a, erm, tendency amongst some of the more unstable Targaryens to link wildfire with being able to transform into dragons. Nonsense of course.”
“I only just put the pieces together in my head, Lord Merryweather,” Oberyn added as he kept calculating. “Perhaps the Mad King thought that using wildfire on King’s Landing would be the blood magic sacrifice he needed to turn himself into a dragon?”
There was a long and horrified pause. “But…” Merryweather seemed to be having severe trouble with the concept. “But…”
Oberyn completed his calculations, raised an eyebrow for a moment and then sighed. “Do you know why I studied at the Citadel, my Lords?”
This time the pause was a more baffled one. Oberyn broke it. “I wanted many things there. To learn, so I could annoy the officious cunt of a maester that I grew up with at Sunspear by telling him things that I knew but he didn’t. But also because I was curious about the world. And because in certain books, certain facts about the world are distilled down to their purest form. To numbers. And numbers do not lie. You cannot get a number to lie – the truth is always too self-evident. And I know what the numbers are for wildfire.”
The men stirred – but the head pyromancer jerked upright in his chair. “No!”
He raised an eyebrow at the wretched little man. “What?”
“The Substance cannot be reduced to mere numbers – that is blasphemy!”
“All chemical processes – because that it was wildfire is – can be reduced to mere numbers. If you are clever enough that is. I know that I am. You should be more concerned about why it is that your Guild of Lunatics made so much of the filthy stuff for the Mad King.”
“Aye,” Seaworth growled at the wretched man. “And speaking as a man from Flea Bottom, whose family used to live here, I am not particularly happy with your guild.”
“We knew nothing of this plot!” The Head Pyromancer wailed. “I was an acolyte at the time! We were just told to make the Substance, it was Rossart who directed us at the time! He and his lieutenants!”
“Who all died,” Seaworth said stonily. “Murdered by the Kingslayer?”
“No-one knows!” The Head Pyromancer was still at the wailing stage. “They… just all died!”
“Regardless of all that,” Oberyn broke in, “I know what would have happened if the Mad King had ignited the wildfire.” He slid the calculations over to Pycelle, who took them with a frown. “For the Red Keep alone… that amount of wildfire, ignited at once, would have created a fireball that is called an ‘explosion’. The wildfire is located in the lowest level of the Red Keep. With nothing below it other than bedrock, there would be only one direction for the fireball to vent – upwards. And the chamber it was in was built to withstand pressure from above and not pressure from below. Put simply, if a man dropped a candle in that room now we would barely feel a thing before we all died. The burning fragments of the Red Keep would fall somewhere downwind in Blackwater Bay, leaving a charred stump of bedrock.”
There was a strained silence that was broken by Arryn. “And if all of the wildfire in the city had been ignited?”
Oberyn sighed and then swapped troubled glances with Pycelle, who then slid his calculations back with a nod. “The entire city would have been destroyed,” Oberyn half-whispered. “And everyone within its walls. The smoke from the explosion would have been seen from Storms’ End, perhaps as far South as Sunspear. All that would have remained of King’s Landing afterwards would have been a glowing, smoking hole in the ground. And the sound of it all… it would have deafened people for leagues around.”
Arryn ran a hand over his face. “And the army that Ned and I led here would have all died. Tywin Lannister’s too.”
A nod greeted those words. “You all know how much we Martells mourn the death of my sister and her children. Given this plot… the odds of their survival were always a lot smaller than we ever knew. Or ever feared. I always knew that the man was mad, but this…” He leant back in his chair and pulled the tattered remnants of his composure around him. “This is beyond madness.” He needed to write to Doran at once. This was a quarrel to the heart of the dying remnants of their plan.
“Then the question now becomes what we do with this wretched stuff,” Velaryon asked. “It’s like a knife to the throat of the city.”
Arryn stroked his chin and then shot a look at the Head Pyromancer that made the man cringe in his seat. “Can it be removed safely?”
The wretched little man started to gobble out something, but Oberyn tapped the table to silence him. “Yes. But it will be difficult. Many of the barrels are leaking. The Pyromancers will have to deal with those. But for the most part, given careful planning, it can be safely removed. The thing then is what to do with it.”
Arryn stroked his chin – and then stopped. Something had obviously occurred to him. “I think I might have an idea about that.” He looked at Pycelle and oddly enough Seaworth. “But it will depend on if it is practical.”
Robert
The trees seemed to stop dead as they came to a halt, his boots digging into the snow and leaves on the ground. He had her by the wrist and she was holding him too. She looked exactly as he remembered her and – no, wait, no. She was a little older than the last time he had laid eyes on her in Harrenhall and there was strain in her eyes. Oh, those eyes.
As he looked at her he felt his heart swell. He’d forgotten how alive she looked, how… what was the word… vital, yes, that was the word. “Lyanna,” he half-whispered as he looked at her. “I caught you. You’re here.”
She looked at him almost wildly and then down at their joined hands – and then she smiled at him and muttered what sounded like a prayer to the Old Gods. “You caught me,” she muttered. “At last. At last, Robert.”
He looked her up and down. “You’re just as I remembered you,” he said, feeling the tears in his eyes. “Just as before.”
Lyanna smiled a very small smile. “I’m dead, Robert,” she said almost curtly. “The dead can never age.” And then she smiled the smallest and bitterest of smiles, one that faded as she looked at him. “You got fat, but you look better than you used to.”
He blinked at that. “Aye, well, I’ve been doing my best to get back to fighting trim…” He paused. “How did you know? Oh wait, this is just a dream isn’t it?”
“Not entirely,” she said – and then something roared far off in the distance, something inhuman and bestial. It was a noise from a nightmare and the trees around them seemed to shiver in response.
“What the bloody hell was that?” He asked as he looked in the direction that the noise had come from, but before he could step away to peer into the trees she pulled him back, her face white and her hands shaking.
“Robert, we don’t have much time. They’re looking for me.”
Bewildered he stared at her. “Who’s looking for you?”
She pulled a face. “The Others and their ally. I don’t know what to call it, it’s a thing that they use to hunt in places like this, between death and life.”
“The Others are hunting you?”
“Yes, so we have very little time,” she said as she looked at the trees again, a harried expression on her face. “I am only here because the Old Gods have given me permission to talk to you.”
“The Old Gods?”
“Aye, they have brought me here. They have more power than before, but they have their limits. They cannot bring me back the way that they brought Robb back in time, but they can do this much.”
This made no sense – and then he looked at her, looked properly. She looked strained and nervous. “Is this a dream?” He had to ask the question.
To his shock she shook her head and gave him that sad little smile. “You’re in Winterfell, Robert. I’m buried here. And Winterfell is special… the walls between the living and the dead are… thinner here.”
He just stared at her again. “Then… you’re real? I mean… you’re really here?”
“It’s... complicated.” She seemed about to explain further, when the howl started again, a little closer and this time filled with what he could tell was bottomless hate. “We have no time. Robert – you need to warn Ned. The Others are coming to the West. They seek to outflank the Wall somehow. Ned needs to heed Maege Mormont’s warning. They’re using their magic to hide what they are doing, but there is danger to the West, Robert. You and Ned must watch out there.”
He nodded, trying to absorb her words whilst he stole a look at the trees. There was danger there, he could tell. Danger coming closer by the heartbeat. “Right. Danger to the West.”
And then she tightened her grasp a little. “You must do something else Robert. You need to become what you were born to be. You need to be the Storm King. There’s a lot more at stake than you know. Ned is becoming what he needs to be, but you need to change as well.”
He wanted to laugh for a moment. “Be the Storm King… I keep being told that. But how? How can I do that, Lyanna? I can’t call on the storm or call down lightning or cast… whatever a Storm king casts.”
She smiled again at him, a smile of infinite sadness. “You need to let go of me Robert. The memory of me is holding you back. You’re wallowing in grief. Let go of the past and step forwards. You must do this.”
But he shook his head. “Let go of you? Never! You’re my Lyanna. My she-wolf! The Knight of the Laughing Tree. I fought a war to get you back. Ned and I fought to avenge your father and your brother and to get you back from that bastard Rhaegar Targaryen. When I killed him at the Trident, when I swung my Warhammer and smashed every rib of his chest in, I did it for you.”
“I know!” She almost keened the words. “And I love you for it! When word came that he was dead and that you had killed him I exulted! I threw the fact that he was dead in the face of the three whoresons who guarded me! And told them that they were no knights, not any more.” She closed her eyes as if in pain. “They stopped being knights the first… the first time that they held me down. So that… so that he could…”
He did the only thing he could think of – he took her in his arms and hugged her. “Shhhh, shhh, it’s alright. They’re all dead. I killed Rhaegar and Ned took care of the others. They’re all dead.”
She wept in his arms for a moment – and then the thing in the trees howled yet again, startling them both and she pushed herself out of his arms.
“I’m dead,” she said shortly. “Remember me, but let go of me Robert. I anchor you to the past. You need to let go of me.”
He looked at her for a long moment, wanting to shake his head again, but knowing that he couldn’t somehow. He felt almost helpless. “I can try,” he said eventually. “I don’t know if I can succeed though. Lyanna – if only you’d lived…”
“I wanted to,” she said tremulously. “By the Old Gods, I wanted to. But those three fools guarding me…” She looked at him again and then she wiped the tears from her eyes. “There is another reason why I had to talk to you. I wanted to beg you for a life.”
He frowned. “What?”
There was a short pause as she closed her eyes as if in agony, before opening them again and clenching her fists in his chest. “Rhaegar… he took so much from me. He lied to me, again and again and then he… he raped me. Again and again. I fought, Robert, I fought. But there were four of them and just one of me and… I lost.”
Fury boiled within him. “I’ll have their crimes added to the White Book of the Kingsguard, Gods damn them.”
“But… he gave me one thing that I do not regret. I died as a result, but I don’t regret it, not when I looked at that little face in my arms.”
He froze. “He got you with child.” He did not ask the words, he just stated them, flatly.
She stared at him, her face working with some undefinable emotion. “Yes,” she said eventually. “He gave me a babe, a child of my blood. And the babe was in a way my own revenge. Rhaegar was obsessed with prophecy, the Valyrian Song of Ice and Fire. He thought that he was an important part of it and that he needed three children who would be his ancestors come again. He had an Aegon and a Rhaenys. He needed me to give him a Visenya. I did not. I gave him a son instead.”
“A son,” he repeated, still reeling from this. “You bore him a son.”
“My son. My blood! There’s nothing of his father in him.” And then to his horror she got to her knees and clutched at his breeches. “Spare him! Please, I beg of you! He’s no threat to you, he’s not legitimate, but he’s a Stark, he’s my son, he’s not a Targaryen! Please Robert, if you ever loved me, spare my son! He’s blameless! I told Ned to protect him from your wrath, I heard about how you laughed at the sight of Rhaegar’s children, I made him swear to protect him, please, I beg you, spare him!”
He stood there, stunned, for a long moment – and then he reached down and pulled her up. “Gods, Lyanna, please don’t do that. You need never beg anything from me. Not you. Never you. I’ll never have you on your knees before me.” He looked into her eyes and realised that she was terrified and a part of his heart broke for a moment. “Your son will never be in any danger from me, I swear it. I will not harm him, or, or allow others to harm him. I swear it Lyanna.”
She looked at him – and then she burst into tears and hugged him. “Thank you,” she whispered brokenly. “The dead see only short glimpses of the living. He’s a good lad. He’s a Stark, through and through. He hasn’t had an easy life, but Ned has kept him safe.”
Ned. Ned knew. Oh Gods. Something of that sense of shock and betrayal must have shown on his face, because Lyanna looked at him again, this time fiercely. “Don’t you blame Ned! I was dying, on my deathbed, when he arrived and saw my son. I made him swear to keep him safe. I made him swear to protect him. If you want to blame someone, blame me, not him!”
Various things clattered together in his head – and formed an ugly pattern. “You and Ned thought that… that I would have killed your son?”
She nodded. “I was afraid. So afraid.”
Gods. Did people think that he was a monster? Then he thought back to that day, that terrible day when he and Ned had had that argument that ended up with Ned screaming in his face, angrier than he had ever been with him. He still had nightmares about that day.
“I will not hurt your son,” he said again, thickly. “Or have him killed. I swear it, on the Old Gods and the New.”
She looked at him again and then she smiled tremulously and ran a hand over his face. “Thank you.”
There was a long moment of silence – and then the trees to one side burst apart as a… a thing came through them. It was a howling dustdevil, black as night. Whatever was in it was thin as a stick, had clawed hands and empty eyes and… tentacles? He took a step back, before remembering himself and placing him between it and Lyanna. Whatever it was he was glad that the wind was hiding most of it.
“What is that thing?” He had to shout the words.
“The Other’s new ally!” She replied, also shouting. “It’s found me!”
He swallowed. “What will it do to you?”
“It’s too late – I’ve talked to you!”
The thing advanced slowly, the timbre of the howl changing subtly, and Robert heard noises from another part of the forest. “Lyanna – what will it do to you?”
“I’m already dead, Robert. You can’t hurt the dead.”
He knew at once that she was lying. And that… made his hands hurt for some odd reason, as if they were too hot for a moment. He looked about at the trees quickly, looking for a stick, a branch, anything that might be used as a weapon. And then movement to one side caught his eye. A thing shaped like a man strode into view. It was… blue-skinned, with white hair that floated behind it like a wake and its eyes shone like bright blue stars. The black howling thing shuddered and then drifted next to the newcomer.
He swallowed and backed away from the hideous pair, escorting Lyanna away. He looked about desperately – and then he blinked as one of the trees to their right seemed to shiver as a face appeared on it. “What the fuck is that?”
Lyanna stared at it. “The Old Gods! They are here!”
He paused as his hands burnt again for an instant. “Get to that tree Lyanna! I’ll keep them off!”
“What with?”
“My bare bloody hands if need be! Go! Run!”
She paused for a long moment and then she kissed him on the cheek and ran for it, picking up her skirts as she did. The two things approaching them stopped briefly and then darted after her. So he did the only thing he could – he ran and roared as loudly as he could, coming once again between them.
Jon had once told him that only madmen and fools were never afraid, which was a good thing because right now he was fucking terrified. As he skidded to a halt in front of them they both paused and eyed him, or at least the blue-skinned thing did. This was an Other, it had to be. “You leave her alone,” he shouted after a moment of tongue-tied terror. “Leave her alone!”
The Other stared at him and then raised its hand to backhand him. He watched the arm sweep back and then forwards and he knew that if it touched him he was dead. His hands were burning more fiercely than ever and he realised there and then that this was important, that this meant something. Hands, burning, why – and then suddenly something opened in his mind, something that he had no idea had even been there before, spurred by terror and desperation. Light burst from his hands, white light that annihilated shadows and which sent the two things reeling back with choked cries.
He stared at his hands in astonishment and then realised that he could almost feel the shape of a sword in his hands. What was this? Was it Stormbreaker? He looked back as Lyanna reached the Heart Tree and then looked at him in what seemed to be astonishment. “Robert?”
“Lyanna – go. GO!!!” She blinked at him and then she placed both hands on the tree and muttered something. After a moment the eyes on the tree seemed to burn with red fire – and then she was gone.
He turned back to the things in front of him with a savage grin. “Right, you cunts.” The Other eyed him balefully, something forming in its hands, like a blade being spun out of ebon night, whilst the howling thing seemed to grow in strength. He concentrated into that strange new place inside him and new light burst forth from the sword in his hands. “Go back to the shadow that awaits you!” The words sounded strange in his throat and his mind, as if he was speaking in a different language. “You shall not pass!”
The light grew and grew and everything seemed to shudder away from him as he suddenly thrust the sword into the earth in front of him. Fissures erupted in front of him and something gibbered and howled as the light poured out.
He shuddered as he clenched his fists around the sword – and then suddenly he was back in his bed, upright, covered in sweat, his heart pounding. As he ran his hands through his sweat-soaked hair he finally noticed two things. First, that Stormbreaker was on the bed with him. And the second thing was that Ser Barristan Selmy was standing next to the bed, along with Oakheart, both white-faced and trying not to look terrified.
“What?”
“Your Grace,” Ser Barristan said eventually. “There was light coming from your room. Bright white light. From Stormbreaker. Your Grace… it was hovering in the air, held by you. Glowing.”
Oh. Bugger. Now he knew how Ned felt at times. He handed Stormbreaker to Ser Barristan and then got out of bed and stuck his head in the nearest bowl of water. As he scrubbed his hair clean he noticed that his hands were still shaking as if he had had an argue, but as he looked at them they shook a little less. He paused, closed his eyes and made his decision.
“Ser Barristan?”
“Your Grace?”
“My compliments to Lord Stark and tell him that I need to see him at once in the crypts, at the grave of his sister. Ser Arys?”
“Your Grace?”
“Once Ser Barristan has escorted Lord Stark in, you are to guard the entrance and let no-one in. Not a soul. Do you both understand?”
“Aye, your Grace,” they chorused and then strode out.
He watched them go and then sat on the bed again. All of a sudden he wanted to weep.
Ned
He came awake with a start, his heart pounding. The Tower of Joy again. The fight outside and then the scream and his run inside to find his dying sister. And the baby. This time he’d found them both dead. It was a dream that he had had before. And it always made him want to sit in a corner and weep.
Cat stirred in her sleep for a moment and he thanked the Old Gods that he hadn’t woken her up. She needed her sleep. She was showing now and he’d had to talk to Sansa about taking on a little more of the burden of running Winterfell, to help her.
But it was all for naught, as a heavy fist slammed against the door. “Lord Stark!” It was Ser Barristan’s voice. “I beg your pardon Lord Stark, but I am here on his Grace’s command!”
Cat stirred and came awake as he stood and pulled a shirt on, before walking to the door and opening it a crack. “Ser Barristan?”
The Kingsguard bowed quickly. The guard to one side did not look happy, but then Ned peered at the southerner more carefully. He looked pale and shaken. “Your pardon for the interruption at so early an hour Lord Stark, but his Grace would like to see you immediately.”
Alarm went through him. “What has happened? A message from King’s Landing?”
“No, my Lord.” Ser Barristan paused and looked a little wild-eyed. “It is… hard to explain. But his Grace is waiting for you at the grave of the Lady Lyanna Stark.”
This time unease went through him. “Very well. Give me a moment to dress appropriately.” The Kingsguard nodded tersely and Ned shut the door so that he could pull on breeches, boots and a leather jerkin.
Cat looked at him as he dressed. “Robert wants to see you?”
“Aye,” he muttered as he stamped his way into his right boot, which was not co-operating with his foot. “And Selmy looks like he’s seen a ghost. Something’s up.”
He kissed her gently, told her to get back to sleep and then strode out of the room, with Selmy a step behind him as they passed down the corridor. “What happened?”
For a long moment there was nothing but silence from the older man, and Ned looked over to see that his face was working as he visibly wrestled with something. “We saw a light under the door to his Grace’s chambers,” he said eventually. “We were alarmed. But when we went in we saw that Stormbreaker was… it was… Lord Stark, it was glowing. As we entered it was floating above his Grace, but then he reached out and took it and it… shone. With light.”
Ned stopped walking for a moment and then stopped and stared at the Kingsguard. “Truly?”
Ser Barristan stared at him, his eyes haunted. His answering nod was heavy and stunned. “Truly, my Lord.”
The rest of their journey to the crypts was carried out in silence as Ned wondered what on earth was going on. Just before they reached the crypts something occurred to him. “Ser Barristan, you said that the Selmys were swordbearers to the Durrandons and that you had old records sent by your brother. Are there any references to such a thing happening in the past?”
“Ah… I will have to look at what my brother sent,” Ser Barristan said thoughtfully, as they reached the door. Ser Arys Oakheart was standing there, as pale as the older Kingsguard still was, and he nodded to them as he opened the doors for them.
As the doors closed behind them Ser Barristan looked at him. “Ser Arys will guard the entrance and will allow no-one else in. I am to take you to his Grace, as I was ordered to.”
Not knowing what else to do Ned nodded. They found Robert sitting in front of Lyanna’s statue, looking up at her face. He looked as if he had gotten dressed in a hurry, his hair was wet and there was a strained look on his face. Stormbreaker was to one side, leaning against the nearest wall. As they approached he looked at them and then smiled slightly before sighing gustily. “Ned. Thanks for coming. Ser Barristan, I need your services for one more thing.”
“I am at your Grace’s command.”
“I need you to witness an oath I am about to swear.”
This startled Ned, as well as Selmy by the look of it. “Of course your Grace.”
There was a pause as Robert stood, looking at Lyanna’s statue again. “I, Robert of the House Baratheon, the First of my name, King of the Andals and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm, do hereby swear by the Old Gods and the New that I will not harm the son of Lyanna Stark, nor will I allow others to harm him, or reveal that he even exists.”
The very air seemed to congeal around Ned as she stood there, rooted to the spot with horror. He knew that he should say something, deny something, do something, but he was so stunned that he didn’t have the faintest idea what on earth he should do. And from the look on the face of Ser Barristan Selmy he felt the same way.
“Oh bloody hells Ned, stop doing that ‘I am Ned Stark, Statue of the North’ thing that you always do when you’re startled.” Robert was busy sitting down again, before looking back up at Lyanna’s face. “Sit down. You heard my oath. And you know that I keep my oaths. Ned, sit down.”
After a long moment he finally coaxed his reluctant limbs into life and joined Robert on the floor before the statue. “Robert…”
“I told you that I’d been dreaming about her, Ned. Chasing her, whilst she trys to tell me something, me unable to catch her.” Robert ran a shaking hand over his face. “Tonight… tonight I caught her. But I don’t think that it was a dream.”
The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. “What… what are you saying?”
“From what she said… Ned, I think it was her. Lyanna. Her ghost, spirit, call it what you want. But it was her. I know it was her. My she-wolf. The Knight of the Laughing Tree.”
There was an odd startled noise from Selmy and they both looked over at the stunned Kingsguard. “Your pardon your Grace, my Lord, but – the Lady Lyanna was the Knight of the Laughing Tree? The Mad King thought that he was some kind of plot against him!”
“Nay,” Ned said with a sad smile. “She witnessed three squires beating a Northerner that they were making fun of. She decided to teach them a lesson in the lists. Beat them all. She was a superb horsewoman.”
“Fiery, she was,” Robert agreed, looking at the statue again. “She did the right thing. I would have thumped their skulls, she beat them all and made them look small. There was no plot. But I knew it was her by the way that she rode.”
Selmy absorbed this – and then he laughed. “So Aerys’s fears about that knight were all for nothing!”
“Aye,” Robert said. Then he sobered. “But it was her, Ned. I’m sure of it. She said that the walls between the living and the dead were thinner here in Winterfell, especially as she’s buried here. And then she said three things. The first was a warning to you – watch the West. Something about Maege Mormont’s warning and the Others trying to outflank us. Mean anything to you?”
He thought back to Castle Black and Maege’s words about freezing fogs off the Frozen Shore. “I think so,” he said thoughtfully. “I’ll send a raven.”
“Then…” Robert paused, his eyes moist suddenly and Ned looked away awkwardly for a moment as his old friend wiped his eyes. “Then she said that I need to be the Storm King and that to do that I have to let her go. Her memory that is.” He looked at Ned, his face almost gaunt for a moment as his nostrils flared with emotion. “I don’t know if I can do that Ned. I just don’t know. She said that I have to if I’m to be what’s needed for this war, but after all this time…”
Ned pulled a face. And then he swallowed. “And the third thing?”
Robert stared at the statue again, his eyes still red. “She went down on her knees and begged me to spare the life of her son. Our Lyanna – on her knees Ned! She begged me to spare him! Gods, I think she was afraid of me. Of me, Ned!”
He closed his eyes tightly, but then remembered Robert’s earlier vow. “But you agreed.”
“Of course I bloody did, I’m not a monster! He’s your nephew, he’s Lyanna’s son. That trumps whatever Targaryen blood he has.” He sighed and then looked at Ned. “I’m not stupid Ned. Oh, I shout and I bluster and there are times when my temper gets the better of me, but I’m getting better at it. I drink ale more than wine these days so I’m not in my cups half the time. And while I was waiting for you I did some thinking. Jon is Lyanna’s son. Don’t start like that Ned, you heard my oath. I won’t hurt the boy. He looks so like you though…”
He sat there, his mind reeling. Gods, there had been a time when he would have been panicking by now. He’d been in fear of Robert finding out for years and now… “Robert, I couldn’t tell you. Lyanna begged me on her deathbed to protect him. To save him.”
“Save him from me? Gods Ned, how could you think that I’d kill a child! A babe in the arms of that maid!”
“Because you laughed at the bodies of Jon’s half-siblings. You laughed Robert.”
His old friend groaned and covered his eyes with one large hand for a moment. “Gods,” he spat bitterly. “That day. That terrible fucking day. I wish I could take it all back, Ned. There’ve been horrible days in my life, the day that I saw my parents’ ship founder right in front of me, the day that you arrived at King’s Landing with Lyanna’s bones, and then there’s that day.”
The hand came down and Robert stared at the wall. “Jon taught us a lot Ned. You more than me at first until he got it into my thick head that this was important. He taught us everything about how to be a lord. But what he couldn’t teach me was how to be a king. On that bloody ride down from the Trident, after Jon prevented me from joining you in your ride to King’s Landing because of my wound, all I could bloody think about was ‘how do I act like a king?’, and I didn’t have a bloody clue.
“And it didn’t feel real at first. Not until I saw the Red Keep on the horizon. And then your messengers arrived and said that the Lannisters were in the city and that Tywin Lannister had turned his cloak and all of a sudden it was all very real. Especially when I met the Old Lion and looked into those cold green eyes of his. In that moment I knew that he was dangerous. That I had to show no fear here, I had to be a king, I had to stand up straight in front him. So when he showed me the bodies I did the first thing that entered my head. I laughed.
“I knew it was a mistake the moment I saw Jon’s face. Lannister was happy, but Jon wasn’t. And then there was your face… When we had that argument I was angry, with myself, with the Targaryen’s for me being wounded, with Tywin bloody Lannister for putting me in that position, with you for being right. And afterwards, after you left in a fury, I wanted to sit on a stair and cry. Jon found me in the stable the next day, trying to saddle a horse and fucking it up because I was still injured. I wanted to ride out and join you. Apologise. Fight with you. Jon told me not to be a bloody fool. Said I was still injured. Said that the Realm needed a king again after having a madman in charge for so long. So I stayed. I’ve always regretted that day Ned. But did you really think that I would have killed Lyanna’s babe?”
“I didn’t know Robert,” Ned said in some anguish. “And I couldn’t take the chance. My Father was gone, my older brother was gone, my sister was gone, the number of Starks had halved. I had to protect the pack. He may have been half-Targaryen, but he was half-Stark and that was more important. And I had to protect him from the Lannisters. If Tywin Lannister had heard that one of Rhaegar’s children had survived, even as a bastard, he would have ordered his death.”
There was a long silence in the darkness of the crypts, with only the occasional hiss and crackle of the torches breaking that silence. “Well,” Robert said eventually, “He’s a Stark. And he’s Lyanna’s revenge.”
Eyebrows raised Ned looked at him, and Robert laughed shortly. “Lyanna said that Rhaegar wanted a daughter. Wanted a Visenya, who he presumably would have legitimised and then married to his son Aegon. Like the Conqueror, you understand? But she gave him a son instead. And he’s all Stark! Looks so much like you, Ned. That’s one in the eye for the shade of Rhaegar bloody Targaryen, the raping piece of shit.”
Robert’s eyebrows came down into a thunderous scowl. “She said that he did rape her Ned. She said that he lied and lied and lied to her and that when that failed she had his Kingsguard hold her down and…” His voice trailed to a halt, his face red with fury. “Gods damn them all for that. She was just a girl. Sworn knights against a girl. She said that she threw the fact that they were no longer knights in their faces every day after that.”
There was another strangled noise from Ser Barristan and they both looked at him. He was as white as a sheet and looked as if he wanted to cry. “Your pardon your Grace, my Lord,” he said eventually. “I knew them all. Or at least I thought I did. For them to have done what they did… When Rhaegar started to get obsessed with prophecy he… changed. Became driven. He loathed his father for what he did to his mother but to do it in turn to your sister Lord Stark… well it is beyond me. Although in his last days his melancholy was very deep, as if he regretted everything. Especially after his second trip to the Isle of Faces.”
Ned’s eyebrows went up again. “Rhaegar went twice to the Isle of Faces? I never knew that. Why did he go there?”
“I do not know, the Green Men said that only he could be allowed to talk to the Green Man. Afterwards he was… different. Knowing what I know now, I wonder if his orders to me and the others of the Kingsguard at the Trident were designed to keep us away from him as he sought out you, your Grace. I don’t think that he thought he’d survive meeting you.”
“Lyanna was happy when I told her how I’d killed him,” Robert rumbled, his eyes dark with thought and memory. “And there was something hunting her. I’ll tell you everything later. But I need to know something first. What do you plan for Jon?”
“He will be a bannerman for Robb,” said Ned firmly. “That’s all he wants. He will found a cadet branch of House Stark and I already have a few ideas for keeps that can be rebuilt for him. He will follow Robb should he ever call his banners.”
“Does he know his true parentage?”
“He does. It horrifies him.”
This seemed to surprise Robert. “Horrifies?”
Ned sighed. “He doesn’t want anything to do with his father’s family. And he hates the fact that one of his grandfathers had the other grandfather burned alive. And above all he doesn’t want to go raving mad like Aerys.”
There was another long silence as Robert looked at him, before chuckling slightly. “Aye, there is that. The Targaryen trait of going raving mad every now and then. Tell the boy that it worried me at times when I was younger.” He paused. “Who else knows?”
“Cat. I had to tell her eventually. Robb, because of something else that I need to tell you about. And there’s a handful of men on the Wall, just in case he ever had to flee there and join the Night’s Watch.”
“Hmmmm.” Robert paused as he looked at Lyanna’s statue again. “It’s a good plan. It’ll keep him safe. Let me know if you need any coin to help. Lyanna would want him to be supported.”
Ned nodded. He felt slightly sick now, as the shock and adrenalin of this entire conversation burnt off. “Thank you Robert. I’m sorry for all of this.”
“Don’t be daft Ned,” Robert snorted. “She told me that she made you swear on her deathbed. You did the only thing you could. You did the right thing, even though it had to be a secret. You always knew how to do the right thing. I always envied that about you Ned. In King’s Landing everything gets mired in filth and lies and self-serving cant. It’s good to be here and away from all that. Never change Ned. Please. Never change.”
He nodded in response – and then a yawn ripped its way out of him. “Your pardon your Grace. It’s been a hell of a night.”
Robert smiled. “Aye, I’m sorry to get you out of bed. Get back to your Cat, Ned. I’ll get some sleep myself. Oh – one last thing. Lyanna said something odd. She said that the Old Gods were stronger than they had been, but that they had their limits and that they couldn’t bring her back as they’d brought Robb. Does that mean anything to you?”
Oh gods. He sighed. “It does. Remember your first day here, when I said that I had a source of intelligence that you wouldn’t believe? It was Robb. But it’s a long story and it needs Robb to be there. I’ll meet you in my solar after breakfast Robert. You need to hear it all in full.”
As he walked out of the crypts and out into the outside air he looked up at the sky and the stars that blazed down. “Thank you Lyanna,” he whispered. “Thank you.”
Willas
He arrived at the gate just before sunrise, accompanied by a small group of guards. And there he waited, staring up the road to Highgarden. He was tired despite the sleep he’d had earlier, interrupted by the odd nightmare of the confrontation at the gate. He scrubbed at his face with both hands for a long moment. Too much to do. Too much to think about.
Frankly he didn’t dare leave Oldtown. Not if Otherbane was the only thing that could keep back whatever the Seven Hells that thing in the gate was. The booming was still there, like a hollow heartbeat that no-one could ignore. Grandfather had quietly asked him to stay as long as he could, at least until a solution could be found.
He had a feeling that such a solution would mean asking Ned Stark for help. It made him want to laugh quietly. When was the last time that the Reach had asked the North for help? Before the Field of Fire? The Andal Invasion?
And the arrival of the man who had sent out the Call would bring its own… problems. He didn’t like the mood in parts of the city. Febrile was the word. Not quite unrest, but scratchy excitement and the odd bout of feverish muttering. The Starry Sept was still stunned by the death of the Septon, but the fact was that he did not trust the men and women in it. How many of them had ties to the Faith Militant? He didn’t know. Which worried him.
“My Lord?”
He looked up at those words. The senior guardsman was pointing up the road and as he looked he could see the flickering of banners in that direction as a party of horsemen rode towards the gate, escorting a carriage. As they got closer he could see that the leading riders bore the banners of Highgarden and he sighed a little and stepped forwards.
The horsemen recognised him as they approached and reined in, the carriage slowing at the same time. As it came to a halt he walked forwards, acknowledging the bows of the riders and suppressing the need to wince with every muttered “My Lord”, before getting into the carriage, placing Otherbane to one side.
Mother and Grandmother were both sitting opposite him and both looked tired and strained. “Willas!” Mother cried, before jerking forwards and hugging him. He let her. She was red-eyed but she always gave the best hugs and above all she smelt of home. After a long moment she released him and went back to her seat, where she regarded him with a worried look. “Are you well?”
“Of course he’s not well, he’s the Lord Paramount of the Reach now,” Grandmother snorted. She did not hug him. If she had that would have been worrying. Instead she gave him a wintry little smile. “You have my sympathies Willas. Now – take us to him please.”
He nodded and then leant out of the window. “To the docks before the Hightower!”
As he leant back in again Mother frowned at him. “Not the Starry Sept?”
“No,” he sighed as the carriage lurched on its way. “The Starry Sept is being watched for signs that the Faith Militant have wormed their way into it. And the fact that it was the Septon of the Starry Sept who started all this… No, he’s at the sept at the Hightower. It’s not as big or as beautiful, but it’s safe there.”
This earnt him a ‘Harrumph’ from Grandmother, who leant forwards to peer out of the window at the streets of Oldtown as they rolled down the street. “Your message was… terse. What exactly happened?”
He hadn’t been looking forwards to this and the uncertainty must have shown on his face, but oddly enough it was Mother who commanded him: “Tell us, Willas. Tell us what happened.”
So he sighed and then he did. Everything. The argument at the Hightower, how the Septon had been allowed admittance, Father’s embarrassment, the descent to the Gate and then… and then what had happened there. And then Father’s last moments.
By the time he finished Grandmother had squeezed her eyes closed and Mother had both hands at her mouth as she wept silently. He sat there awkwardly, not knowing what to do or to say. The silence stretched on until the carriage shuddered to a halt.
“The docks, my Lord,” a guard said as he opened the door. “Lord Hightower has sent his personal barge.”
Willas nodded as he retrieved the ancient spear, got out and then helped the two women to exit the coach. As Mother got out she wiped her eyes one last time and then schooled her features as befitted Lady Tyrell. Grandmother eyed her for a moment, nodded curtly and then they all boarded the barge.
As the oarsmen stretched out for the Hightower he settled Otherbane in its leather holder at his back and then mentally prepared himself. He was not looking forward to this. Going anywhere near the Gate brought back unpleasant memories and he was truly worried about what it all meant.
Garlan and Loras were still standing vigil in the Sept when they arrived at it. They both looked up and then went to Mother at once, who hugged them both before looking at the lonely figure on the bier in front of them all.
Mother strode up to the bier with Grandmother and then looked at Father’s body. He had been dressed in fine robes rather than in his armour, which was a good thing as he would have looked… scrawny in it.
“He’s… he’s so thin,” Mother whispered as she stroked Father’s face gently. “How could that have happened?”
“It was the thing behind the Gate, Mother,” said Loras, a haunted look on his face. “Confronting it… took its toll on Father.”
Mother nodded slowly as she just stood there, looking at the body of her husband, before taking his hand and lifting it to her cheek for one last time. And then she sat in the chair that Garlan had brought over for her.
As for Grandmother she stood on the other side of the bier looking down at her son for a long moment, before she leant down and kissed his forehead. “My poor dear boy,” she whispered just loud enough for Willas to hear. “Rest in peace. Sleep until the morning comes.”
Willas stood there, his mind filled with memories for a long moment. And then Grandmother straightened up, smoothed Father’s hair a little and then made her way over to Willas. “Right,” she said firmly. “Show me this bloody gate thing that killed my brave but foolish son.”
“Grandmother,” Loras was foolish enough to say, “It’s dangerous and-”
Grandmother silenced him with a glare and then looked back at Willas. “Show me.”
He opened his mouth, say the gimlet look in her eyes, shut his mouth and then held out his arm so that she could hold it as he led her out of the Sept and off to the stairway that went downwards. As they descended she looked at him briefly. “And how are you, Willas? You are now Lord of the Reach and I know that it can be a heavy burden at times.”
It was a good question and he sighed as he thought about it. “I’m tempted to say ‘Ask me again in a week’, but that would be the wrong thing to say. It’s been… hard, Grandmother. There’s a lot to do. And now with all this...”
She harrumphed as they started down the next flight of stairs carefully. “Has the blizzard of ravens started to arrive yet with messages from Lords with available daughters?”
“Oh yes,” Willas smiled as they reached the bottom and then headed for the black steps. “Lord Hewett has sent several ravens already with suggestions about his various daughters, and that’s going to just be the start of it.”
“It is and…” Grandmother paused and looked down at the steps. “Who made these steps?”
“No-one knows,” he said grimly. “The bottom course of the Hightower is all made from this stone.”
“Yes, but the steps are made for feet smaller than ours.” Then she stiffened. “Ah. I think I feel it.”
They continued down to the bottom of the stairs and then along to the doors, where guards with sweat on their foreheads seemed to relax slightly at the sight of Willas and Otherbane. At a nod from him they opened the doors and they passed through until eventually they were standing before the Gate, which was booming at its usual rate.
Grandmother hissed with some undefinable emotion the moment that she laid eyes on it and she now stared at it with narrowed eyes and a mouth set in a grim line. “So that’s it,” she said eventually. “The thing that killed your father.”
“Yes,” he sighed. “And it worries the life out of me. Grandfather too.”
She took a step forwards and squinted at it, before waving her walking stick at the frame. “What do those runes say?”
“We don’t know. I’ve had Maesters from the Citadel here and Samwell Tarly is researching it as a part of his task of finding out more about the early history of the Reach.”
Grandmother harrumphed again. “It still amuses me that Randyll Tarly, a man who revels in hitting other men on the head until their brains ooze out of their ears has a son who knows what a book looks like.” She looked at the flagstones in front of the gate. “So where did your father rescue this fool of a septon?”
“Just beyond the marker there,” he replied, pointing. “And just beyond that was where I killed the Septon of the Starry Sept. Or his corpse at least.”
Grandmother shivered a little. “Walking dead. A touch of the North this far South? Chilling. And you said that the… whatever it is behind the Gate was afraid of you?”
“I was holding Otherbane, Grandmother. I think that it was afraid of the weapon, not me.”
Another harrumph. “Perhaps. Perhaps. Do you know what it is? And the booming noise?”
He eyed the Gate. “I have a suspicion,” he muttered in a low voice. “But it’s best not discussed here.”
Grandmother stared at him quizzically – and then she paled slightly and stole a glance at the Gate, where the booming was still filling the air. “You think it can hear us?”
“Best not to take the chance,” Willas replied, before leading her back out of the room, giving it one last glare over his shoulder as they left the room.
Going up took longer than going down, especially as Grandmother was tiring. But eventually he ushered her into Grandfather’s solar, where there was a pitcher of wine, some glasses and some honeycakes waiting, as well as Grandfather himself and Aunt Malora.
“Alerie mentioned that you went to see the Gate, Olenna, so you might need some wine after that,” Grandfather said as he poured some wine into a glass and then handed it over. “I’m sorry about Mace, but by all the Gods, why did he have to allow that idiot access to the Gate?”
Grandmother took a sip of wine, mumbled at a honey cake and then pierced the Lord of the Hightower with her gimlet gaze. “And why,” she snapped, “Did you allow it all in the first place? Why did you not tell them all that it was none of their business?”
That bought her a wince and a sigh. “Frankly I hoped that they’d leave after becoming properly afraid of it,” he said, pouring wine for them all. “It terrifies most people. I didn’t realise that Septon Alyston was so set on raising his profile in the Faith that he would try and get that close to it. I’m just sorry that Mace died saving a man who was already dying.”
There was a moment of silence and then Grandmother nodded reluctantly and drank some more wine. “Very well. Understandable. Now – earlier, downstairs, Willas would not tell me what you think the thing behind the Gate is.”
Willas swapped a glance with his grandfather and aunt for a moment before leaning forwards. “Grandmother, based on what I saw at the Gate and above all from what Father said just before he died, I think that the Drowned God is behind the Gate.”
Grandmother just stared at him and he realised that for the first time in his experience she was astonished. “The Drowned God,” she said eventually. “Willas, my boy, are you feeling alright?”
“I am fine Grandmother. But Father said that what was behind the Gate was dead but would not die. And that it was a god. Does any of that sound familiar?”
“The Ironborn doggerel…” Grandmother breathed. “But that’s…”
“It would explain why the Ironborn are so obsessed with Oldtown, even though they don’t know why,” Malora said as she stared at the books on the table to one side. “It also explains why House Hightower has always been so focussed on the Hightower itself and keeping it safe.”
“’Hold the Hightower’, my father told me on his death bed,” Grandfather muttered savagely. “He never said why. Just ‘Hold the Hightower and protect the Gate’ and nothing bloody else.” He all but threw some wine down his throat and then stood up and walked over to the table. “All these books left by my ancestors. Books that talk of magic. Books of so-called spells. Nothing about the history of this place. Nothing about what might be required to fight a bloody god. Damn my ancestors! Damn them!”
Willas and the others stared at Grandfather for a long moment, until he rubbed his forehead and waved at them all in apology. “Your pardon. I just hope that something is found in the Citadel. We need information. If this is indeed the Drowned God…”
“We will have to send word to Winterfell and ask Ned Stark to come here,” Willas sighed. He caught Grandmother’s questioning look. “Before he died Father said that what was behind the Gate was afraid of Ned Stark’s fist or something like that.”
“The Fist of Winter?” Grandmother sat up in her chair. “Ned Stark has found the hereditary weapon of the old Kings of Winter in Winterfell, called the Fist of Winter. If it’s anything like Otherbane…”
“I’ll write to Lord Stark at once,” Willas muttered. “If he’s the one thing that whatever it is behind the Gate fears then we need him.”
“He might have more pressing things to deal with,” Malora sighed. “Everyone who heard the Call is heading North. Ned Stark was last heard of at the Wall. Well… who knows where he is now? Or what he’s dealing with?”
“I’ll write to him! Grandfather, I’ll need two ravens for identical messages, which I’ll sign myself.” Willas said forcibly. “In the meantime – I must stay here, at the Hightower. If Otherbane is the only thing that can keep the thing behind the Gate at bay, then here I stay. Besides – I want to be here to keep an eye on the Starry Sept. We can’t let the Faith Militant get a hold there.”
Grandmother swapped a gaze with Grandfather and then they both nodded and muttered “Good” virtually in unison, before Grandmother pulled a slight face. “Your father will have to be buried in Highgarden as soon as possible. Your absence will be… noted.”
He shrugged in response. “It can’t be helped. Garlan will preside over Father’s funeral. I’ll… I’ll pay my respects later.”
There was a pause as everyone seemed to absorb this, broken by a hurried knock on the door. “Enter!” Grandfather snapped, and the door opened to reveal a somewhat rattled Maester.
“My Lords – a raven from King’s Landing brought this.” He handed the note over to Grandfather, who read it with what seemed to be rapidly mounting astonishment.
“Good Gods,” Grandfather said eventually and rather faintly. “News from Winterfell – His Grace the King has divorced his wife after she was discovered in, erm, ‘fornication’ with her own brother, the Kingslayer. Joffrey, Tommen and Myrcella Baratheon are now all Hills after being declared bastards born of incest.”
There was a very long moment of silence as everyone stared at him and then everyone bar Grandmother seemed to stand up and stare at the message in astonishment.
“Well,” said Grandmother eventually. “Thank the Gods your Father is dead. As otherwise he’d immediately be plotting to throw Margaery into the arms of Robert Baratheon.” And then she grinned fiercely. “Oh, how the Old Lion must be raging!”
Chapter Text
Bronn
He often wondered what the spiders in the crypts ate. There had to be some kind of food down here. He thought about that and then shuddered. Well, the tombs of the more recently dead Cawlishs were sealed.
He walked down the passageway, looking into the rooms to each side. Yes, all crypts. Good stonework. Solid. Excellent. He passed on, looking at the tombs with a little more interest. Old statues of old, long-dead lords stared back at him, swords on their laps. Or what remained of swords at times, some little more than rusty shards.
And then he paused and stared. Hmmm. Interesting. Some of the coats of arms on the earlier tombs were… interesting. He continued on, looking about. More good stonework, nothing bricked up, excellent. He tilted his head at the statue that had not just a rusty smear but also an old dust-covered shield.
“Lord Cassley.”
He paused and looked behind him. “Steward Cawlish.” He wanted to call her Ursula, but he knew that she was not yet ready for any familiarity. Yet.
“Can I ask why you are in the crypts?”
“Oh, just having a look around.”
“For what?”
“Weak spots.”
“In the crypts?” She deployed a raised eyebrow at him.
Ah. He looked at her. “Every keep has a weak spot. Every one. It might be the old wall that the previous lord didn’t get around to replacing or strengthening. It might be the sallyport that didn’t get a new gate, as had been planned.” He paused and then grinned at her. “Ever heard of House Honeyfeather, in the Reach?”
Ursula Cawlish blinked. “No, my Lord.”
“Don’t blame you. Small house. Small keep. And not so much ‘Honeyfeather’ by name, more like ‘Pissanvil’ by nature. A secure keep though. Locked up tighter than a drum. A sellsword was once hired to retrieve a Valyrian steel dagger from that keep, as it was said by another local lord that they didn’t really own it. The sellsword spent four days inspecting the bloody place from all angles. Finally he discovered an old disused privy hole overhanging a cliff. And it’s amazing what a well-motivated man with a rope and a grappling hook can do.”
There was a pause and then she raised an eyebrow at him. “Was that sellsword you?”
“Yes.”
Another pause. “A disused privy hole?”
“Yes.”
She lowered the eyebrow. “So you’re looking for weak spots?”
“I am.” He looked around. “Seen one or two places to keep an eye on. Nothing bad, mind you, but I’m just checking the last areas.”
She looked at the tombs. “Anything here?”
“No.” He tilted his head. “The stonework down here is the work of the First Men. And I didn’t know that the Cawlishs once married into the Mudds. Was this place once a part of the Riverlands?”
“A long time ago,” she replied softly as she looked at the nearest statue. “The Vale and the Riverlands used to fight over it. And yes, one of my ancestors – no, two of them – married into the Mudds. A very long time ago.”
They stood there for a moment amidst the long-dead Cawlishs before he looked at her. “Was there a reason why you came looking for me?”
“A raven came from King’s Landing. It seems that King Robert has divorced Cersei Lannister, on a charge of incestuous coupling with her own brother. And the royal children have all been disinherited. They’re all bastards.”
A weight he hadn’t known was on him fell off his shoulders. “So, the news is out there?”
“It is.”
“Good thing I was down here. You can tell people that I was ‘very surprised’ when you told me. I hope that you were yourself surprised?”
The other eyebrow flickered. “Oh, astonished.”
“Good.” He pulled a slight face. “Any word from Haster about Lady Lysa whatever the hells her name is now? Arryn? Tully?”
She went slightly pink and her chin went up. Oh dear. Not a good sign. “Still demanding things that she has no right to.”
“Well, as soon as she’s fit I want her out of here. Out and off to King’s Landing or the Eyrie. Away from here. That woman’s raving mad and I still think that she’s a threat to us.”
When he looked at her again Ursula Cawlish had a rather odd look on her face. “I agree Lord Cassley.” Yes, there was definitely something there.
He could work with that.
Kevan
The ride East from Torrhen’s Square was… hard. Tywin drove the men at a fearsome pace, in a way that reminded him of the days that led to the fall of the Reynes and the Tarbecks. And that was something that frightened him more than a bit. His brother could be as relentless as an avalanche when sufficiently enraged. And Tywin was indeed enraged – but coldly so. Tywin was even more dangerous in circumstances such as these.
When they stopped for the first night at a small keep that had a particularly young (and terrified) Lord the first thing that he checked was if there had been any further news from Winterfell. To his relief there was not. No news of executions, no word of exiles, nothing.
Tywin was curt with everyone, even him, and the men trod lightly around him, even Kevan himself. He knew what kind of things might set his brother off, so he warned the officers and the men and drove himself just as hard to keep on top of any little… hiccups.
He had already warned Gregor bloody Clegane not to do anything stupid. He’d then warned several large guards to keep an eye on the wretched man. Tywin regarded him as a tool, if a very blunt one. Kevan viewed him as an unstable murdersome idiot and he still didn’t know why his brother had brought him with them, other than to show that he commanded the loyalties of the Mountain.
East they rode again at dawn on the second day, passing along the road that ran through the hills to the North of the Barrowlands. Every settlement around them seemed to be busy sowing or tending to crops and he viewed it all with a growing sense of dread. There also seemed to be some fairly intense efforts at breeding livestock in places, with sheepherders standing back from the road to let them pass. Some of them were quite winsome women, but he didn’t have to snarl at the men to stop them from stopping to talk to them. Tywin’s wintery gaze was enough, cowing even the Mountain.
On they rode, walking the horses when they were blown, but still pressing on. He doubted that anyone else could keep that kind of pace, not even Robert Baratheon himself.
The first surprise was when they came across an old keep that had once been all but a ruin – but now there was a group of tents to one side and a building had been restored, with more on the way. The banner that flew was that of a running black direwolf on a red background and Tywin had been curious enough to ask whose keep it was as they ate their midday meal just after the Mountain had been stopped from trying to headbutt a tree to stop one of his headaches.
The man who strode up to them, guards behind him, was tanned and looked vaguely familiar. Lord Rickard Redstark was his name, and he told them he was restoring what had been one of his family’s old holdfasts as his own.
“House Redstark?” Tywin had not quite scoffed. “That family has been gone from the North for centuries. Not since…” And then he had paled a little, which for Tywin was unusual. “Not since the Conquest.”
“The King who knelt was also the King who sent members of important families East to Essos, in the Company of the Rose. Just in case. Cousin Ned can tell you more, but we have come home to fight the Others. Safe trip Lord Lannister.” And then he strode off again.
Kevan watched the man leave and then ordered that the camp be struck as soon as the men had finished eating. True enough, Tywin ordered them back on the road soon after, his face as hard as stone. As they resumed their ride East he overheard Tywin mutter something that made dread run through him. Four words: “Something dark is coming.”
He had a bad feeling that more surprises were on the way.
Robb
By the time he finished speaking the two men in front of him were both white-faced and gaping at him. The fact that they were the two most powerful and important men in all of Westeros… was amusing in no small way. He kept that to himself however. Best not to stir anything up.
After a long moment Robert Baratheon sank back into his chair, which creaked a little in protest, and then looked at him and smiled crookedly. “Gods… no wonder the Old Gods sent you back, lad. Me dead, Ned dead, half the realm on fire and the other half getting ready to go to war… and all the time the threat of the Others was hanging almost unseen over the Wall. No Call. Gods. What a fucking mess.”
“And Joffrey on the Iron Throne,” muttered Stannis, his eyes voice hoarse. “And Renly… gods. Renly dead from foul magic.”
Robb eyed the man carefully. “My mother saw his death and described the… thing that killed him. She described it to me afterwards.”
Stannis ran a shaking hand over his face. “Renly. I gave him my food at the siege of Storm’s End to keep him alive. And he repaid me with betrayal.”
“In a world that is no more. A time, I mean. Gods, this is making my head spin. How did you cope with it Ned?”
“Badly, at first,” Father replied from the window, where he had been staring out at the courtyard below, his hands behind his back. “It’s always hard to hear Robb tell of what happened.”
“A shadow with my face.” Stannis shuddered, before catching himself. “I will give orders that if this Melisandre of Asshai appears anywhere near my family or the court she is to be killed at once.”
The King pulled a slight face at this, but then looked back at Robb. “The Greyjoy boy knows about this, doesn’t he?” It was a surprisingly shrewd query and Robb nodded after a moment. “And that’s why he wants to change his name?” Another nod.
There was a long moment and then the King let out a bark of laughter. “If I didn’t know better you’ve had your revenge for that other future, Ned!”
Father turned and quirked an eyebrow at him. “What’s that?”
“Roose Bolton’s trueborn son is to marry your daughter and renounce his family’s legacy, that fool Balon Greyjoy is about have his last son take a new name and Jaime Lannister has taken the Black. It only needs Walder Frey to fall over and break his scrawny neck to complete it all!”
Father smiled slightly. “I wish that I planned such a revenge. But I did not. You know why I did not tell you of all this when you arrived now. You wouldn’t have believed me.”
“Aye,” the King rumbled, “I would not.” Then he looked at the door. “Ser Barristan!”
The door opened to reveal the white-cloaked warrior. “Your Grace?”
“Is Theon Greyjoy out there?”
“He is your Grace.”
“Send him in, if you please.”
“Aye your Grace.”
When Theon entered there was a look on his face that reminded Robb of those men who had gone into battle for the first time. His chin was up, but there was something in his eyes that combined many emotions – hope, a little fear, some uncertainty but also resolve. He stood in front of the King, Mist at his side, and bowed. “Your Grace.”
“You are here again to ask permission to change your name to that of Theon Greymist?”
Theon swallowed. “I am, your Grace. I wish to found my own house here in the North, as a bannerman to House Stark.”
“You are aware of the implications of this?”
“I am.”
The King looked at Robb for a moment. “Young Robb here has recounted the future that he remembers. I understand why you have made this request now.”
Theon’s eyes jerked rapidly to Robb and then back to Robert Baratheon, before he nodded jerkily, a sheen of sweat suddenly on his forehead. Mist looked up at him for a moment, before making a huff noise that seemed to reassure Theon. “I want nothing to do with my father your Grace. When he rebuilt the Iron Fleet he placed my life in danger the moment the first hull was laid down. He cares nothing of me. I care nothing of him. Lord Stark has been a far better father to me than my flesh and blood. I am of the North now.” And then he fell silent, flushing slightly as if with embarrassment at how many words had escaped his mouth.
The King looked at him for along moment from beneath a pair of beetling eyebrows, before finally making a decision. “Theon Greyjoy, bend the knee before me.”
Theon went down one knee at once, visibly trembling just a bit.
There was a long moment and then the King said: “Rise, Theon Greymist. You will have to swear your vows to Lord Stark, but from this moment you have founded a new lordly house here in the North. Do you have any idea of what banner you will fly in your keep, wherever it will be?”
Theon stood, shaking slightly with emotion, before pulling out a piece of cloth with a coat of arms stitched onto it. The King took it. “A blue wolf running over green waves under a grey sky?”
There was an odd noise from Father behind him, and he half-turned to see the Lord of the North deep in thought.
“A good choice,” the King rumbled. “Any words yet?” Theon shook his head, obviously overwhelmed. “Very well then. Talk to Lord Stark in a bit. But for the meantime, that’s all. Off with you.”
Theon looked at Robb, mouthed ‘Ale??’ at him and then walked off looking happy but dazed. As the door close behind him Father rubbed his nose. “Interesting banner,” he muttered, and then something under his breath.
“Who else knows about this?” Robert Baratheon rumbled. “Cat?”
“Aye, her and Jon. Luwin too. Jeor Mormont. And a few others at the Wall – Benjen and Maester Aemon. Oh and Tyrion Lannister, who worked out certain clues.”
“And now us. Let’s keep it to that. Too many more and who knows what might happen.”
Father nodded and looked out of the window again. “And now we await Tywin Lannister.”
The King nodded, a scowl on his face, but just as he seemed about to say something there was a rumble of voices in the corridor, before the door opened to reveal Ser Barristan again. “Your pardon your Grace, but there is a lord from the Reach who craves an urgent audience with you.”
“Who is it?”
“Lord Randyll Tarly your Grace.”
The King’s eyebrows flew upwards. Then he swapped a gaze with Stannis, who looked as if his eyes had turned to agate gems, before sighing and then looking at the door. “TARLY! Get in here you old warhorse!”
A lean bald man with a grey beard strode in, dressed in travel-stained clothes strode in and took a knee in front of the King. “Your Grace.”
“Stand. You’ve come a long way. The Call?”
Lord Tarly went pale for a moment as he stood. “It was loud at Horn Hill, your Grace,” he muttered and Robb could see the others prick up their ears. “Loud enough that… well, my oldest son heard it more than I did. And he found Otherbane, the spear of the Gardner Kings, hidden at Horn Hill. Lord Willas Tyrell holds it now. And he sent me, your Grace. The Call has been sent out and the Reach will answer. As I have some small knowledge of war Lord Willas sent me to find out what exactly the threat is and what the Reach needs to send most urgently.”
Robb raised his eyebrows and then saw the others react as well. “Otherbane?” The bald man looked at him and he nodded at him. “Robb Stark, Lord Tarly. My father holds the Fist of Winter, and his Grace holds Stormbreaker, both weapons of the First Men.”
“Sit down Tarly,” the King muttered. “And tell us all that has happened in the Reach.”
Theon
He sat on the bench in the courtyard, next to the table and small cask of ale, and stared at the mug in his hand. He felt… oddly numb. He had thought that he’d be feeling exultant, and there was a shade of that in the back of his head, but for the most part there was this shocked stillness in his head.
There was still no sign of Robb, but Mist was staring at the doorway in a way that made him feel that he and Grey Wind would join them soon.
He was no longer a Greyjoy. Instead he was a Greymist, the first of his name. He had a better idea of what he was feeling now. Part anticipation about the road ahead, part exultation about his new freedom – he was no longer a hostage to his father’s madness – and part fear about failing.
His new house would be based on him. Him. Was he strong enough? He was sure that he was, but… there was that nagging feeling. Normally he could look back on the fact that he was – had been – a Greyjoy and take fresh strength from that. Not anymore.
“Are you alright lad?” Ser Rodrik Cassel was looking down at him quizzically. “You’ve been staring at that ale for quite a while.”
“I’m…” He paused and then drank some of his ale. “I’m no longer Theon Greyjoy any more. His Grace has given me permission to found my own house now. A Northern house. I am… I am now Theon Greymist.”
The elder Cassel stared at him for a moment, his eyes widening a little, before the old man smiled and slapped him on the back. “Congratulations lad! Or should I say Lord Greymist?”
“I think it is Lord Greymist,” said a voice to one side, and he turned to see Robb approach, Grey Wind next to him. Mist wuffled a greeting at his sibling and then the two direwolves sat and stared at them. Robb poured himself a mug of ale, nodded at Ser Rodrik to do the same and then held his drink up in a salute. “To Lord Greymist! The newest bannerman to House Stark!”
As they all saluted and drank Theon felt the shock of it all lessen a little. It had happened. He had stepped out of the shadow of Balon Greyjoy. It should have been that moment in his life when the sun broke through the clouds. Instead it started to rain gently, a shower that spattered down onto the shingles on the half-roof above their heads.
But they were dry enough where they were and as they finished the mugs he showed the older man his idea for a sigil. Ser Rodrik peered and nodded approvingly. “Any word on where you’d have your keep?”
He shrugged. “Near the coast perhaps. I always wondered about founding a Northern navy on the Western coast.” He felt his nostrils flare a bit. “Protect the coast from the Ironborn.”
Ser Rodrik gazed at him keenly for a moment before nodding sharply. “A good idea,” he grunted. “Another thumb in the eye of your father.”
Robb looked at the white-whiskered master of arms. “Did you ever meet Balon Greyjoy?”
“Saw him once,” was the reply. “After Pyke fell. Man had a face that looked as if he’d eaten a vinegar-soaked rotten onion.” He seemed to be about to say something else when all of a sudden there was a shout from the East Gate, followed by a horn being blown. The older Cassel put his ale down and hurried out into the rain, looking up at the gates, where his nephew was standing with a Myrish spyglass in hand. Theon swapped a troubled look with Robb and they both followed the older man, having tugged up the hoods of their cloaks, with their direwolves padding gravely after them.
After a moment a guard ran out towards Ser Rodrik. “A party on the road,” he gasped. “Bearing the banner… of House Harlaw.”
“Ironborn?” Cassel barked and Theon felt his eyebrows fly up. What was the Reader doing here?
“How many?” Robb asked, his eyes keen.
“Just a half-dozen of them, my Lord.”
Robb looked at Theon, who pulled a face. “Not many.” His felt his face harden. “Watch them and find out why they’re here.”
His friend nodded. “Admit them, but watch them, as Lord Greymist said.” As Ser Rodrik and the guard hurried off Robb looked at him. “Are you ready for this?”
Not really, but he set his chin. “I’ll need to be.”
The party that rode through the gates were indeed Ironborn because they rode as if they were sacks of straw. Not one was a good horseman, but two were slightly better than the others. The first was an old man bearing the banner of House Harlaw, a white scythe on a black background. The second was more interesting, a girl in her mid-twenties, dressed in dark leathers, with short black hair and a nose that was rather impressive. Rather familiar as well.
As the assorted group dismounted, one muttering that he needed a new arse, the two Cassels walked up to them. “What is your business in Winterfell?”
The girl drew herself up. “I am Asha Greyjoy, here bearing a message from Lord Rodrik Harlaw, of Harlaw, for his Grace King Robert.” Then she paused and exchanged a quick glance with the man with the banner, who nodded fiercely at her. “And we have heard the Call.”
So, it was Asha after all. He thought it was her, although his memories of his sister were hazy with age. He put a hand on Mist’s head for a moment and then frowned a little. How would this play out?
The Cassels both turned to look at Robb, and it was only then that the Ironborn seemed to notice them – and the direwolves. Several of them muttered at each other, whilst Asha raised a rain-soaked eyebrow at them.
“Lord Robb, this is Asha Greyjoy,” Ser Rodrik rumbled. “And party.” He glared at the other Ironborn in such a way that made them stir uneasily.
Robb tilted his head as he looked at the Ironborn – and then he looked at Theon. “Lord Greymist,” he said quietly, “Would you help me escort Lady Greyjoy to his Grace the King?”
He nodded. He wanted to grin, but some how this felt right. “Aye. I would.” His sister seemed to dismiss him with a glance, albeit a troubled one because of Mist, before almost openly eyeing Robb’s arse as he led them towards the Great Keep. He had a feeling that his sister might have a few shocks coming to her.
Edmure
It was a mercy to execute the mad Septon Blackfoot.
As he was dragged to the place that had been chosen to execute him it was obvious that he was still raving mad, drooling and laughing as he cried at something that no-one else could see. The men were subdued as they watched him approach and he could understand why. He was completely insane and could not understand that justice was being done. Did he even realise that he had committed crimes that warranted the death penalty?
Blackfoot was dragged to the spot in front of him and he straightened and did his best not to swallow with nerves. This had to be done. His Goodbrother always said that the man who pronounced the sentence should also be the man who swung the sword.
The sword in question was being held by Patrek Mallister, newly returned from Seaguard and oddly quiet. He’d said that his father was marshalling aid for the Wall with all dispatch and that the Call had been heard at Seaguard.
He really needed to talk to Ned.
Patrek held out the sword, which had been sharpened especially for this, and he took it. It was heavy. That was a good thing.
“Kneel,” he commanded. Blackfoot just stood there in front of the block, laughing softly and crying at the same time. There was also that sudden stink about him that made Edmure wrinkle his nose in disgust and he pulled a face and nodded at the guards, who forced the Septon to his knees with out much difficulty.
“In the name of Robert of the House Baratheon, First of His Name, King of the Andals and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm, I, Edmure of the House Tully, son of Lord Hoster Tully of Riverrun, Lord of the Riverlands, sentence you to die. If you have any last words, now is the time.”
The Septon did not say a word – he just hummed and smiled and cried. Edmure looked at Patrek for a moment, who grimaced, and then sighed. “Very well.”
But as he lifted the sword in the air and prepared to swing it the Septon actually finally said something: “…can you hear it?”
He paused, confused. “Hear what?”
There was a pause. “They come.” The Septon said the words in a wondering tone. “They are coming. I hear them. I hear him. Faint. So faint. He’s coming.” The giggle turned into a sob. “Kill me.”
He stared at the man and then hefted the sword again, gauging where to strike on the man’s skinny neck. And then he brought it down, as hard and true as he could. The impact jarred his wrists, but he had judged it right and he panted a little as he stepped back from the headless corpse. The head itself rolled on the ground for a moment, before coming to a stop, the eyes twitching once, twice and then ceasing to move as they went dull with death.
There was a collective sigh from all the men around him and he looked up to the balcony to one side where Father was standing, watching it all. Hoster Tully gave his son a single firm nod and then walked tiredly back into the hall.
Edmure looked at the nearest guards. “Give his body to the Silent Sisters. He served the Seven, before his ambition doomed him, so treat his body with due respect.”
The men nodded and then bent to their work and as they did Patrek approached and took the sword from him. “Normally,” his old friend said, “We would go out now and find wine and wenches and forget the cares of the world. What do you think he meant by his last words?”
He remembered the sensation of metal meeting flesh and bone, and shuddered. “I don’t know,” he said carefully. “But wine sounds like a good idea to me at the moment.”
Asha
Winterfell felt… intimidating. Not that she would ever admit that to anyone. No, she made herself walk as normally as possible, perhaps with a suggestion of swagger. Anything to prevent anyone from suggesting that this place made her uneasy.
The direwolves really made her skin crawl a bit though. There was something about them, something… serious, for want of a better word. Every now and then one of them would look at her in such a way that made her feel very odd indeed.
The two young men leading her deeper into Winterfell also made her think a bit. ‘Lord Robb’ had to be Robert Stark, Ned Stark’s heir. He took after his Tully mother and although he was young he looked as if he was old enough for a tumble or two. Nice arse too. But there was something about his eyes that looked a bit strange, as if his eyes were older than his face.
As for the other lad, he hadn’t taken his hood down when they went indoors, unlike Robb Stark, and there was something odd about him as well. He had a direwolf but his name was Greymist and not Stark, and she had thought that only Starks could have direwolves. Perhaps he was Ned Stark’s bastard son with a new name…
She shook her mind off the men and concentrated on where they were going. They had entered a doorway and were heading up a set of stairs that doubled back on itself as it went upwards, and then along a long corridor. Up another set of stairs and then another corridor that led to a closed door that was guarded by a white-haired man in armour with a white cloak.
“Ser Barristan,” Robb Stark said with a respectful nod of greeting. “We need to see His Grace at once. This is Asha Greyjoy, with a letter from Lord Harlaw.”
The old Kingsguard nodded at the Stark boy and then looked at her, with a slight tilt of the head and a narrowing of the eyes that made her suddenly aware that this man was dangerous in a way that she had seldom seen before. “One moment,” Ser Barristan muttered, before knocking on the door and slipping in. When he returned he nodded. “His Grace is within.”
The room was obviously Lord Stark’s solar, judging from the maps on the walls. But it was the four men within it that made her swallow. She remembered them from after Pyke had fallen and after that, for a while, three of them had appeared in her nightmares. Stannis Baratheon, the man who had smashed the Iron Fleet at Fair Isle. Ned Stark, the Quiet Wolf who had besieged the castle and finally Robert Baratheon, the Demon of the Trident himself. And then there was Randyll Tarly, the grim lord of Horn Hill and the man who had carved a bloody swathe of his own through the Iron Islands during Father’s ill-fated rebellion.
Tarly was standing in front of the largest map, staring up at it and was pale. As she entered she heard the words “A hundred thousand?” fall from his lips, and then he seemed to catch himself and rally.
As for Robert Baratheon he was not what she thought he would be. She remembered the Demon, but had been told by Ironborn merchants who had passed through King’s Landing that the King had gone spectacularly to seed in recent years. Well, those merchants must have been wrong, because the King looked as powerful as ever, although there was something about his midriff that looked a bit saggy. However, his shoulders were as vast as ever and his gaze was azure and frankly rather intimidating.
And there was the huge direwolf by the fire, which made her eyes widen as it looked at her with eyes that seemed to size her up and then dismiss her as a potential threat.
“Well then, Asha Greyjoy,” the King boomed. “Come forth. You have a message from The Reader I have heard?”
She bent the knee for as long as she could bear and then she straightened up and handed the letter over. The King took it with a frown, peered at the seal, cracked it with snap of the thumb and then opened it to read the contents.
“How bad is the civil war in the Iron Islands?” The question came from Stannis Baratheon, who was watching her with a stony expression.
She paused, considered bluffing it out a bit, and then looked the man in the eye. “Bad. My father denies that the Call was real. Greenlander mummery he called it.”
“Did you hear it?” Stark rumbled, his eyes narrowed.
She licked suddenly dry lips. “I heard it,” she muttered as he mind went back to that day. “I was at sea when I heard it. It was… no mummery. It was real.”
“But your father denies it?”
“Balon Greyjoy always was a fool,” Stannis Baratheon rumbled. She wanted to glare at him, but she couldn’t deny that his words were true.
“The Reader calls for help from the Crown,” the King said thoughtfully as he handed the letter to his brother. “Says that Balon Greyjoy is killing those who say that they heard the Call.” He looked at her with eyes that seemed to blaze suddenly with fury. “And he confirms the fact that your father, despite being told not to do so by me, has rebuilt the fucking Iron Fleet. Did he hate his only remaining son, a hostage here in Winterfell, that much, to risk his life?”
She swallowed. That had been something that she had been hoping that the King might miss. Truth be told, she knew that Father had written Theon off years before and had been grooming her as his eventual successor, even though it went against tradition. Time to tell the truth. “If my father had not then he would have been overthrown by his own lords as being weak. Bending the knee to you was… hard, for many, your Grace.”
Something odd glittered in the eyes of Robert Baratheon for a long moment. Then he smiled, or rather he bared his teeth at her. “Well, it’s a moot point I suppose. You’re now your father’s only potential heir at the moment. Plot a careful course.”
She blinked at him for a long moment as horror slowly stole over her. “Theon is dead?”
“No,” Stannis Baratheon muttered as he passed the letter over to Stark, who read it quickly. “He’s just… unavailable for your father.”
“I don’t understand.”
The Hand of the King shrugged. “You will.”
But she persisted. “Is my brother dead?”
“No,” said Robb Stark. “He lives.”
Baffled and more than a bit angry she looked about the room and then glared at the still-hooded Greymist boy, who seemed to be glaring back at her angrily. “What are you staring at?”
The direwolf next to the boy flattened its ears and then glared back at her, confusing her even more, but then the King spoke up again: “So your father has called for a truce and a meeting, but The Reader thinks that it’s a trap?”
She looked back, her thoughts skittering around like a seagull on a frozen pond. “Aye. And I agree with him. Father does not normally do… truces. He will try and gain an advantage.”
“You mean break Guest Rights.” Stannis did not ask it as a question, he merely stated it. “If it’s even offered.”
“Aye, you have the right of it,” Asha admitted. “My father will… probably imprison me. For my own protection, so to speak.” The words tasted bitter in her mouth, like ash leavened with burnt sea salt. “I don’t know what he plans for Nuncle Rodrik. But he will remove us as leaders of those who know that we have to help the Night’s Watch.” She paused, the next words almost closing her throat as they formed themselves in her mouth. “Father… Father gave Nuncle Victarion orders to raze Harlaw to the ground when he attacked us with what remained of the Iron Fleet. I… I do not know him anymore.”
There was a long silence as the men in the room all looked at her, even the bearded Reachman who had finally stopped staring at the map on the wall and muttering things under his breath.
“What help do you need, Asha Greyjoy,” the King eventually said. “What can I do?”
She nodded at him. “Recognition of who we are, your Grace. We represent those who heard the Call. Those who know that we have to send aid to the Wall. And those who know… that the Drowned God…” She fell silent for a moment as she struggled with the words. “Is wrong.” They were the hardest two words that she had ever said in her life.
The others must have realised that by the look on her face, and after a long moment she composed herself again. “Lord Harlaw,” she said in a low voice, “My nuncle Rodrik, found runes in High Harlaw. Runes that glowed eventually and which told a tale that… that spoke of the Drowned God being mad. A… mad thing that was once one of the Old Gods, but who had been driven to that madness by the fight against what was behind the Others.”
As the others frowned and bestirred themselves at her words she pulled out a second letter. “Lord Harlaw transcribed the runes and said that they should be sent to Lord Surestone here in the North, a man who is known to my nuncle as an expert on the old ways of the First Men. Nuncle Rodrik said that he is a good man who can be trusted with any truth.”
It was Lord Stark who took the letter with a sorrowful gaze. “Lord Surestone was my cousin. He is dead – and is much mourned. But his daughter lives and carries on his life’s work and is here in Winterfell, so I shall pass this on to her. You have my thanks.”
She nodded at Lord Stark and then looked over to the King. But the next words that were spoken came from Greymist. “A mad god? Aye, that sounds right. I saw him as a foul creature on an island made from the bones of the dead your Grace.”
Surprised she looked over at Greymist again, whose head was lowered as he clutched at something strung around his neck. “What would you know of the Drowned God?”
“More than you,” came the reply. “I have denied him. I follow the Old Gods now.”
Something prickled at her scalp. “Who are you?”
Greymist, with hands that shook a little, pulled down his hood and she finally got a good look at his face. “I was once Theon Greyjoy. But no more. Today his Grace allowed me to choose a new name as a bannerman of the North, in service to House Stark after my so-called father all but abandoned me. Now I am Theon Greymist. Of House Greymist. And I am a Northman.”
Ah. That explained so much. She was torn in a dozen different directions, wanting to snarl at him, embrace him, pity him, understand his actions… She settled for looking at his direwolf, who looked back at her with a pitiless gaze. “I think I understand,” she said thickly after a moment. “We must talk, brother, but I understand.”
“And I think that I have a solution to your problem,” Stannis Baratheon broke in. “You and your uncle need support from the Crown at this meeting? Then you shall have it, in the form of me. If the Hand of the King attends, then not even Balon bloody Greyjoy can try to break his word.”
“He might have others who are not sworn to him attack, to get around breaking Guest’s Right,” the King said, frowning at his brother. “Oh, and he hates you, Stannis!”
“I can live with that,” the Hand said with a bitter smile. “Besides, it’s not like I’d be going alone. I’d be the dagger in the boot for Lord Harlaw.”
The two Baratheons stared at each other for a long moment, before the King smiled at his brother. “A dagger in the boot indeed. No – something more lethal than that. Very well.” He turned back to her and was about to speak when there was a knock at the door. “Come!”
The door opened to reveal a grey-haired Maester, who bustled in with a message in one hand. “From Castle Cerwyn, your Grace.”
As the Maester left the King unrolled the message. Then his eyebrows flew up before beetling down. “Tywin Lannister was at Castle Cerwyn when this message was sent.” He handed it to Stannis Baratheon. “He will doubtless be here tomorrow.” And then he looked back at her. “I’m afraid that your trip back to High Harlaw will be delayed a few days. The Lannisters are coming.”
Myrcella
Everything had changed and there were times when she wanted to sit and weep for what she had lost. Most of the servants were gone, assigned to other duties, and those who were left were… more reserved than they used to be, especially those who had the livery of House Baratheon. She was no longer their princess.
No. Now she was just a bastard.
It wasn’t a nice name, or a nice term, but it now hung around her neck – and would for all time now.
She didn’t sigh as she worked on her embroidery with the others. No, that was for the privacy of her own rooms. Instead she had to put on a brave face, the face of the bastard of House Lannister. Born of… she didn’t want to think of the word, it made her skin crawl.
At least Sansa Stark had not stopped being her friend. Lord Stark’s eldest daughter had made a point of talking to her, asking her advice about certain stitches, especially those from the South. She liked Sansa – she was kind and cleverer than she had first thought. Certainly cleverer than Mother.
Her thoughts veered away from Mother, like a frightened bird in a room. Mother… scared her at the moment. She had been to see her in her room that morning and the encounter had left her shaking. Mother had assured her of a great many things. That she was still Queen and that Myrcella was still a princess, that this was all just a ghastly mistake that would be rectified soon, as soon as Grandfather arrived. That Joffrey would be King eventually. That Lannisters always – always – paid their debts. And that Father would pay for what he had put them all through.
The look on Mother’s face had been such that she had sat very, very still and eyed the door whenever Mother was ranting at the floor or the ceiling.
As for the rest of the morning, well Father – she meant the King – had been his usual awkward self, not knowing what to say at times and trying to be reassuring in a vague hand-patting way. She would be sent back to the Westerlands, she had been told, and he’d make sure that Grandfather took care of her. There had been a sadness on Fath – the King’s – face whenever he look at her and she knew that he regretted what had happened.
And Tommen… well, her brother had been thinking a lot and he had come to a decision.
“I am going to the Citadel,” he had told her that morning. “I am going to be a Maester. It’s the only solution, ‘Cella. There’s nothing else ahead for me, is there? I’ll never be a Lord, or a knight, I don’t have the metal in me for that. But I like books, I like reading books. And I want to help people.”
She hadn’t known what to say, other than to nod uncertainly and then hug her brave, tremulous little brother.
She hadn’t asked to see Joffrey in his cell. He was wrong in the head, she knew that now. Mad, bad and cruel, just as in some of the songs about the madder Targaryens. She had overheard some of the guards muttering about the mad little bastard and his bruised… well, she didn’t want to think about that. Apparently the wildling girl Val had a ‘hell of a foot’ on her, and the guards seemed to approve of her.
There was an errant thread in her embroidery due to a slightly shaking hand and she unpicked it carefully. She would not think about Robb Stark. She would not. Her dream was dead.
“Are you alright there Myrcella?” It was Sansa, who was looking at her kindly.
“Just a slight mistake,” she said quietly, her eyes misting over for a moment. But a hard blink and a wipe of the finger and all was restored again. She smiled at her friend. “I’m fine.”
Sansa smiled back at her with something behind her eyes that spoke of unsaid words. Then she pulled a slight face. “Father says that your grandfather will be here possibly tomorrow. What’s he like?”
She paused and pulled a slight face of her own. “Grandfather is… very serious. Mother once said that he hasn’t smiled since Grandmother died.”
Sansa seemed to mull that over, exchanging a glance with Beth Cassell, who had been frowning over her own embroidery to one side. Rumour had it that she had been keeping an eye on young Torren Rosestark, who had a bright laugh and even brighter eyes.
“So how do you tell when he’s happy?” Beth asked.
“His eyes twinkle.”
The Northern girls exchanged a glance. “And how does he laugh?”
“He doesn’t. Well… not really. The odd bark. He uses words rather than laughing.” The words ‘You’ll see’ died unsaid on her tongue. Grandfather was hardly going to be happy when he arrived. In fact he was going to be very angry.
Sansa and Beth seemed to exchange a glance that almost read her thoughts, before Sansa cleared her throat. “Your grandfather can’t possibly blame you for all of this Myrcella. You never knew the truth.”
That was true, but her answering smile was still a sad one. “I just wish I knew what the future holds for me,” she said quietly. “I… I think that I will have to wait and see.”
“I can talk to Father, or have Domeric talk to Father as well,” Sansa said quietly. “If that would help?”
She shook her head. “My thanks, but no. I will have to see what is decided for me.”
There was a moment of silent looks and then the others nodded and then they all went back to their embroidery. After a long moment she looked up. “Where is Septa Mordane again?”
Sansa looked a bit flinty at this. “According to Mother she’s having a crisis of faith.”
She paused and looked blankly at the others. “What does that mean exactly?”
“I’m not sure,” Sansa replied, “But Father’s nostrils flare every time the Septa’s name is mentioned. And that’s never a good thing.”
Kevan
Dawn came too early for his liking and he groaned as he sat up and then swung his feet around to meet the rug by his bed. The room was not a large one, but then Castle Cerwyn was not exactly a huge hold.
They had arrived the previous day, just a bit too late to keep going for Winterfell. It was just as well, because he was feeling his years. It had been a long time since he had been pushed this hard. The days after the burning of Lannisport by the Ironborn perhaps, or the ride to King’s Landing at the end of Robert’s Rebellion. Even Tywin looked a bit worn down.
The trip had unnerved him still further. The Kingsroad was well maintained – and it needed to be given the traffic heading North. Not a continuous stream, but a steady flow of men and women heading North and South, going to and from the Wall.
Their arrival at Castle Cerwyn had seen the usual nervousness on his part about what messages they might find there – but there had been nothing new from Winterfell, thank the Seven.
Lord Medger Cerwyn had greeted them at the main gates with bread, salt and wine, along with a very keen-eyed squint at Tywin. “Lord Lannister, be welcome to Castle Cerwyn. Word of your arrival has already been sent to Winterfell.”
Tywin had nodded, murmured the appropriate words of response, sprinkled, eaten and drunk the offerings and then dismissed his men with a tilt of the chin before disappearing off to Lord Cerwyn’s solar.
Kevan had liaised with the steward of the castle about the men, sunk himself into the nearest hot bath, eaten a meal, had some wine that he sorely needed and then thrown himself into bed.
And now it was dawn and he had to get up and break his fast. As he reached the entrance to the hall he saw that Lord Cerwyn was there, talking to his son quietly. As he approached and nodded in recognition the older man dismissed his son and then joined him.
“Your brother is a man of very few words,” Lord Cerwyn said drily. “As I expected from the ravens of late.” He looked at Kevan and he could tell that further words of sympathy were unsaid. Which was good. Too many more words and he might fly apart into a thousand pieces, given his rage and grief.
“Aye,” Kevan replied eventually. “How long do you think to Winterfell?”
“Half a day,” came the reply. “It depends on how hard you ride.”
“My brother is impatient to get there,” he replied wryly. “We have a hard ride ahead.”
This seemed to amuse Lord Cerwyn for some reason. “Aye, well, no-one can ride as hard as Ned Stark. I’m still tired from my own ride to and from Castle Black, and I wasn’t even in the party that made Ned Stark’s great ride south.” His face tightened. “Hard truths were said at Castle Black. Cold reality is never easy to face.”
He stared at the man. “I’m sorry – what hard truths? Is this about the Call? We ride to Winterfell to find out the truth of the matter.”
This time it was Lord Cerwyn’s turn to stare at him. “Surely the cages would have told you of that?”
“What cages?”
Lord Medger Cerwyn turned and directed a look of utter astonishment at him. “You have not seen any of the cages that the Night’s Watch have been bringing South from the Wall?”
“No – what cages?”
The lord of Castle Cerwyn ran his hands over his face and then harrumphed. “The cages that prove the Call! Fortunately a party of man from the Night’s Watch came in late last night. They have a cage. I suggest that you get your brother your leading lords, like that Westerling fellow, and meet me in the hall behind me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’ll find out why Ned Stark allowed a hundred thousand Wildlings through the Wall to settle in the Gift and the New Gift this Winter. Get your brother Ser Kevan.”
Lord Cerwyn vanished into the hall and Kevan stared at his retreating back for a moment, before turning on his heel and then walking back into the courtyard, which was starting to fill up with Lannister men, most of them yawning. Tywin was one of them, already dressed in his riding leathers and looking flinty.
“There you are,” Tywin grated, “We need to be on the road as soon as possible.”
“Cerwyn wants a word – he says it’s important.”
“Doubtless he does,” Tywin replied, his nostrils flaring as he pulled his riding gloves on. “I’m not interested in what he has to say however. Let us leave.”
“He talked of cages that prove the Call. And then he said that Ned Stark has allowed a hundred thousand wildlings into the Gifts, based on presumably these cages.”
Tywin switched his gaze from his gloves to Kevan. “What cages?”
“He said that there is one in the hall and we should see it.”
“He also said that Ned Stark allowed in a hundred thousand Wildlings, did he? Really? Nonsense. There cannot be even a quarter, no, a tenth of that number North of the Wall. The place is a desolate hellhole of ice and snow.”
“And yet he says to come and see.”
Tywin looked at him for a long moment. “Are you saying that I should come?”
“Not me. He is. But I think that you should. We should. The man looks… intent.”
There was a long pause as Tywin openly mulled all of this. And then he pulled his riding gloves off reluctantly and tucked them into his belt. “Very well,” he snarled. “But this had better be worth it.” He turned to one side. “Westerling! Join me.”
Lord Westerling appeared to one side, chewing on a piece of bread. “What’s amiss?”
“Our host has a ‘cage’ of some kind from the Wall that he wishes us to see. We will go, look for a heartbeat, and then leave this place. Winterfell calls.”
Tywin stamped off with his nostrils flared and therefore missed the look on Westerling’s face as the bread all but fell from his hand, before he gathered himself and walked after Tywin. Kevan frowned and caught up with the man.
“What’s wrong?”
“My son wrote to me that he had seen something in a cage that he could not explain, something that I would have to see for myself. He said that it would change me, as it had changed him.” He looked at Kevan and something cold went up and down his spine for a moment due to the look in the man’s eyes. “His handwriting was shaky when it came to those words.”
Dread pooled in his stomach and he strode on, into the hall. Ahead he could see Lord Cerwyn, taking to two men dressed in black. On the table to one side there was a shrouded shape that looked squarish.
Tywin came to a halt in front of the table. “Lord Cerwyn,” he said shortly. “You wish me to see something?”
The Northman looked at Tywin with a certain something in his eyes and after a moment he looked at one of the men of the Night’s Watch and raised an eyebrow.
The older man in black stepped forwards, nodded a half-bow, and then looked at them all. “Alik Snow, my Lords, of the Night’s Watch. Newly come from the Shadow Tower with a cage that was found there, with, erm, new contents.”
Tywin glowered at the man. “What ‘contents’, man?”
Snow stepped back from the table. “Best that you see it for yourself, my Lord. We have been told that when men who have not seen a cage ask about them, they must discover the truth for themselves.”
There was a pause whilst Tywin flared his nostrils again for a long moment, before he finally stepped forwards. “Very well,” he all but snarled. “Let us get this mummery over with.” He reached out and snatched the cloth away from the shape, to reveal a cage that contained… a head? Whoever’s head it was had been a man, with black hair and a scar across his nose and…
Time seemed to stop as the head in the cage suddenly opened very blue eyes and then hissed at them all before gnashing its teeth.
After a long moment Kevan seemed to unfreeze himself from his suddenly rigid posture. “What is this… thing?”
But oddly enough it was Tywin who answered. “The runes on the cage explains it, brother. ‘Proof of wight’, or close enough to that.” He looked at Snow. “This is real?”
The man of the Night’s Watch spread his hands. “You may pick it up to see for yourself, Lord Lannister. It is no trick. No mummery.”
To be fair he could not but admire his brother’s nerve as he reached out with hands that did not shake to pick up the cage and then jiggle it about so that the head bounced about enough to see the white of the severed spine at the base of the skull. Then he replaced it on the table. “I see.” The words were said flatly. And then: “You have my thanks Snow. And you Lord Cerwyn.”
Tywin pulled his riding gauntlets from his belt and then turned on his heel. “We ride for Winterfell at once,” he told Kevan, but there was something in his eyes, just for a moment, that said that he was shaken.
Kevan nodded, still rooted to one place as he stared at the head of what had to be a wight. His mind was whirling like a sycamore seed from the implications. Wights. Wights were real.
After a long moment he turned and walked from the hall. And as he did so he noticed that Gregor Clegane had followed them in and was staring at the head of the wight with a look that almost amounted to… fear?
Daenerys
According to the songs and legends the great heroes and heroines of yesteryear would roll themselves up in their blankets at night, put their heads on the grass and slept easily.
Given the aches and pains she had on waking up that morning, the songs and legends were nothing but a load of tosh, as old Ser Willem would have said.
She looked out over the rolling hills of Andalos and sighed a little before wincing as something in her neck complained. Well, perhaps the ride today would somehow get the kinks out. That’s all they had been doing for some days now. Just… riding. North into Andalos.
It was quite beautiful, in a way. Andalos. The place where the Andals had come from. It was just so… hilly. And empty. Mile after mile of nothing. Apart from the hummocks. The hummocks disturbed her. According to Lord Varys they were the remains of buildings. Farmhouses and other places long since fallen into less than rubble.
The Andals were gone from here. Or rather, almost gone. They had passed through a small village yesterday, which had been a strange experience. Varys had made her pull her hood up before they had reached it.
“Memories of the Valyrians run deep here,” Varys had told her. “And of other, darker things.”
He had said nothing more and had dealt with the negotiations in the village for more food. From what she had heard the villagers spoke the common tongue, but with archaisms. A lot of ‘thee’ and ‘thou’. And they had stared at her with deep suspicion.
“Few pass through this area,” Varys had told her afterwards. “Pentos claims this area, but does nothing with it. So few know what’s out here. Illyrio and I were the first in years to start asking questions about it. The people there know me, which is why I did all the talking back there.”
She yawned tiredly and then pulled her robes closer around her before walking over to where Varys was talking to the senior Unsullied guard, a tall grey-eyed man called Black Rat. There were twenty of the Unsullied with them, those that apparently Illyrio Mopatis had left to Varys in his will, although from what he had said there might be others somewhere.
“How are you today my dear?” Varys asked. His head and cheeks were freshly shaven and she wondered just why he needed to keep himself so trim. That and where he had gotten the hot water.
“I am still not used to sleeping on the ground,” she replied with a yawn. “And I could do with a bath. But you warned me of those things and I am fine otherwise.”
Varys smiled briefly and then nodded at Black Rat, who stamped, turned on his heel and left, bellowing orders as he left. A servant approached and handed over platters of ham and bread, along with a flask of what must be well-watered wine and Varys waved her to a pair of camp stools as they broke their fast.
“We will be at our destination by noon,” Varys told her. “And there will be ample chance there to rest and bathe. Illyrio liked his luxuries and Bolthole is well equipped and provisioned.”
This was the first time that he had told her where they were headed for and she raised her eyebrows at him. “Bolthole?”
Lord Varys smiled at her briefly. “Illyrio was always a man with a plan. And then a backup plan in case anything happened. And then a backup plan in case the backup plan went wrong. Bolthole is aptly named. It was his fallback position in case of disaster at Pentos.”
She thought about that and then nodded. “Such as Pentos being attacked?” The memory of seeing that black and greasy smoke on the horizon was a dark one.
“Just so my dear. And Illyrio built it in a place where not even Andals will go.”
She paused and stared at him. “I don’t understand.”
Varys smiled slightly at her as he ate the last of his bread and ham and then swigged from the flask. “You will. I will explain as we go.”
That explanation did not come for a while. Once again they all saddled up, once again she fed her dragons and made sure that they were alright before mounting her own horse and once again they set out into the hilly terrain. Here and there she saw a herd of what looked like wild cows, and once again here and there she saw the hummocks.
As the Sun climbed high and higher in the sky and they rode down what might have been the remains of an old road that had been abandoned long before she finally found Varys riding next to her.
“Do you see those… low rises on the horizon?” Varys asked.
She peered at where he was pointing to, westwards. “I do. By the mound?”
“Aye. That’s the remains of what was once the largest town in Andalos. All gone now, thousands of years ago. Nothing but low shapes on the horizon. But the mound… You know your history, my Lady? Of the Andals?”
“I think I do,” she said cautiously. “But now that I have seen this place I am not as sure as I was. This land is very empty. Why?”
“Oh, many reasons. A lack of settlers for one. But also because the Andals that remain here… remember. They remember dread. And the mound is a reminder. They avoid this place, just as there are certain words that the few inhabitants here… avoid. One is ‘Stark’.”
She frowned. “I thought that Theon Stark, the Hungry Wolf, only raided the shore of Andalos?”
“Oh, he did more than that. A fascinating subject, history.” Lord Varys smiled a very odd little smile. “Full of doors opening and shutting, closing off some things that might have been. Oh, what might have been.” He seemed to catch himself after a moment and then refocus. “Anyway, there were always things about the Andal Invasion of Westeros, and the North’s reaction to it that always puzzled me. Why the North was so defensive at first, before attacking Andalos in the way that it did.”
She frowned. “Their friends to the south were being invaded, why would they not attack?”
“Yes, but they were armed with bronze whilst the Andals had iron! And then I realised something. Theon Stark was a man driven to defend his homeland. A man driven by war, a man who knew that you needed every advantage in war. I researched the history of the time. The North dealt with the Andal attacks on its shores not with bronze swords at times, but with flights of arrows. And there are references to prisoners. It makes sense – how else could they have divined the secret of iron, other than from Andal prisoners?”
She thought about that and then pulled a face. “You think that…”
“They tortured people for the secret of iron? Of course. Theon Stark was a man seeking to protect his people, to pass on what he could to his son. I imagine that torture was the first thing that came to mind. And then he needed time. Time to find deposits of iron in the North, to mine it, refine it, work it… and then use it.”
Varys looked around at the hills around them. “The histories are wrong, you see. He didn’t just raid the shores of Andalos. Oh, so many had left, before then, driven by the thought of plunder and free land, by the fact that the Valyrians were coming, that others wanted to raid other places, and so on. No, Theon Stark came to drive a knife into the heart of Andalos. He went beyond the coast to there – the place where the First Sept stood. By that mound.”
She looked at the mound on the horizon. “What is that mound, Lord Varys?”
“When the Hungry Wolf came to Adalos he had his men kill everyone they found. Men. Women. Children. And then he had his men behead the bodies. The mound… that is where they left the heads. And they left, back to the North.”
She stared at him – and then back at the mound on the horizon. “But…”
“Oh, they also covered it with sod and grass, and the mound had settled due to, well, rot, but yes. It’s 70 feet tall and 300 long. Imagine the numbers. And that is why the local Andals avoid the place. And why the name Theon Stark is a curseword here.” He looked ahead of them and then smiled as a long low farmstead cane into view. “Bolthole. We are here.”
Tyrion
“Will everything have to have fur on it at the Wall?” Jaime asked as he held up the black cloak with its fur at the collar and peered at it.
“Not everything,” Tyrion said with a smile that he did not entirely feel inside. It was earlier in the morning than he was normally awake at, but Jaime was leaving for the Wall with the latest party, and he had no intention of missing a moment of his brother’s remaining time in Winterfell. “Smallclothes with fur is a bad idea. Too sweaty.”
Something that might have been almost a smile flashed over his brother’s tired, drawn, face. He still looked as if he hadn’t been getting nearly enough sleep. Not that Tyrion blamed him. He had been discussing the implications of everything with Uncle Gerion, which were horrific enough for their family, plus Father was due sometime today. Jaime wanted to avoid Father.
He held out a fat envelope. “Here.”
“What’s this?” Jaime frowned as he took it.
“Everything I could remember about the Wall. What it’s like, what the people are like, what the temperature is like… everything I could think of from my time there.”
This time the smile was a little more long-lasting, if considerably more wry. “Thank you,” Jaime sighed eventually. “You’re a better brother than I deserve.”
“Pish-posh,” Tyrion replied with a wave of his hand. “It’s the least I can do. Besides, you’re supposed to be impressed by my heroics at the Wall.”
Jaime tilted his head and look at him. “This is me, Tyrion. You only use the words ‘pish-posh’ when you’re trying to hide the fact that you are upset.”
He sighed. “I just… I don’t know when we’ll meet next.” But then he glared at Jaime. “But we will meet again, so don’t go getting all maudlin on me! This war that is coming at the Wall… Robert Baratheon is right, it is the great war and it is here.”
That ghost of a smile came and went again. “We’re Lannisters. We don’t do maudlin, brother. We snark at each other and then slap each other on the back.” He looked at the cloak again. “Maybe you’re right though. We will meet again. Perhaps you’ll be married by then?”
He felt himself turn slightly pink. “More than likely.”
“Tyrion, there’s something you need to know. About-” But he was interrupted by a scuff of the boot on a flagstone and they both looked over to see Ser Barristan Selmy approach, with a certain flinty look about the eyes.
“Lord Tyrion,” the old Kingsguard said with a nod. “Ser Jaime.” He came to a halt before them and then looked Jaime up and down. “You depart for the Wall. Before you go there you should know that a raven came from King’s Landing. Lord Arryn wrote that your tale of wildfire has been confirmed.”
Jaime’s chin came up, but no smile crossed his face. He was too busy staring at Selmy. “What? What else?”
Selmy cleared his throat roughly. “The numbers were worse than you had stated. More than a thousand barrels were hidden beneath the city. 300 alone were in the lowest level of the Red Keep.
Tyrion gaped and felt almost faint for a moment as he did a swift calculation in his head. “That… that many would have been enough to level the Red Keep. Right down to the bedrock. My gods… and were the same number in the other places that Jaime mentioned?”
“Aye. About 250 each under the Great Sept and the Dragonpit, and 50 barrels under each gate. Other caches as well. Enough to destroy the city. You were right to kill Aerys and Rossart.”
Jaime’s eyes had widened hugely and he swallowed. “I… knew that they had planned such a madness, but the scale… my gods. 300 barrels under the Red Keep? I thought it was half that number!”
“Aye, his Grace the King and the Lord Hand were stunned as well. Messages are being sent to King’s Landing.” He pulled out a small pouch from where he had been holding it in the folds of his cloak and then tossed it over to Jaime. “Here. Don’t open it.”
Visibly confused Jaime looked at the pouch. “What is it?”
“The ashes of your white cloak.”
Jaime flushed and glared at the pouch. In response Ser Barristan placed both hands on the pommel of his sword. “I have never understood you, Lannister. You joke and jape and make comments that you think are clever, but you can be serious when it is needed. You are a decent swordsman. And you did the right thing when you killed Aerys. You fulfilled your vow as a knight to protect the innocent, saving King’s Landing from an insane king. You did what I could not. You became the best of us in that moment, you broke your first oath to a King for the noblest of reasons. And then you broke your second oath to a King for the basest, most carnal, of reasons.”
The old Kingsguard stepped forwards. “Ser Davos Seaworth wears his knucklebones in such a pouch to remind him of what he has. Wear that pouch as a memory of what you once were, the greatest of us all before you fell. Try and become such a man again. The Wall shows the true metal of a man. We’ll have to see what emerges.” And with those words he strode off again.
Jaime stared at his retreating back and then looked at the pouch again with some distaste. “Well,” he said eventually, “I suppose I should be grateful that he didn’t smear my face with the ashes.”
“Don’t lose that pouch though.” They both jumped slightly and then turned to look at Uncle Gerion, who had been watching the whole thing to one side. “It’s important.”
Tyrion looked at his uncle carefully. He seemed very serious. “Why? It’s just ashes?”
Uncle Gerion strode forwards and looked at Jaime intently, laying a hand on his right shoulder. “Because Selmy is right. You need to show what you’re made of at the Wall. Don’t throw that pouch away – I can see that you want to, I see it in your eyes, nephew. You need to keep it. Seeing it will drive you to change. To be the better man that I know is within you.”
“Uncle,” Jaime started to say with a slight frown on his face, “I-”
“Jaime, listen to me. Keep that pouch. I had a greendream about this. Nebulous strange things, greendreams, but this one was clearer than some others I have had in the past. You were on a narrow path, with fog on either side. When you kept the pouch you stayed on that path. Without it you wandered away into the fog and were lost.”
His brother stared at their uncle, his face pale. “You’ve changed Uncle Gerion,” he said eventually. “You’ve changed.”
Uncle Gerion smiled crookedly – and then he pulled his eyepatch to one side so that they could both see the terrible hole in his face. “I had to change,” he said. “I’m not the same man who sailed away to find Brightroar. This changed me, as did other things – look at me Jaime, not at your boots! You need to change now. It’s time. We’ll meet again at the Wall. Be safe nephew.” He replaced the eyepatch, embraced a white-faced Jaime and then strode off in the same direction as Ser Barristan.
There was something of a pause as Tyrion waited for Jaime to recover himself and truth be told to pull himself together a bit. After a while Jaime put the pouch away in his robes, turned to Tyrion – and then sighed as he caught sight of something over his shoulder. “One of my new brothers is standing over there and scowling at me, so it’s time to go. I’m sorry that I’m leaving you to deal with Father, but frankly I can’t face him.”
Tyrion nodded choppily. “I’ll take care of Father. And I’ll keep an eye on Tommen and Myrcella.”
His brother looked sadly at him for a moment. “I’m not their father, Tyrion. I fathered them, but I’ve never allowed myself to think of them as my children. I couldn’t.” He took a deep breath, looked at Tyrion as if he was about to say something – and then paused and sighed. “Your lady love approaches. Be safe, brother. Take care.” He squatted down a little so that he could hug him and then he walked off, his face creased with lines of care.
Tyrion turned to look at Dacey, who was watching him with a slightly worried look. “Dacey.”
“Tyrion.” She nodded at Jaime’s departing figure. “Cat told me that he leaves for the Wall this morning. Are you alright?”
“No,” he muttered, squinting at his feet for a moment and then looking back up again. “I will be though, with time.” And then something occurred to him. “I have talked to Ned Stark, as you suggested, after you talked to him as well, but I have just realised that I have not asked you the most important question of all. Will you be my wife, Dacey Surestone? I have very little to offer you, save my heart, but I love you.”
“And I love you. Of course I will be your wife,” she smiled as she leant down and kissed him on the lips. “Was there ever any doubt with that?”
“My father is coming,” he muttered as he wondered why her lips had felt like rose petals, “And he might have something to say about that.”
She clasped her hands together in front of her and tilted her head slightly. “Then I shall have something to say to him.”
And with that they watched as Jaime got into his saddle and then trotted his horse to join a group of men in black at the northernmost gate. His brother turned in his saddle and nodded at him, before they all rode out of the gate. Heading North.
“Ned said that they’ll take the old road North of here,” Dacey told him quietly. “They won’t meet your father.”
“Good,” Tyrion answered. And then he set his own chin. “There’s a lot that my father needs to know.”
Robb
Father stalked up and down in front of them all, his eyes hard and uncompromising as he inspected them all. He sniffed a bit as he came to a halt to one side, glared at them all again and then nodded slightly. “Ah, you’ll do,” he said grudgingly. “Not bad.”
He exhaled slightly in relief and swapped a glance with Grey Wind, who looked almost as relieved as he felt. To one side Frostfyre snorted, but if that was in admonishment at Father or at the other direwolves in the room, he wasn’t sure. He also noticed that Jon and Theon, as well as their own direwolves, relaxed a little as well. The three of them were all in clothes that rivalled what they wore the day the King arrived.
“Right, now listen to me,” Father said, making them all straighten a little. “Tywin Lannister is a proud, prickly, arrogant man who has a mind for intrigue and a very long arm.” He eyed Robb for a moment and he nodded a little, remembering that other life for a moment. Father then continued: “And above all he comes after his family has been publicly humiliated. The revelation of his children’s incest and treachery will have hit the Old Lion hard – very hard indeed.
“Do not smile at him. Do not make him think that he is a figure of scorn, pity or ridicule. Be as serious as you can around him. Do not give him the slightest reason to complain – and if he is foul-tempered then he might see offence in the smallest of things. So – be wary. Word has come to me that his party contains some rather interesting men. His brother Kevan is with him, which is a good thing – he’s a good, solid man. Be careful around him as well though. And there’s Ser Gregor Clegane. Yes, Robb, the Mountain is coming. I’ve warned the servants. I’ve also warned the Hound.”
“The Mountain’s coming?” Jon asked, scowling a bit. “Why did he bring him? The man’s a monster.”
“Aye,” Father said, scowling himself. “I remember what he did in the Red Keep. I also remember the reports of the way that he behaves at times, which is why I warned the servants. Your sisters too.”
Theon’s face twisted a little. “Lord Stark, what do we do if the Mountain does attack someone though, and we witness it?”
“Call for help at once. Scream if you have to. There’s no shame in seeking help against a man like that. He’s been known for beating women to death after raping them. Be wary of him.”
They all nodded. Father swept them all with a gaze and then nodded. “Right. Have any of you seen Bran and the other two members of the Terrible Threesome?”
The other two looked at Robb, who smirked. “I delivered them into the hands of Shireen and told her to keep them out of trouble. The last time we saw them she was organising them.”
Father looked at him with a raised eyebrow and a slightly twitching mouth that spoke of a smothered smile. “Excellent,” he said after a while. “I’m proud of you. Bran will sulk mightily, but she’ll keep that lot out of trouble. Right – let’s get ready.”
He swept out, Frostfyre at his side, and the three looked at each other. “Right,” Jon said eventually. “So, now we wait. What do we do whilst we wait?”
They ended up just sitting on a bench watching as Winterfell organised itself around them, often thanks to some barked commands from Father. They watched as Arya was chased out of the Godswood by Mother, as Septa Mordane swept past deep in thought and as Maester Luwin scurried about with messages. And they watched as Gendry appeared wearing new clothes and looking as if he wanted the ground to open up and swallow him right there and then.
They looked at the blacksmith as he wandered past them and then looked at each other. “Any word on what the King will do with that one?” Theon asked in a cautious low voice. “I mean, will he legitimise his bastards?”
There was a pause as they all mulled this over. And then a collective shrug. “Father hasn’t said anything,” Robb admitted. “And the King has to do something. Marry again. Legitimise his bastards. Or stay with Lord Stannis as his heir. But House Baratheon’s a bit thin right now. And-”
But he never got a chance to finish what he was about to stay, because all of a sudden there was a shout of “JON STARK!” that made them all jump, just before a furious red-haired figure appeared in a dress. It was Ygritte and she seemed to be extremely angry.”
“What?” Jon asked, as bewildered as the rest of them.
“This! This… thing!” She plucked at the dress. “Apparently you mentioned to Mance that my furs had started to smell a bit, so he talked to Lady Stark and she found this fucking thing for me! What the bloody hell is the point of the hole at the bottom! The wind’s blowing right up me arse and as for me-"
Jon turned bright red and threw his hands up. “I’m sorry! I never thought that you wouldn’t…” He paused. “I thought that you’d seen dresses before?”
“Spearwives do not wear things like this!” She barked at him. “And the breeze around my arse would kill me North of the Wall! I didn’t think that there’d be this little to it!”
“Wait, what about your smallclothes?”
She paused, her eyes narrowing. “Nothing like that was delivered.”
“It must have! Let me ask Lady Stark for you! There must be more!” And with that he escorted her away, gabbling quite a bit and still red-faced.
Robb and Theon watched them go, both with mouths twitching and the moment that they were out of sight they both dared to look at each other – and then they both howled with laughter, laughing until the tears ran down their faces. And when they heard a faint cry of “I heard that you buggers!” they laughed even harder.
“Gods,” Theon giggled eventually. “Do you think that poor bugger has a clue?”
“No,” Robb wheezed when he was able to. “That girl has her eye on him! But can you imagine her in charge of a keep?”
“It would never lack for rabbits, she’d always be out with that bow of hers!” And that set them both off for a while again.
When they finally recovered Theon pulled a slight face. “I wonder who Lady Greymist will be?”
“Whoever you want it to be,” Robb said, slapping him on the shoulder. “Who knows?”
Theon smiled wryly and peered at his feet. “I like Ros. From Wintertown. But then she’s a whore. Might not be the best lady for Castle Greymist, wherever that might be.”
“Any thoughts on where you want that castle to be?”
His friend scowled a little. “Aye. The Stony Shore perhaps. You need someone there to keep an eye on those Ironborn buggers. Build a Western fleet for the North. Or a flotilla at least.”
He eyed Theon for a long moment. “Aye,” he said thickly. “I can’t think of anyone better to have there.”
The moment was broken by a horn blast from the South gatehouse, a high and clear note. Voices were heard shouting down and up and after a long moment Jory Cassel came into view. “A column of men in red to the South my Lords,” he panted. “Riding hard for Winterfell.”
He stood quickly. “Their numbers?”
“A hundred of them at least Lord Robb.”
“Very well – tell my father Lord Stark and his Grace the King that Tywin Lannister is here.” As Jory ran off he exchanged a grim look with Theon. “And now it begins.”
Kevan
The moment that the towers of Winterfell appeared on the horizon something seemed to freeze deep in his bowels. The capital of the North, and they were riding in there to see what had happened to his niece and nephew. But there was something else. Was Lancel alright? Had he been harmed? Of course he was alright, of course he was well, this was the North, where Guest Right was inviolate… but there was still the small terrified voice of fatherly fear.
The closer they got the more he could sense the tension amongst the men, including bloody Clegane. Apart from Tywin that is. He was riding with his usual stony face. But he knew his brother and he could see the signs of tension here and there – the set of an eyebrow, the lines on either side of his mouth. He knew that Tywin was strained.
As they approached the gatehouse that the road led to he could feel the eyes on them all. He could also see that Wintertown, the so-called temporary town by Winterfell, was being worked on by large numbers of men and women, whilst what looked like barley and oats were being grown in the fields everywhere.
The banner of House Stark seemed to be flying everywhere, but it was the largest flag flying from the highest tower that made him wince a little. It was the Baratheon stag, showing that the King was in residence. And nowhere was the Baratheon-Lannister flag that Cersei always insisted on.
Approaching the main gate he could see that there was a head on a spike above it and his stomach roiled for a moment as he peered up at it. Tywin did the same, but it was the head of an unknown man who seemed to have been scorched somehow.
Through the gate they rode, and inside the first courtyard, where he could see large numbers of men bearing the colours of Houses Stark and Baratheon. And first amongst them were Lord Eddard Stark, who was standing there with some kind of mace at his hip and his Grace the King, Robert Baratheon – and he stared at the man.
He had been in King’s Landing the previous year on Tywin’s business, and he had been quietly contemptuous at how Baratheon had let himself go, becoming fat and lazy. But the man in front of him was not that man. No, this was the Robert Baratheon of Pyke again, almost the Demon of the Trident. Tyrion had written that the man had been driving himself hard of late. Well, this was the truth of it.
Stannis Baratheon was next to his brother, the hand pin prominent in his jerkin, and he could see Catelyn Stark and what must have been the Stark children next to her. One looked remarkably like Ned Stark and another looked like a Tully, so based on what he had read of the Starks one must be the bastard and the other the heir. Both were looking at Tywin warily, although there was something about the eyes of the heir that made him pause. As he dismounted and joined Tywin and the others in bending the knee to the King he flashed a quick look at the crowd and to his relief he could see Lancel standing there, very much alive and unharmed. The little voice of fear shriveled and died.
“Rise, Lord Lannister,” the King rumbled and as he rose he could see that Ser Barristan Selmy was behind him, clutching a large and ancient sword. “Be welcome to Winterfell.” His voice was as powerful as ever, but there was something else. Anger?
Stark stepped forwards, one hand on the head of that mace, and then waved a hand at some servants, who strode forwards with bread, wing and salt. “Welcome to Winterfell, Lord Lannister,” said Stark. “Welcome to the North.”
Tywin partook on behalf of them all and then turned to the King. “Your Grace, word reached on our way here of certain… events here at Winterfell. We must talk of them before anything else.”
“Agreed,” the King rumbled. There was something in his voice that he just couldn’t put his finger on – was it angry anticipation? “Lord Stark foresaw this and has offered the use of his solar. We’ll go there now.”
As the King, his Hand and Lord Stark strode off towards a doorway Tywin glanced at Kevan and grunted just one word over his shoulder before joining them: “Come.” He nodded back but then quickly walked over to Lancel, who met him halfway. They embraced quickly.
“You’re alright?” Kevan asked, looking hi m up and down. “Not-” he looked around quickly at the milling crowd as they helped the Lannister men to dismount. “Not mistreated?”
Lancel shook his head, blond hair flying. “No, Father. Not at all. It’s been difficult but Uncle Gerion has been keeping everyone informed as to what was happening. Under control as well. It’s so good to see you though.”
He smiled, stealing a glance at the doorway through which Tywin was stepping. He’d have to scurry to join them. “Good, I was worried. And-” It was then that the words that his son had said hit him. “Wait… ‘Uncle Gerion’?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Lancel, your Uncle Gerion died years ago.”
“People keep saying that,” said a very familiar voice behind him. “But I got better.”
He turned on his heel and then felt his eyes widen a very great deal. Gerion. It was Gerion. He had an eyepatch and was thinner, and there were lines on his face and traces of grey at his temples that had not been there before, but it was Gerion. “Good gods,” he said faintly. “Gerion.”
“Kevan,” his brother said with a quirked smile. Then he looked him up and down. “You got fat.”
“Gerion. I…” He had no words.
“Gods, brother, don’t tell me that you’re going to faint like Tyrion did when he first saw me.”
He shook his head and then strode up to his brother and hugged him. “Damn it Gerion,” he choked out, “We all thought you were dead.”
Gerion hugged him back for a long moment and then broke away and held him at arm’s length. “I’m hard to kill. And it’s all a long story. I’m sorry I wasn’t here to stand by the King and see Tywin’s face when you rode in, but I had to send a letter. Allarion!” This shout brought up a young man with rather darker skin, but the undoubted look of a Lannister. Gerion laid a hand on the lad’s shoulder. “Your mother has written. You have twin brothers. She has named them Tytos and Tyrek.”
What looked like tension left Allarion’s shoulders and he closed his eyes and nodded, before looking at Kevan. “Ser Kevan, I am Allarion. Your nephew.”
He looked at his new nephew for a long moment, taking in his looks, his expression of carefully hidden shyness. “I am glad to meet you, nephew,” he said warmly. And then he recalled where he was. “Your pardon, I must get to Lord Stark’s solar at once.”
“I will take you there – I am due there too,” Gerion smiled as he clapped a hand on Kevan’s shoulder. “Now, I will bet you a silver stag that Tywin’s first words on seeing me will be a simple statement that I am still alive, followed by him asking if I found Brightroar.”
He pulled a slight face. “Mayhaps. Did you?”
Gerion’s smile faltered for a moment. “It’s a long story.”
He nodded and started to walk towards the doorway. And then he remembered what was just as important. “Cersei and Jaime – where are they?”
Gerion’s smile vanished. “Both alive,” he said grimly. “But she’s in a guarded room here in Winterfell and Jaime’s head for the Wall. He’s a man of the Night’s Watch now, Kevan.”
The doorway loomed ahead. “Gerion – what happened?”
His brother faltered slightly as they passed through it. “Foolishness, selfishness and stupidity, the like of which I have never seen. The King will tell you and Tywin what happened.” A sigh. “We Lannisters will be facing the implications of this for years afterwards. For years.”
Ned
His father had laid down some Arbor Gold years before the Rebellion. At Harrenhall Brandon had joked that as soon as he became Lord of the North he’d drink it all. After Ned had become the Lord of the North he had barely touched any of it.
Now, however, it was time to use it and he poured out four goblets of it and then handed one to Robert, one to Stannis and the other to Tywin Lannister, who was looking about the solar with carefully hidden interest – particularly in the map.
“My apologies, your Grace, Lord Stark, I thought that my brother was following me more closely than it seems that he was.”
Heh. Gerion had been talking to Luwin about something, so he hadn’t been in the courtyard when his brothers had arrived. Well, now he was very likely going to see it close-up.
There was a knock on the door and Ser Barristan entered. “Your pardon your Grace but – she’s back Lord Stark.”
Robert raised an eyebrow took a sip of wine which hid the amused tilt to his lips. Then he looked at the wine, raised the other eyebrow and nodded at Ned in appreciation. “A fine wine Ned.”
The door opened fully and Frostfyre padded through and went to Ned’s side, where she then stared at the Lord of the Westerlands. He had to give the Old Lion his due, he barely reacted to the sight of the huge creature. Instead Lord Lannister merely nodded slightly. “An impressive beast. Tyrion wrote to say that you had acquired a direwolf.”
He nodded – and then the door opened again to reveal a somewhat white-faced Kevan Lannister. He at least stopped and stared at the sight of Frostfyre, until he was apparently poked in the back by Gerion Lannister, who stepped into the room, closed the door firmly and then nodded at his oldest brother. “Tywin.”
There was a pause as Tywin Lannister stared at his brother, his eyes just a bit wider than they had been, one hand frozen in mid-air in front of him – and then the hand closed, the eyes narrowed a little and he leant back and took a sip of the wine that Ned had poured for him. “Gerion. Still alive I see. Did you find Brightroar?”
Gerion smiled and extended a hand in the general direction of Kevan, who scowled and dug into a pocket to place a coin into that hand. “I bet Kevan a silver stag that one of the first things you asked me would be about Brightroar. We shall talk of it later. I have it. And…” He flipped the eyepatch up to show the terrible hole in his face. “What it cost me.” The eyepatch was flipped down and then Gerion sat firmly down in a chair and with a nod and a smile accepted the goblet of wine that Ned had poured for him.
There was another pause as Tywin Lannister stared hard at his brother – and then the moment passed as he looked at Robert. “Your Grace. I have come to Winterfell to ascertain the truth of this ‘Call’ that has roiled across the land. But on the way word reached me of certain… allegations about my son and daughter. Your Grace, I must ask this question first – where are Jaime and Cersei?”
Robert’s nostrils flared a bit. “You deserve to hear this from me first Lord Lannister. Cersei is in a room here in Winterfell under guard. She is no longer my wife, I have annulled the marriage due to her… behaviour, to put it politely, with her own brother. Behaviour that amounts to treason. As for Jaime, he is on his way to the Wall, where he will join his new brothers of the Night’s Watch. He has sworn his vow, joined the Order and left this morning.”
Tywin Lannister’s own nostrils flared for a moment as his knuckles whitened around his goblet for a moment, but he seemed to ignore Kevan Lannister’s groan of dismay. He opened his mouth for a moment – and then he closed it and seemed to gather his thoughts before starting again. “I take it that the accusation of incest that has been made against them is a real one?”
“Both accusation and proof were real,” Robert said in a voice like thunder. “I wish with all my heart that they were not, but they were seen engaging in open fornication by my Hand Lord Baratheon. Lord Stark and Ser Barristan Selmy, as well as others.”
The knuckles whitened again around the goblet. “There could be no chance of… misinterpretation?”
“None,” Stannis said in a voice like iron. “They were both naked, he was inside her and she had her legs wrapped around him.”
Kevan gave a groaning sigh again, whilst Tywin’s lips thinned for a heartbeat into near invisibility. “I see,” he said eventually. “And… I understand the annulment. May I ask about the circumstances in which they were discovered?”
And here was the dangerous ground. He leant forwards slightly. “Jaime Lannister was observed beforehand acting in a highly suspicious manner, taking bedclothes to an unoccupied room in the Broken Tower. Given the nature of the vows of the Kingsguard this was peculiar. When his sister joined him, this was beyond peculiar. A party was formed and they were discovered in the act of incest.”
Tywin Lannister’s left eyebrow twitched upwards for a moment. “And what of the children?”
Robert pulled a face. “They are his,” he said heavily. “I wish that it was not so, but it is true. They are his.”
“Says who?” Tywin snapped. “What proof is there?”
“His own word,” Stannis snapped back. “Your son Jaime wrote a full confession, recounting his actions. His crimes.” He handed a scroll over to Robert, who seemed to weigh it in his hands for a moment.
“Lord Lannister, he did not write this under duress,” Robert rumbled after a moment. “He wrote this of his own free will. He was not tortured into it. And he was allowed to join the Night’s Watch for two reasons. The first was his free confession. And the second was more… complicated.”
“You and I and Ser Kevan there and every man of the armies that we led into King’s Landing on the day of the death of Aerys Targaryen owe their lives to your son,” Ned said hoarsely. “Because Jaime admitted the true reason why he killed the last Targaryen king. He did not do it to please you, or to curry favour with what were then the rebels, but to save the city.”
The Old Lion’s forehead creased slightly. “I don’t understand.”
“Tywin,” said Gerion gently, “Did you not ever wonder why Aerys chose Rossart to be his last Hand? The Chief Pyromancer?”
Tywin Lannister froze in place ever so slightly. “Tell me.” The words were utterly flat in their inflexion.
“He had Rossart brew a lake of wildfire,” Robert sighed as he leant back in his own chair and stared at the fire. “And he was going to have Rossart ignite it when my army entered the capital. Probably thought that the explosion would turn him into a dragon or some such lunacy.” He turned his gaze from the fire to Tywin Lannister. “Your son discovered this plot and killed Aerys the moment that he gave Rossart the order to carry it out. He saved a lot of lives. The whole city in fact.”
Tywin Lannister sat there and seemed to absorb that, before leaning forwards a little and running a hand over his forehead for an instant. “I see,” he said. “Why was this not made known?”
“Because the bloody fool did not tell anyone!” Robert muttered. “Fair enough, he thought it would cause a panic. Which it would. But then he kept silent about it because he thought that the wretched stuff would degrade.”
Tywin’s eyes seemed to slam shut for an instant and then re-open. “But it does not,” he said after a long moment and Ned had the feeling that he was clinging onto his self-control. “Wildfire matures and strengthens with time. And also becomes more… easily… ignited.” His voice ground to a halt. And then he seemed to come to life again. “Is it still there?”
“Word came from King’s Landing this morning, by raven,” Stannis said, passing over a message scroll. “It’s still there. Hundreds of barrels of the stuff under the Red Keep, the Great Sept, the Dragonpit, the Street of Steel and many other locations. At least 50 barrels under each gate. Lord Arryn writes that they are trying to remove it with the greatest of care.”
The message scroll shook slightly as Tywin read it. And then he carefully handed it over to the white-faced Kevan, before asking, in a voice of deadly calm: “My son’s confession if you please your Grace?”
Robert handed the scroll over and then they all watched as Tywin Lannister opened it up and started to read. As he read it his nostrils flared once, twice, and then three times, and then his eyes seemed to blaze for a long moment – before dulling into embers. As he came to the end he looked, just for a fleeting moment, like an old and beaten man. Just for a flash. And then he seemed to come to life again.
“I see,” the Lord of the Westerlands said in a hard voice. “So – my grandchildren are now Hills are they?”
“They are,” Robert rumbled. “It gives me no pleasure again, to say so, but they are. And I must tell you that Joffrey is in a cell. The bloody fool got drunk and decided that one way to impress you was to try and stab Ned’s heir in the back with a Valyrian steel dagger. Fortunately for him he utterly failed, as otherwise his head would have been on a spike over the bloody gatehouse. Fear not about the others, they are good children and are being treated with all due courtesy. But they are all bastards now.”
Tywin absorbed this with a nod and a slight wince. And then he seemed to rally a moment. “There is no doubt at all about that?”
“None,” said Stannis in a voice that spoke of utter certainty. “They are all pure Lannister. There is not a single Baratheon trait amongst them. No black hair, no blue eyes, no second toe being longer than the first.”
“By chance three of my bastards are also in Winterfell,” Robert said, his eyes now hard. “And they all resemble me. Black hair, blue eyes, second toe. But Joffrey, Tommen and Myrcella – not a single trait. Not a bloody one, Tywin, not a bloody one. One I might be able to accept, but all three?”
The longest pause of all followed, as Tywin Lannister seemed to have a quiet internal battle for a while as he then reread the confession. “Your Grace,” he said eventually in a voice that combined many emotions, “I need to talk to my daughter.”
“Talk to your other son first,” Robert said in a hard voice. “Because he’s got something more important to tell you.”
“What, your Grace?”
Robert set his face into an expression of total resolve. “The Others are coming for us all and the Call is true.”
Chapter Text
Tyrion
He stood there in the Godswood quietly, listening to the sound of the wind in the red leaves above him. The face carved into the trunk still intrigued him. How long ago was it carved? Who had carved it? He weighed the report he had written in both hands and then looked down at it. So many pieces of foolscrap, bound together with rough bindings on the left hand side of it. Everything he had seen, everything he had heard, everything he had read (well, summarised at least). Would it be enough?
And then he tucked the book under one arm, lifted the heavy bag with the other and stumped grimly away towards the rooms that had been set aside for Father. Dacey had asked him if he wanted her to join him in this. He had kissed her hand, praised her gallantry and then told her that no, this was his battle.
There was a guard at the door, a man in the standard Westerlands helm that he had never particularly liked the design of. The guard knocked on the door as he approached and then opened it at the barked ‘Come!’ from within.
Father was inside, standing at the window, his hands behind his back and tension written all over the set of his shoulders. Tyrion swallowed slightly but walked in. It was then that he noticed that Uncle Kevan was sitting at the table to one side whilst in the far corner Uncle Gerion was lounging in a chair, one foot on, appropriately enough, a small footstool.
“Sit.” Father almost spat the word out. He sat in the nearest chair abruptly, the bag at his feet and the report on his lap. This was as bad as he had feared. Father sounded several leagues beyond merely angry. And he had every reason to be.
After what felt like an age and a half Father finally tore his gaze away from the window and wheeled around, pacing around the room and finally settling into a chair facing him. “Did you know?”
He knew exactly what Father was talking of. “No.”
Father stared at him intently, eyes narrowed, studying his face. “Did you suspect?”
Ah. Time for the truth. “That they were doing something stupid? Yes.”
Father’s hands balled into fists briefly, knuckles whitening. “Then why,” he said in a tightly controlled voice, “Did you not say something?”
He looked Father right in the eye. “Would you have believed me? I had no proof. Nothing. Just a few anecdotes about looks and glances, nothing tangible. If I had told you – you would never have believed me. You would just have called me a revolting dwarf with a disgusting imagination and then had me banished to the remotest corner of the Westerlands.” Or, perhaps, the Wall.
Father stared at him, every muscle in his face taut, strain written all over his face, almost seeming to lean forwards – and then slowly he leant back in his chair and passed a hand over his eyes. “You have a point,” Father said eventually. His eyes drifted over the room and finally returned to him. “No, I would not have believed you. Not without proof. The whole thing is rank madness. Whoever would have thought that this could happen?”
Tyrion sighed. This was a time to hold his tongue and be sober and silent. But he had to say something. “Jaime left for the Wall this morning.”
“Good,” Father said, his eyes blazing. “When I go to the Wall to see it I will speak with him, whether he likes it or not. He needs to know what his behaviour has cost his family.” Father looked at him. “Descendants of Lannisters yet unborn will be dealing with the aftermath of this, you realise that don’t you?”
He thought of the jokes, the ribald songs and the general sniggering that was probably already starting to spread across Westeros. “I do,” he said eventually. “I do.”
There was a depressed silence in the room for a long moment, before Father broke it. “What’s that in your hand?”
Ah. He stood and then walked over to Father and handed his report over. “You told me to go to the North and find out why Lord Eddard Stark was asking about the Others. Here, Father, is my full report on all that I have experienced.”
Father took it with a slightly bemused look. “This is not a report, this is a small book.” He placed it to one side. “Summarise it. Succinctly.”
He opened his mouth to reply, closed it as he thought very hard and very fast, and then turned to walk back to the bag. Opening it he pulled out Rocktooth, hefted it in his hands for a moment with a sigh and then he walked over to place it on the table next to Father. “This is Rocktooth, the axe wielded by Lann the Clever. And the Call is true. This thing kills wights and Others in very impressive ways.”
This resulted in something that he had never seen before in his entire life – Father looking absolutely flabbergasted. He stared at the axe with his mouth slightly open for a long moment. “Rocktooth,” he said after a while. “The ancestral weapon of our family. I once had Casterley Rock almost turned upside down looking for it.”
He nodded. “It was at the Nightfort, Father.” And then something occurred to him. “Oh,” he muttered and then he pulled out the twin knives from his hip. “And The Warnings too. They glow when wights and Others are near. It’s a bit alarming when that happens.”
Father looked at the knives, the axe, at Tyrion, at the axe again and then seemed to collect himself. “Sit,” he said again. “And explain.”
So he did. He sat there and just started to talk about his trip the North, from the moment he left Lannisport, to the moment that he arrived in Winterfell for the first time. On and on he talked, recounting everything he had seen, heard of, experienced. Occasionally he pointed at the report and named a page, allowing Father to open it and peer at maps, or drawings, or particular passages. He continued on, his throat growing drier and drier but he kept on talking until he became hoarse. This was important.
Oddly enough it was Father who poured him a goblet of wine and then gestured at him to drink and then continue. So he did, blessing the sensation of the wine going down his parched throat – and then he started to talk again. On and on he went, before he finally ended with the sad events of the past few days and then the thing that in his mind was just as important, his proposal of marriage to Dacey. And then he fell silent with a rather defiant tilt to his head. He was bloody well going to marry her.
Uncle Kevan had moved to the table not long after he had started talking, so that he could at least glance at the report. He now looked at if Casterley Rock had been dropped on his head. As for Uncle Gerion he was smiling proudly at Tyrion, sipping from his own glass of wine. And Father… Father was staring at him with the oddest look on his face that he had ever seen. It seemed to combine a great many emotions, including astonishment, incredulity, disbelief, vague annoyance and a slowly growing something else.
“I see,” Father said slowly. “So, to summarise your summary, since you left the Westerlands you have confirmed the fact that the Ironborn are fighting amongst themselves, confirmed that the North is preparing for a very cold and long winter as well as a war against a legendary enemy, rescued the only child of the late Torgen Surestone, escorted her safely to her family here Winterfell, discovered that the First Men used dragonglass on a hitherto-unsuspected scale to fight the Others and their wights, forged a good relationship with the Starks, discovered what had happened to the Mountain Tribes of the Vale, witnessed the Old Gods speaking through the mouths of a Stark not once but three times, ridden to the Wall, witnessed a council of war between the Starks and the lords of the North, listened to Ned Stark decide to turn his back on thousands of years of enmity between the North and the Wildlings and let the latter settle in the Gift, travelled to the Nightfort and fought rogue Wildlings there, discovered not one but three heirlooms of House Lannister that had been thought lost, passed under the Wall through a magic gate, helped to rescue a half-wighted Stark who has been wandering the Haunted Forest for at least hundreds of years, killed wights with Rocktooth, confronted and killed an Other with it as well, and finally took part in what many are referring to as Ned Starks Great Ride South, when he moved at a speed that genuinely shocked me. Would that be a fair summation?”
He ran through what Father had just said in his head and then nodded. “Erm, yes Father.”
The silence that followed was the longest one of all, a long-drawn-out moment of total silence as Father just stared at him through narrowed eyes. And then he finally opened the report to the page with the careful line drawing of an Other, before doing something that utterly shocked Tyrion.
He laughed.
It was a soft, rueful laugh, a noise that combined amusement with bemusement and a certain amount of bewilderment. And the other three men in the room just stared at him in astonishment.
After a moment Father looked up. “It seems that the Gods have a sense of humour. A twisted one, but a sense of humour. It seems that the son that I wanted to succeed me has shamed the family in every way, but the son I thought was unworthy of the family name has instead shown himself to be a true Lannister. I always thought you a stunted fool. But I was wrong. You’ve… you’ve done well.” The last words looked as if they left a slightly bitter taste in his mouth.
Slightly dazed at receiving praise from Father he nodded at him. “Thank you Father.”
“You’ve also brokered yourself a marriage that I have to say is far better than anything I could have arranged for you. Lady Surestone is the daughter of a good man. Treat her well, or I’ll have something to say about it.”
He peered at Father. “You… knew of him?”
“I did.” Father leant back in his chair and seemed to sigh a little. “When you are Lord of Casterley Rock you will soon find that there are always people out there who will look to you to resolve disputes over land and other things. And there are always those who think that it would be clever or cunning to cite old or obscure laws or precedents in their favour. Such as the laws of the First Men.”
Understanding blossomed. “Lord Surestone was an expert on the First Men.”
Father nodded in what have been approval. “Exactly so. He once came to Casterley Rock to ask about its history. At the time I was adjudicating a particularly messy and intractable land dispute between Lords Lefford and Brax, with the latter citing an obscure law dating from the First Men, so I had little time for a Northern Lord. But when he heard about the dispute he approached me in private and explained the law in some detail – and in full, as Brax had only referred to a part of it – giving me the full context of it that allowed me to settle things quickly and cleanly.
“Surestone returned to the North after that but ever after, especially when I was Hand of the King, I would write to him with the latest knotty little legal problem involving fools who tried to cite the laws of the First Men.” He sighed. “His letters always had more common sense and practical wisdom than the letters of a hundred lords that used to arrive. I am… aggrieved that he is dead and will talk to Dacey Surestone to pass on my sincere regrets about his passing. I’m also glad that his murderer has paid for his crime. I take it that Bootle’s head is the one over the gatehouse?”
Eyebrows raised, Tyrion nodded. “It is.”
“Good.” Father stood and then passed the report over to Kevan, who took it with a sigh. “And now I have to go and see my grandchildren. I understand that Joffrey has utterly disgraced himself.”
“He has,” Gerion grimaced. “Tried to knife Robb Stark in the back. Even worse, the boy didn’t even have a belt knife on him. Joffrey on the other hand had a stolen dagger made from Valyrian steel. Despite that the Stark boy disarmed him and broke his nose. Oh, and one of the wildling girls kicked him in the balls.”
Father grimaced as much as he ever could. “I see,” he said heavily. “Dishonoured and disgraced indeed. Very well.” And then he paused and his eyes looked almost like emeralds, so hard did they appear to be. “And then I will talk to my daughter. And… explain matters to her.”
As Father strode out Tyrion found that his goblet was being refilled. Still faintly dazed he looked up to see that it was Uncle Gerion. “What just happened?”
His uncle refilled his own goblet. “Your father has had his world upended and shaken, and has just been forced to react. Congratulations Tyrion.” He smiled at him. “Your mother would be so proud of you right now.”
Robb
It was interesting to see how much Sarella had improved in her archery skills in such a very short amount of time. It was enough to make him pause in his walk along the wooden causeway and stare carefully. The Dornish girl was an enigma. A dangerous enigma.
“She’s good,” said a voice to one side and he blinked a little. Ah. Val again. He had the feeling that he had to be very cautious around her at times. He’d made bad mistakes in that previous life.
“She’s improving fast.” He tilted his head to one side and then looked at Grey Wind, who was scratching at an itch with a rear leg and closed eyes. “Odd that.”
“She hates being defenceless,” Val muttered as she walked over to Grey Wind and added her fingers to scratching away the itch. Much to his surprise the direwolf muttered with obvious pleasure, leant into her hand, almost overbalanced and came very close to falling over. For some reason he glared at Robb as if he was to blame for that. “But she’s used a bow before. I think it’s the arrows she’s having trouble with.”
He looked back at the Dornish girl with narrowed eyes and then stared at the arrows she was using. And then he understood. “She’s using dragonglass.”
“Aye. A heavier weight. Different balance. Needs a different way of loosing it from a bow. She wasn’t used to it at first.” Val looked at her. “Why are people so skittish around her?”
He smiled and then tilted his head at Val so that they started to walk away from Sarella. “Her father. Prince Oberyn Martell of Dorne. Also known as the Red Viper. And a very dangerous man.”
Val blinked at him for a long moment. “What’s a viper?”
Ah. He should have expected that. “It’s a snake, and a poisonous one at that. The Red Viper fought in Essos and it’s said that he likes to use poison on his blades. And his temper can be as hot as the land he’s from.”
“Mance told me what a snake is,” Val said thoughtfully and then she shuddered a little, making her braid swing behind her for a moment. “And can Dorne really be that hot? No ice, no snow, barely any water?”
“Well,” he said cautiously, “There is some water there. Otherwise there’d be no Dornish Red.”
She nodded seriously, her mind obviously struggling with such an alien concept, and they passed down the rest of the wooden walkway in a companionable silence. At the end of it they came out at a platform and there they found Mance Rayder.
The King Beyond the Wall was dressed in clothes of red and black and was softly strumming on his lute. Robb wasn’t entire sure he recognised the tune, but there was something stirring in it, a hint of a greater theme.
“A new tune?” Robb ventured.
The older man looked at him for a moment, a hint of amusement in his eyes and his mouth twitched to one side for a heartbeat. “Oh, yes. A new tune. You’ll hear all of it soon. It’s not quite ready yet. Not quite right in places. It will be though. It will have a royal debut.”
Robb sat next to the former man of the Night’s Watch. “Have you met the King then?”
“I have.” The strumming became something a bit more harsh and martial. “The Demon of the Trident. I had heard rumours that he had become a fat old man. That was… wrong.”
No, he thought, remembering what he could recall of that other King Robert from the other lifetime, that was right. “The Call awoke something within him. And Stormbreaker…”
The strumming stilled completely. “The sword of the Durrandons. The Fist of Winter, Stormbreaker, this talk of Otherbane… the First Men must have hidden them well, or had a plan, or… something.”
“They must have,” Robb agreed heavily. “Before the Andals came. And then the Targaryens.”
“Oh,” Val broke in crossly. “In the name of the Old Gods will you two cheer up? There is much that is waking up. Look at the horizon in front of you, not on the one at your back.”
He exchanged a look with Mance and was about to make a protest when a guard suddenly made an appearance. “Lord Robb, Lord Rayder, Lady Val, Lord Stark requests your immediate attendance at his solar.”
Mance Rayder closed his eyes in annoyance. “I am not a bloody Lord and-” He looked at the bewildered guard. “Oh never bloody mind. Lord Robb, lead the way please.”
As they trotted down the nearest flight of stairs he heard Val snark at Mance: “I thought you were to be a Lord?”
“Not just yet,” Mance muttered. “Lord Stark’s idea. Depends on a few things and… oh, stop smirking at me goodsister.”
He smiled a little himself and continued on, Grey Wind leading the way. As they approached Father’s solar he could see Ser Barristan Selmy and Jory Cassel guarding it and relaxed a little. “The King is within,” he said in a low voice to the two Free Folk. “And hopefully not Lord Lannister.”
“Many seem afraid of the man,” Val said with puzzlement in her voice. “Why?”
“I will sing a song for you later Val,” Mance replied. “It’s called ‘The Rains of Castermere’, and after I sing it I shall explain what it is about.”
Robb nodded at Selmy and Cassel and then waited as Ser Barristan knocked on the door, opened it at a muttered command from within and then held it open so that the trio could walk in.
Inside they found Father and the King, as well as Lord Stannis, sitting on one side of a table whilst on the other were a particularly interesting set of people all in travel-stained clothes. Two of them were red-headed twins wearing the surcoat of the Redwynes. The third was a man in the black of the Night’s Watch. And on the table was an open bag and in the bag were… large eggs? Large eggs that glittered?
“Robb,” said Father, who looked a bit strained. “Come closer, all of you. Rayder, we need your help on this. These three men have just arrived from Castle Black. Before then they were at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea and before that they were at Hardhome, North of the Wall.”
Mance stepped forwards, his face pale. “Is everything alright there? There was a gathering of the Free Folk there.”
The closer of the red-headed twins stood and nodded at him. “Horas Redwyne. I was there with Cotter Pyke. Fear not, we got them all out there. All but the giants, who went South to the Wall. But we went looking for cages there, the cages used to display wight parts, and we found these… bones in one of the caves. And these. Eggs.”
The man of the Night’s Watch nodded. “Jon Hill, melords. Pyke sent them on to Castle Black after getting a raven from Maester Aemon. He saw them himself. And then sent us South here with them, riding hard. And the letter he wrote to his Grace and Lord Stark.”
“Maester Aemon,” the King rumbled as he stared at the eggs, “Said that they – and the bones – are not from dragons. The bones were the wrong colour and the eggs felt… wrong.” He paused, his face working with some unidentifiable emotion. “I agree about the touch. Not like dragon eggs. Not quite right.” And then he stood abruptly and strode over to stare moodily out of the nearest window.
Father looked at the King, obviously puzzled, and then looked at Mance Rayder. “There are legends of ice drakes, or ice wyrms. Legends South of the Wall at least. What do the Free Folk know of them?”
There was a clunk as Mance Rayder put down his lute and then walked over to stare at the eggs. “Oh, there are tales alright. You said that there were bones in a cave at Hardhome, lad?”
Horas Redwyne looked a bit irked at being called ‘lad’, but nodded. “The place – the cave – looked as if it had been half-melted in places. Claw marks everywhere as well. It was… peculiar.” The Reachman shuffled his feet. “I’ll confess that it shook me.”
“The fate of Hardhome has always been a mystery,” Mance muttered. “Perhaps now we have a better idea of what happened there. As for tales of ice drakes… all I have is just that. Tales. Legends. I’ve never seen one. Nor have I heard of anyone seeing one.”
“I have.” It was Val who spoke. She was pale and unsettled. “My father’s mother once told me that she had seen something, far off in the sky, when she was once on a hunt. North-West of the Frostfangs. It had wings and was like nothing she had ever seen in her life. It was no bird. It was too large for that. Too… strange as well.”
There was a moment of silence and then the King stamped back over from the window. “Sorry Ned,” he rumbled at Father. “Memories.” He looked at Stannis Baratheon, who looked back with an odd look of his own. “Our Grandmother was a Targaryen. She gifted me her dragon egg when I was young. It’s in a chest somewhere in Storm’s End. Been there for years. Seeing these brought back memories.” He pulled a face.
“Well,” sighed Father. “We have yet more proof of things beyond the Wall. And we know now to never dismiss tales of things we think of as being impossible. Not now. There are so-called legends that are flesh and blood.” He looked at the Redwyne twins. “My compliments to your lord father and please tell him everything that you have seen. Our thanks for coming here with these. I’ve ordered quarters for you to stay in.”
The Redwyne twins bowed at them, whilst the man of the Night’s Watch nodded wearily and then the trio left. Father leant back and sighed. “And now we have a new mystery to unravel.”
The King nodded and seemed about to speak when there was a knock on the door that had barely closed. “Yes?” Robert Baratheon barked crossly.
Ser Barristan Selmy opened the door, looking grave. “Lord Lannister wishes to have a word your Grace. He has Joffrey Hill with him.”
Ah. Robb straightened and Mance Rayder looked at the King. “We’d better leave your Grace.”
But the King shook his head. “No. Stay.” He flicked a finger at Robb and Val. “These two stopped his attack dead in its tracks. Whatever this is about I want them in the room.”
Tywin Lannister stepped into the room looking as if he was the lord of Winterfell and nodded formally at the King. “Your Grace,” he muttered. And then his grandson walked in, slightly stiff-legged.
Joffrey Hill looked as bad as his real father had when he had sworn his oath before the Heart Tree, with dark circles under his eyes and a haggard look to his face. His eyes were bloodshot and hunted, flickering from face to face – and when he saw first him and then Val they bulged slightly and then took on a slightly mad aspect, combining horror, anger and above all fear. He looked quickly back at the door, but Frostfyre was standing there, looking grimly at him, and he swallowed convulsively. “Your Grace,” he said eventually, after getting a glare from his grandfather.
“Your Grace,” said Tywin Lannister after a moment that included a flicker of the eyes in the direction of the ice drake eggs. “I am glad that so many are here to witness this. My grandson has something to say.”
Joffrey shambled – there could be no other word to describe it – forwards and then stared at the floor. There was a red mark on one cheek, as if something or someone had hit him there. “Your Grace,” he said hesitantly. “I am… I am here to confess my guilt… for my…” He bared his teeth for a moment, but then saw the intensity of the glare that his Grandfather was directing at him and then flinched more than a bit. “My attack on Lord Robert Stark. I wish, in recompense, to take the Black.” The last words came out in a rush, with what sounded like no small amount of resentment behind them.
The King looked at him with a great deal of contempt in his eyes and then looked at Father. “Lord Stark, it was your eldest son and heir that he attacked. What say you on this matter?”
Father swept Joffrey with an equally contemptuous look – and then he rubbed his jaw in that way he had of showing that he was about to make a decision. “By right and law I could take his head for what he tried to do. But he failed and has confessed his guilt. Given his family and the circumstances, I can accept his appeal to be allowed to join the Night’s Watch.”
There was a long silence as the King stared at the boy he had thought was his son, his face more than a little red. And then he sighed and rubbed his forehead for a moment. “Very well. My thanks, Lord Stark. You have been most merciful under difficult circumstances, and the Crown is grateful to you. Lord Lannister, what say you?”
Something like a sigh might possibly have escaped the lips of Tywin Lannister, but the Lord of the Westerlands gave no other sign of his relief than a nod of the head. “My thanks, your Grace. Lord Stark as well.” He sent yet another glare in the direction of his grandson, who once again visibly flinched before sending another hunted look at the door. Frostfyre almost seemed to briefly curl a lip at him before moving to one side, and the bastard then scuttled out to join the guards who were out there.
“My thanks again,” Tywin Lannister said. “And your Grace, I must go and talk to my daughter.” He bowed shortly and then swept out, his face stony.
It was only once the door was closed that the King spoke again. “I almost pity her,” he muttered. “Well – almost.”
Cersei
Regal.
She had to be regal. She was Queen, no matter what that fat fool said, she had been born to be Queen. And nothing could take that from her.
She paced about the pathetically – insultingly – small room, her hands clasping each other spasmodically. Where was he? Father was in Winterfell, she knew that from the muttered comments of the guards. He should have come to her first of all, before meeting anyone else.
And she knew what she would say to him, how she would persuade him that the Starks and the Baratheons were nothing more than liars, how Stannis Baratheon was playing the Game of Thrones to make himself Robert’s heir. This was nothing more than a naked power play on his part, the filthy lies about she and Jaime were nonsense.
Yes, she could make Father believe. He had to believe her. He would never allow Robert and his curs to deprive her of her title – her rightful place.
No, Father would put Robert in his own place, reminding him that House Lannister was the real power behind the throne. Father was still owed a huge amount of coin by the Crown – that was the reality. All the tales of that oaf Baelish’s property holdings and how the debt had vanished were nothing more than lies, and childish ones at that.
And once Father had slapped Robert down and punished Stannis and Stark – how dare they imprison her! – perhaps it would be time for the King to have an accident, perhaps whilst hunting. Joffrey would be King. She could control him. She was sure of it.
And the North would burn, from the Wall to the Neck. Dragonstone would burn too.
She had to be regal.
There was the sound of approaching boots in the corridor outside and she turned to the door, her heart in her mouth. Was that Father’s voice?
And then the door opened, to reveal Father. He strode in, dressed all in black, she opened her mouth to speak – but the moment she looked at his face the words she had been planning died unsaid on her lips. Father’s face was a frozen mask of bleakness, pale skin drawn tight over bone. Except for his eyes. His eyes blazed with one emotion. Black fury. She recognised that face. That was the face that Father used when punishing people who had committed terrible crimes and all of a sudden she felt real fear.
Father closed the door and then his hand shot forwards and pointed at the chair by her. “Sit.” He said the word in a voice like iron and she hurriedly did as she had been commanded. Things were slipping out of her control and she was about to open her mouth to speak when all of a sudden Father drew a dagger from a sheath at his belt and then jabbed it, point-first, into the table, before sinking into a seat of his own, his hand still curled around the handle of the weapon.
There was a long moment of silence as Father seemed to suppress some violent emotion, his knuckles white on the pommel, and then finally he spoke. “I am now going to speak. Whilst I speak you will be silent. If at any point you make the ill-considered decision to interrupt me you will regret it.” He looked at the dagger and then at her again. “Nod if you understand.”
Suddenly terrified she nodded choppily.
“All my life,” Father went on in a low, hard, voice, “I have worked with just one aim in mind. One constant goal. The restoration of our family to its proper place as the most powerful and influential house in the Westerlands, if not in all of Westeros. To that end I have done things that you cannot imagine. I have worked on a scale and at a pace that would bewilder you. I have praised fools and wise men. I have used cravens and heroes. I have killed and I have been merciful.
“And I had thought that all of that work had finally brought House Lannister to new heights. A new royal family. My grandson would be king after his father died.” There was a creak, either from the dagger handle or Father’s fingers as they tightened around the handle again. “But now here we sit, in this room, at this time, and everything that I have worked for lies in pieces at my feet, smashed and broken.”
His free hand came up from his lap and he pointed his forefinger at her. “I gave you one task, just one. You were to marry Robert Baratheon, bear his children and achieve my ultimate goal of creating a Lannister-Baratheon dynasty that would outlast and outshine the Targaryens, so that if Aerys Targaryen could look up from whichever of the Hells he’s suffering in, he’d see what House Lannister – what I – had achieved and gnash his teeth in rage. Well, now. If Aerys can look up from wherever he’s squatting and see me today he’d be laughing at me!” The last three words were snapped out in a rising half-shout that made her lean back in terror. Father never bellowed. But now he was sitting there, visibly fighting to regain his composure.
After a long moment Father composed himself again. “Because how was I to know that you had your own plan? If, that is, such a word can be used to describe the morass of selfish, squalid, filth that you have been wallowing in for years. You decided that instead of bearing the King’s children you would part your legs like a whore for your own twin brother so that the pair of you could rut like a pair of mindless animals. You would then pass any resulting children off as your husbands.”
Father’s eyes seemed to blaze with new fury as they bored into her. “The fact that this was treason – affecting the royal succession – never seemed to have bothered you. The fact that the children wouldn’t have a single Baratheon trait between them, but be pure Lannister, also never seems to have bothered you. Perhaps you hoped that no-one would notice the fact that your children would not resemble your husband in any way. Well, as you might have noticed given your current location, someone noticed.” He hissed the last word in a way that chilled her.
“Now,” he said, speaking in a way that made it seemed as if his words were causing him physical pain, “Before you open your mouth and deliver a torrent of lies as you deny everything, I must first tell you that Jaime wrote out a full confession.” Her heart seemed to stop for a moment in her chest. No. No, her soulmate would not have betrayed her like that. No. It was impossible. Father had to be lying. “A confession that I have read. It made me want to vomit and for the first time in my life I was almost glad that you mother is dead, because what I read would have broken her heart. The confession has been copied out and those copies went out to King’s Landing and other places days ago.”
There was another silence as he tightened his grip on the dagger yet again, before seeming to force himself to relax just a hair. “So, what impact has your little plan had? We will get to you later, I know that you are a selfish creature so we will look at the wider picture that would probably never otherwise occur to you.
“Let us start with your children. Tyrion once told me that one of your good points is that you love them. Well, your plan has certainly impacted all three of them.” He leant forwards slightly. “They are all bastards born of incest. Those words will follow them for the rest of their lives. You might as well have branded the words on their foreheads. The glittering future that they had once is gone. They have been stripped from the succession. They are all Hills.”
She stared at him in horror. No. They were royalty.
“Of course,” Father continued remorselessly, “The fate of some of your children is easier to predict than others. Let us start with your oldest, shall we? Joffrey. You wrote so often to me about him, praising him to the skies, telling me how clever he is, how wise, how brave and how kind. I have spent some time with him today and now I wonder who you wrote of, because I swiftly discovered that Joffrey is a stupid, foolish, craven and cruel boy. The thought of him on the throne horrifies me. The moment he saw me he ordered me – ordered me! – to call my banners, invade the North, rescue him, burn the North to the ground and kill every man woman and child in it and then take him back to King’s Landing. He went on and on about it until I gave him the back of my hand and shut him up.
“I then took him rather firmly in hand. You might not know this but a few days ago Joffrey got blind drunk and decided that the best was to ingratiate himself with me would be to kill Ned Starks oldest son and heir, Robb Stark. So the damn fool tried to stab the Stark boy in the back with a stolen Valyrian steel knife, without any warning, at a time when Robb Stark was unarmed and alone. I cannot even begin to describe how foolish that was.”
Was Robb Stark dead? Surely the guards would have mentioned something about that. Perhaps it was a secret. Perhaps her revenge had already started? But then Father narrowed his eyes a little. “He failed. Robb Stark, despite his handicaps, disarmed and defeated Joffrey. Broke his nose as well. Oh and he was kicked in the crotch by some wildling girl who happened to be passing. Now, normally an attack on the heir of any of the Wardens of Westeros would normally have one conclusion, namely that of the attacker’s severed head ending up on a spike. However, I have talked to Joffrey and then brought him before the King and Ned Stark, and the latter has agreed that Joffrey will not be executed. Instead he will take the Black. He will live on the Wall, he will die on the Wall. Given the list of his true attributes that I listed earlier I doubt that the period between those two things will be very long, especially given the war that is coming to the Wall.
“Next there is Tommen. He will not go to the Wall.” She wanted to sob with relief. “Instead he goes to the Citadel. It is his choice, no-one else’s. The boy seems very certain about the fact that he wants to go there. My grandson will learn to shovel raven dung and one day wipe the snotty noses of the pestilential children of whatever minor lordling he is sent to be Maester to. And around his neck will be the chain he will forge and one of the links on that chain will be made of cat hair, because at the Citadel he will become an expert on what he calls ‘kitties’. Are you not proud of him?”
Father leaned forwards again. “There are smallfolk in the smallest part of the Westerlands who know that you do not breed cattle siblings together, as you can inbreed your way to imbecility. The Targaryens tried it and look how they ended up – a shrieking lunatic obsessed with wildfire, whilst his sons were a fool whose obsession with prophecies ruined the dynasty and a lunatic who tried to sacrifice his own sister in a blood magic ceremony that led to his death. Now, the Targaryens at least had a ritual that they said would protect them when brother married sister, but by the end it was a jumble of Valyrian fragments. You had… nothing.”
Father leant back again and passed his free hand over his forehead. “Now we come to Myrcella. And here I want to weep. She has, so far at least, escaped the taint of madness, or instability at least, that her other siblings have. She is beautiful, intelligent, wise, kind and above all practical. She knows exactly what you have done to her and has come to terms with it. Talking to her left me with a profound sense of sorrow. Oh, the matches I could have made for her! The heirs of great houses would have beaten a path to our doors when they discovered what she is like!”
A look of profound fury was directed at her. “And now… nothing. She knows that her future no longer glitters, but is cloudy and dull. Knows that all too well. Her dream of marrying handsome, clever, brave Robb Stark is gone. Instead she has told me that knows that she will have to make do with whoever I can find. Her only request is that he be kind to her. I will honour that request.”
Silence fell in the room for a long moment. “And now let us turn to Jaime,” Father snapped suddenly, making her jump a little. “You have done something here that I could not. I have been trying and failing for years to get him out of that damn white cloak of his. Now I know why you blocked my efforts. Now he is rid of it! Alchemy indeed! But… he has merely swapped his white cloak for a black one. He will join his son on the Wall, both men of the Night’s Watch.
“Good, because he is an imbecile. I really could have gotten him out of that white cloak years ago if he had told people the true reason why he killed Aerys Targaryen. He did not do it to curry favour with Robert, oh no. He did it to stop the madman from ordering that a huge set of stockpiles of wildfire hidden under King’s Landing be ignited. He saved the city – but then he didn’t tell a soul about it and left the foul stuff where it was. Apparently he thought that it would degrade. It does not. It matures. There’s a cache under the Red Keep even now. Jaime wrote his confession after being told of all this and left for the Wall first thing this morning.”
She found herself going pale. Wildfire? Under the Red Keep? Why had Jaime not said anything of it?
“And now let us turn to Tyrion, and here the irony becomes rich and thick enough to walk on.” A peculiar look crossed Father’s face, one that combined many emotions. “I sent Tyrion to the North to find out why Ned Stark was asking questions about what I thought were nothing more than legends. He succeeded. In fact he performed far above my wildest hopes.
“In the time that he has been here in the North he rescued a cousin of Ned Stark from a fate worse than death and escorted her here to her family in Winterfell. He found out just how the Call was sent out. He went to the Wall and discovered not one but three long-lost heirlooms of House Lannister there and then he battled side by side with the Starks against Wildlings, wights and Others. He has not just seen one of the legendary Others, he has killed one. He has, in other words, behaved like a true Lannister. Can you imagine my astonishment? Of course you can, you are staring at me like a lunatic. But the fact remains – Tyrion has been a credit to the family. You have spent years dripping poison in my ears about him. It seems that we were both as wrong about him as we could be.”
What might have almost been a terrible smile twisted Father’s face. “And now see what alchemy you have wrought! Tyrion, the dwarf son I have despised for so long, is now my heir. He will inherit Casterley Rock when I die. The decision is made, the die is cast. It’s Tyrion or no-one. And he has made a marriage compact that will benefit us all. He will be marrying the Stark cousin that I mentioned. Dacey Surestone is her name. I knew her father. A good man. A good match.”
No. No. No. It could not be. Casterley Rock could not be that disgusting dwarf’s inheritance. It was… wrong. Wrong, beyond words. She almost reeled in her chair. No. There had to be a way around this. Perhaps… she thought of her earlier thoughts, and what Father had said of Joffrey and a solution sprang into mind. She licked her lips, turned to father and –
But then Father just looked at her and the words once again died unsaid on her lips. “I know,” Father said heavily, “What you are about to say. ‘Surely Father, this is wrong, Jaime should inherit, or Joffrey. Call the banners. Inflict vengeance.’ I see those words almost forming on your lips. And I can say only one thing in response: no. Joffrey will never succeed me as the boy is mad. As for Jaime… again, no.”
He looked at her for a long moment and then seemed to sigh. “You have never understood power, not really. For you it’s the prospect of imminent violence that you can order on a whim. But the truth is that it’s more… nebulous than that at times. Varys once told me that it’s a shadow on a wall. A neat turn of phrase but wrong as well. No, power is something else. It’s based on reputation. Any fool can shriek an order, but having it carried out is a different thing.
“You probably don’t understand this, but when I destroyed the Reynes and the Tarbecks in the way that I did, that was a mistake. I was young. I should have left a few of them alive, to provide an example to the Westerlands of those who cross us. The Rains of Castermere gave me a reputation of a mad dog, killing all those who crossed me. I had to work hard after that to change what the Lords of the Westerlands thought of me. It took years of governing wisely, adjudicating disputes carefully and even-handedly. I had to prove myself a just and wise ruler, and then again as Hand of the King. And when I gave my word I meant it. I proved it. I made a name for myself in ruling justly. That was real power.
“Jaime has now sworn three great oaths. One he broke for the noblest of reasons – to save King’s Landing. One he broke for the most squalid of reasons – to lay with his own sister and commit treason in the process. If he breaks the third oath – if he even can and live, given what I have heard about the Fist of Winter, which he swore the oath on – then two things will happen. First, he will be hunted by men from all of Westeros. Second, no-one will ever trust him again.”
His eyes searched her face and then Father sighed again. “The Lord of the Westerlands must be trusted to keep his word. A lord who has a justified reputation as an oathbreaker… will never be trusted. If I went North to ‘rescue’ Jaime now, he would be the weakest future lord of Casterley Rock ever. Weaker than my own father. So… no. Jaime cannot succeed me. Plus he’s also a fool. And if you ever think that I am ever leaving the two of you in the same place together ever again, you’re a fool as well.”
She sat there, her mind a turmoil of shock and anger and confusion. After a long moment she realised that Father was staring at her.
“And then there’s you,” Father said flatly. “The person who has inflicted more harm to our family name than anyone else in the history of our family. There are Lannisters yet unborn who will be affected by what you have done. Every Lannister girl for years to come who marries will have the babe peered at and inspected as people wonder if the child looks too Lannister. Where was the father nine months before? And where was her brother, or her father, or her uncle? You have smeared the word ‘incest’ across the family name and it will be a long time before it fades. Generations in fact.”
Father fell silent and just stared at her. She stared back, motionless, white-faced and terrified. “I should kill you, for what you have done to us, but that would add the label of kinslayer to the Lannister family name,” Father said eventually. “It might be cathartic though. I’m angry enough for it. But it would be too easy. That said, I cannot send you to become a Septa, or join the Silent Sisters. That would be an insult to the Faith. Your former husband has told me that I must consult with him to decide your fate. And I don’t know yet just what might be an… appropriate punishment.”
He stood abruptly, pulling the dagger out of the table, and then stared at her, his nostrils flaring. “Perhaps exile somewhere truly remote, a place where you cannot indulge in your squalid little lusts. I will think on it. But know this – I am beyond ashamed of you. You are a disgrace to our family.”
And with that he swept out.
Chapter 42: Chapter 42
Chapter Text
Renly
The best thing to do when talking to Lollys Stokeworth was to have a look of concerned interest and nod occasionally. That was the best way to deal with the wave of words that washed over you as she talked about everything and everyone, including just how much she disliked her older sister. A sweet girl, kind, but not one the great thinkers of the world.
He made a mental note to find some Stormlord somewhere who would take this poor girl away from her family and keep her happy. There was no way in all the Seven Hells that he would ever want to marry her, but she did deserve something, if only for the fact that she meant well.
Eventually she came to an end and he realised that she had asked him a question and for a moment he desperately tried to remember what that question had been. Ah. “No, his Grace the King will not be returning soon to King’s Landing. In fact I believe that he will be headed to the Wall to see what the situation there is.”
She nodded, her eyes quite wide. “He answers the Call, does he not?” he nodded. “Mother says that the Call is nonsense, but she is very strong in the Faith of the Seven and I’m not sure that she really believes that it’s nonsense. I heard it.”
He looked at her carefully. “You heard the Call?”
The nod this time was almost violent. “I did!” She lowered her voice as much as she could, going from a squeak to a slightly lower pitch. “The Others come. The Stark calls for aid. You are needed!” She shuddered a little, before looking at him. “I told Mother about the head in the cage that I saw. She said that I was a silly girl and had been lied to and tried to slap my hands for listening to lies. I told her she was wrong. I think I’ll stop talking to Mother.” And then she curtseyed and wandered off, reminding him a little of a slightly bewildered but rather resolute puppy.
As he passed on along the corridor he wondered what other younger daughters the Lords and Ladies of Westeros would send his way. Jon had carefully spread the word that he was looking for a wife and as the news of the disgrace of Cersei spread there were many who were taking the opportunity to ally themselves with House Baratheon, probably out of the cold but realistic belief that if Robert dropped dead tomorrow Stannis would need a viable male heir.
He winced a little as he remembered all the fine words that Loras had regaled him with in an effort to bolster the position of House Tyrell in the court. He had no doubt that that ravens were now flying from Highgarden to Winterfell from Mace Tyrell, promising Robert that his daughter Maegery would make a splendid wife, whilst perhaps some other match (not a Florent of course) could be made for Renly.
Wondering where Loras was at the moment was not a good idea. He missed him, but with matters the way that they were… he sighed.
Boots hit floorboards ahead and he looked up from his musings to see Jon Arryn walking towards him. “Renly, are you well?”
“As well as I can be after talking to Lollys Stokeworth,” he sighed. “A sweet girl, but… not much of a thinker.”
Jon looked at him with eyes that seemed to understand a great deal. “You should meet her mother,” he said dryly. “And then again perhaps not. Dreadful woman. Come, walk with me. The Red Viper has returned from the Pyromancer’s Guild and apparently he has been talking with Pycelle and Seaworth.”
He raised an eyebrow. “An interesting combination,” he noted dryly, before matching pace to Jon’s. The old man was almost back up to his old pace, which was a good sign after the attack by his wife.
They trotted down the corridor, around a corner, up the short flight of rather pointless stairs and then through the doors, which a pair of silent servants opened for them. Inside they found Pycelle and Ser Davos Seaworth huddled over a set of plans on the table whilst Oberyn Martell lounged in that rather bonelessly offensive manner of his on a chair. He was holding what looked like the hood of a pyromancer and seemed to be highly amused at something.
“Prince Oberyn, I take it that the Pyromancer’s Guild is still intact?” Jon said with a slight smile as he sat down. “What did you discuss there?”
“Oh, we discussed a great many things,” the Dornishman said wryly. “Including the inadvisability of trying to keep things from me and then trying to lie very badly about that.” He held out a small roll of paper. “I always wondered how people like Aerion ‘Brightflame’, or Aerion the Monstrous,could carry wildfire around with him in little vials and almost juggle with it. Now I know how he did it.”
“Vials of wildfire?” Renly said, his eyes a little wide. “I thought that was just a tale?”
“Oh more than a tale,” Oberyn grinned. “And he made the wildfire safe – or at least less dangerous than it would otherwise be – by adding certain powders to it that diminish its tendency to explode.” He shrugged. “It makes sense. The Targaryens commissioned its creation, so they would have wanted to know everything about the ‘substance’, as the pyromancers call it.” His amusement dimmed a little. “The problem is that these powders burn off or dissolve or just vanish after a while. So our mature wildfire can be tamed – but not for long.”
“How long exactly?” Ser Davos asked, his eyes keen.
There was a pause as Oberyn Martell seemed to think about the question. “A month at the most.”
The Commander of the Goldcloaks exchanged a look with Pycelle. “It might be enough to get it North.” He straightened up and coughed a little. “I’ve designed some changes to a ships hold that might suffice. A cross-grid of wooden walls that are well-braced and screwed down. If we place the barrels in them, surround them with sand on all sides and then screw a roof on the whole thing so that no sand can shift about…”
“It is a sound idea and it should work,” Pycelle said crisply. “We need screws because it would not do to nail the boards down. Combined with Prince Oberyn’s powders… we can ship it out of here to where we need it.”
“It will need calm weather and above all crews that have been paid well and promised that if they don’t come back their families will be taken care of,” Ser Davos pointed out quietly. “But it can be done. Making those screws will be expensive as well.”
There was a pause as everyone looked at Jon, who was looking at the design that lay on the table with bright, keen eyes. “Very well, let it be done,” he said eventually. “I want the wretched stuff away from here as soon as possible.”
Ser Davos nodded, rolled up the plans and then paused and coughed again. “Whilst you are all here my Lords I must say that I have heard an interesting tale from an old acquaintance of mine on the docks. He said that he had seen the Braavosi fleet heading towards Pentos. Heading there in full force I might add.”
There was a pause as they looked at the former smuggler. “Damn it, I wish that Varys was here,” Jon muttered. “Still no words from him?”
“None,” Renly answered gravely. He had to admit that he was wondering where the Master of Whispers was himself. “But if he was in Pentos…” A waggle of the hand displayed his uncertainty.
A fist banged on the doors and he looked around to watch as Quill slipped in with a small scroll for Jon. As the servant left he turned to observe Jon – who seemed to be struggling with something.
“A raven from Oldtown,” Jon said slowly after a while. “Mace Tyrell… is dead.”
He looked up quickly. “Dead? How?”
But there was no quick answer from Jon, who was reading the message again – and then rereading it. “Your pardon my Lords and Sers, this is all most odd. Apparently the old Lord Tyrell died after rescuing a Septon who tried to cleanse a… a gate of some kind in the lowest level of the Hightower itself. The gate killed the Septon and eventually Lord Mace Tyrell.” He lowered the message and then tossed it onto the table.
It was Oberyn Martell who picked the message up. “The lowest level of the Hightower? The level built of black oily stone built by some unknown people?”
“The same,” Jon replied. “Lord Willas Tyrell is the new Lord Paramount of the Reach.”
He thought of Loras instantly and he wished he could comfort him in his grief.
“My young friend Willas will be a far better Lord of the Reach than his father, although I always wondered if old Mace was a bit more wily than most people thought he was,” Oberyn mulled, making Renly frown a moment in thought. There was a tapping noise as he flicked a fingernail repeatedly against the scroll as he seemed to think very hard. “This gate though… what could kill a man? This is all most odd.”
He thought, for a long treacherous moment, about volunteering to go to Oldtown to investigate this. But then he caught a flicker of the eyes from Jon and he realised that that would be selfish of him. No. He needed to stay here.
He had his duty to House Baratheon to carry out.
Daenerys
Bolthole had a bath, a large one, and people to heat water almost to boiling point and so she had spent that first evening bathing and scrubbing the filth of the road off her, whilst her dragons had watched from a perch, obviously confused as to what she was doing. And then she had slept in a very comfortable bed for quite a long time, a long and dreamless sleep.
And Bolthole itself was… interesting. It was more than a farmhouse. It was larger than she had thought at first, and luxuriously appointed in many places. The dead Magister had planned well for any future exile here, with a large number of quite luxurious furnishings.
There was something else though… it was quiet here. The servants came and went, the guards patrolled the area, but above all the background noise of a city was gone. She wasn’t sure if she liked it or not. Not just yet anyway.
And all around them the rolling hills and valleys of Andalos. With the odd lump and bump of a ruin. She could see one now on the horizon and she shuddered a little.
There was a polite tap at the door and she turned from looking out of the window to see a servant. It was Tirys, who unnerved her sometimes by staring at her as if she was either holy or bizarre, she could never properly describe the look. “My Lady, Lord Varys would like to see you in his solar, if you please.”
She nodded, looked at where her dragons were sunning themselves in the sun to one side, and then strode out into the corridor. Varys’s solar had previously been the Magister’s and there was a fresco outside it that showed Mopatis as he had been when he had been younger and less, well, fat.
As she approached a travelstained man in dark clothing stepped out of the room. He looked weary and he walked off without so much as a look in her direction. As she entered the solar she could see that Lord Varys was sitting at a large desk. He was staring at a letter on the desk in front of him as if it had personally offended him. After a moment he seemed to notice that she was there and stood up to beckon her over.
“A thousand pardons my dear, but I have just had some rather odd news. It’s a good thing that you’re here, as it involves your family. I have a letter here from your great-great-grand uncle, if I have the relationship right.”
She smiled slightly as she sat. “More or less. May I read it?”
Varys hesitated for a moment and then picked it up. “It’s written in his handwriting.” He said the words in an odd voice.
She stared at him, confused. “How can that be? He’s blind.”
The eunuch shot her a quick look, eyes flickering at her. “He was. The man who brought his letter here was at Castle Black when the Lords of the North arrived. When Ned Stark especially arrived.”
She frowned. “Why Ned Stark especially?”
Varys straightened up and looked at her. “Because when Lord Stark looked at Maester Aemon his eyes blazed with red fire and he spoke with the voice of the Old Gods as he restored the vision of Aemon Targaryen. That’s what the courier said at least. He owed me a favour and I see no reason why he would lie on the matter. Not when another of my little birds confirmed it and above all there is the letter, addressed to you in Maester Aemon’s hand. All… most peculiar.”
They stared at each other for that long moment of mutual confusion. “The Old Gods?” She asked the question hesitantly. “Truly?”
“It would seem so,” Varys answered as he sat as well. “But then they have been making their presence felt in all kinds of places of late. It’s been all most confusing. Now, I am a little behind the news at the moment – when I am at King’s Landing my little birds bring me their songs directly. My time in Essos has, however, meant that I am trying to catch up as I start to hear their songs again.”
And then the plump man looked, just for a moment, almost haggard. “But one thing I have witnessed with my own two eyes is the reason why Ned Stark summoned the Lords of the North to Castle Black. It was the reason behind the Call. For some weeks now men of the Night’s Watch have been going South with cages made of some unknown metal. I saw one, no, two in King’s Landing. Both contained the severed heads of what had once been human beings. But human beings die when you cut their heads off. These… well, their eyes opened and closed and followed you about the room and the mouths tried to bite all who came near them. Tell me, my dear, are you familiar with the Northern tales of wights? Because that what was in those cages. The heads of wights.”
She just stared at the man as if he was mad. “But wights are nothing more than a Northern myth,” she said, bewildered. “Viserys told me that-”
“Your brother might not have been that well-informed,” Varys sighed. “Although I will confess that I thought the same thing. A Northern legend, nothing more. But once you’ve seen one of those cages…” He leant back in his chair and passed a hand over his forehead before looking at her and smiling wryly. “A Myrish toy, I thought at first. A trick, a device, a thing of wires and plaster. But it was not. Nor was the next one. They were real. And if wights are real… then what of the Others? They animate the dead, or so say the tales, but what if the tales are based on reality?”
She looked at him and then shook her head in amazement. And then she looked at the letter again. The hand that had written her name was a little spidery but it was clear. She picked it up slowly and then tucked it away in a pocket. Now was not a time to read it and by the slightly sidelong glance that Varys sent in her direction that was the right thing to do. She still didn’t trust him, not truly.
After a moment he looked at her again. “I must be away again tomorrow, I am afraid. You can rely on the people here and there is a great deal of food both stored and on its way here, by several careful ways. This place is safe for the time being. However, I have been away from my duties in King’s Landing for too long and I must return there if I am to continue to straddle so very many different lines.”
His eyes flickered at her face and then at the walls and then back at her. “You must consider carefully what you want to do next my Lady. Bolthole is but a pause, a place to gather your strength and to consider where you wish to fly to next. You are a dragon, never doubt that, and Fire and Blood are the words of your family. But Fire and Blood at the moment can only take you so far before they burn any branch you are perched upon. Your family name is not popular and – I know, you are not your father. However-”
He was interrupted by an urgent knock on the door. “Come!”
A servant scurried in with a message that she deposited on the desk hurriedly, curtsied, and then left. Varys scowled at it for a moment – and then he seemed to pale a little. “It’s marked urgent and important,” he muttered as he picked it up and opened it. “Please pardon me my dear.”
As he read it she looked around the room curiously. There were a lot of shelves, some empty, some filled with scrolls, or what looked like rolled up maps, or small caskets. And then she heard a muttered curse, a gasp and then the scrape of a chair. When she looked back Varys was standing and staring at the message in a combination of astonishment and disbelief.
“Are you well Lord Varys?”
He looked at her slightly wild-eyed, before recovering as his arms retreated up his sleeves in that familiar poise of his. “I do beg your pardon my dear. Today has been a day of all kinds of surprises.” He sat again and then twitched a small smile in her direction. “News from King’s Landing, or rather from Winterfell. It seems that King Robert has lost both his wife and his children, in that he has dissolved his marriage and denounced his children as bastards. The reason for this abrupt act is that Cersei Lannister, as she is once again, was discovered having, erm, intimate relations with her own brother, the Kingslayer, and that the King’s children are in fact her brother’s. Incest and treason. Not a good combination.”
She looked at him, her eyebrows raised. She had no sympathy whatsoever for the Usurper, but she felt some surprise at what had happened. Incest was a tricky subject given the history of her family. At one point Viserys had mulled over marrying her himself, only to change his mind when the Dothraki match had come up. Finally she asked: “What happened to the Kingslayer then? Is he dead?”
“Taken the Black and going to the Wall. But he confessed to something – the true reason why he killed your father.”
She leant back in her chair for a moment, surprised, as a hundred memories of her brother’s rants about the perfidy of the Lannisters returned to her. “The real reason? Surely he killed Father on orders from his own father?”
Father’s old spymaster looked at her carefully, eyes flickering. “I fear not.” He paused and seemed to hesitate for a long moment. “In his last days your Father fell into a black and terrible mood. He saw enemies behind every pillar, in every shadow. He was paranoid. His last two Hands were… interesting. Lord Chelsted died in odd circumstances, dipped by your father in wildfire and then burnt alive. I never found out why, save that he had discovered something that your father had been working on. When I started to investigate your father warned me not to, on pain of death. Death by wildfire to be precise.
“His last hand was a man called Rossart, who was the head of the Pyromancer’s Guild. An odd man, prone to giggling and getting… excited when he discussed wildfire. Many wondered why at the time. Now we know why. Jaime Lannister discovered the same thing that Qarlton Chelsted had, the thing that your father had been working on.” The eunuch looked at her with strange expression on his face, a combination of horror and fascination.
A feeling of deep unease stole over her, as she wondered what it was that her father had indeed been up to. “Lord Varys, please tell me what happened.”
Varys pursed his lips for a moment as he seemed to consider his words carefully. “It seems that your father ordered the pyromancers to bury caches of wildfire all over King’s Landing,” he said with a brutal candour. “Under the Dragonpit, under the Great Sept, under all the gates, under places like the Street of Steel and… under the Red Keep. Enough to destroy the city. It seems that your father thought that he could become a dragon when it was all ignited when the rebel army approached. Jaime Lannister stopped him from giving that order.”
Time seemed to stop as ice water seemed to flow through her veins for a long moment. No. No, that was impossible. Father had, from all accounts, been unstable, but to do that, or at least prepare for it? No.
Something of her jumbled thoughts seemed to show on her face, because Varys sighed, looked at the message again and then looked back at her. “You weren’t there,” he said heavily. “In those last days. You were not yet born. You did not see the look on your father’s face after the news of the Battle of the Bells, or after the Ruby Ford. Or, indeed, as the reports came in of the rapid advance of the rebel vanguard, led by Lord Stark. Confusion, despair, anger… madness. In his last days your father plumbed new depths. I was there to see it.”
“But…” She struggled with the words that would not come from her mouth. “To order the destruction of the city… that would be beyond madness. Viserys told me that-”
“Your brother was blinded by his loyalty to your father and his hate for the Lannisters. And he was too young,” Varys broke in almost gently. “Too young to understand what was happening. And… the day that Chelsted died, your father mistreated your mother in a most shocking way. Her screams…” He broke off and stared at the nearest window, before finally looking back. “Your pardon my dear. This… changes a few things.”
There was the sound of drumming fingers as he sat there at the desk. “You can stay here as long as you like. As word spreads of what your father tried to do… well, the reputation of House Targaryen will fall still further. You have a great deal of thinking to do. Even with the backing of three dragons, many will not follow you based on what your father tried to do. This… narrows the possibilities open to you still further from earlier limitations. If you need a home for the foreseeable future then this is it for the time being, if you so choose.”
She thought of the house with the red door for a moment and then smiled with no small amount of bitterness. “Lord Varys, I thank you for your hospitality. However, the idea of ‘home’ is an alien one to me. We were chased from place to place by the Usurper’s assassins, so I do not know what ‘home’ even means.”
Her words bought her an odd look from Varys. “Assassins?”
“Yes,” she said wearily. “Viserys always had us moving from place to place, a step ahead of Robert Baratheon’s killers.”
The bald man stared at her again. “Your pardon my dear, but no assassins were ever sent after you. Spies, yes, to keep an eye on you, but assassins? No. Not to my knowledge.”
She looked at him in puzzlement for a long moment. No. Viserys had told her about the assassins, many times. “But that was what he told me.”
Varys sighed and ran a hand over his face for a moment. “Oh dear.” The hand went back to the desk and drummed some more for a moment. “I need to return to King’s Landing,” he said after a long moment. “As I have been away for too long. There are certain… proprieties… that I must observe.” His face hardened for a moment. “I also need to deal with two pieces on a now defunct board of the Game of Thrones.”
She stared at him, suddenly feeling afraid. “When will you return?”
“I do now know, but rest assured that I shall.” He looked at her most carefully. “Enjoy the quiet. Raise your dragons. Read Maester Aemon’s letter. I will leave instructions for the servants to obey you. And think on your future. It might be that House Targaryen is merely a smaller player on the board than some might have thought. But you are alive and able to think about such things.”
And with that he stood up, gathered his papers, bowed to her a little and strode out.
Theon
The evening meal in the Great Hall that night was… subdued, almost. It was not loud it was not boisterous in any way, it was just… quiet. The King was at the head of the table, next to his brother Lord Stannis and his all but brother Lord Stark, and they talked quietly but intently, gesturing at a small map of the Realm on the table.
There was a moment of sudden silence to one side and he looked over to see that Tywin Lannister had arrived, his brothers next to him and a faint air of tension over them. The silence deepened for a moment and then everyone resumed what they were doing at a slightly louder volume. He suppressed a smirk. It was not a good idea to smirk anywhere near a Lannister right now.
Tywin Lannister strode to the empty chair at the head table that had been set aside for him, bowed shortly to the King, who nodded back at him, and then sat and speared some meat off a platter that a servant had hurried to bring to him. He then ate, staring at the table with what looked like unseeing eyes.
Theon watched him carefully and then looked at the other Lannisters, who were eating and glancing at the head of their House worriedly. And then after a long moment the King looked down the table. “Lord Lannister, we need your counsel on the matter of mobilising the Realm – especially over the issue of how and when to man the Wall. I would be grateful to know your thoughts on this.”
He frowned for a moment and then watched as Tywin Lannister chewed, took a swallow of wine and then leant closer to the map on the table and joined the low-voiced conversation. Theon couldn’t hear that much of what he said, but occasionally a word could be heard, such as ‘harvest’, ‘stockpile’ and then ‘Night’s Watch’. After a while they all resumed eating and drinking, although every now and then one of them would lean towards the others and say something.
He sighed a little. Robb had gone to bed earlier, tired, and Jon was off somewhere in a hunt for the Terrible Threesome, who had apparently been hatching some kind of plan to search the crypts for the legendary dragon egg of Vermax. Exactly how a large dragon had gotten into the crypts seemed to have escaped them, but apparently they had a plan to look for it.
Once he finished his food he stood, nodded at those around him and then walked out of the Hall and looked up at the stars above him. Those same stars shone above Pyke. And also the Stony Shore. He’d been thinking about the latter a lot this past day. There were a few old abandoned keeps here and there, but he’d been looking at the maps and he thought that he might have spotted a few good anchorages here and there. A keep, a potential port, land to till, a holding to protect… there were possibilities.
Well now, look at him. A Lord, thinking of the duties of a Lord. He just needed men and a wife, and that latter thought made him think of Ros. Should he pay a visit to Wintertown and the brothel where she was? Too late tonight perhaps. Or was it? He liked her and he was pretty sure that she liked him. She seemed to, anyway. It was hard to tell with whores.
And then he heard a crunch of boots approaching, followed by the clearing of a throat and he sighed a little and turned. His sister was standing there, a mug of ale in her hand.
“I was wondering when you’d seek me out, sister.”
“I had a lot to think about,” she said, before bringing her other hand out from behind her back and handing him another mug of ale. “Here you go. I don’t like to drink alone.”
He took it and quaffed, before wiping his mouth. “Not bad. You want to talk about what I’ve done?”
“I do.” She seemed to struggle for a moment for words, before deflating a little and then waving him over to one side, where there was a barrel with a spigot hammered into it. Ah. More ale. “You’re a Greenlander now.”
“I am.”
“Lord Greymist.”
“That I am.”
“Father won’t be pleased.”
He scowled at her. “Father can fuck off.” She glared at him and he threw the remains of the ale down his throat and then poured himself another one. “Oh stop that. When did father make the decision to rebuild the Iron Fleet after Pyke fell and I became a hostage? A day? A week? A heartbeat? I could have been put to death at any time if word had gotten out. Did Father ever think of me?”
Her scowl withered a little as he stared at her – and then her eyes flickered down away from his. “He had his duty to our people.”
“Your people. I’m not Ironborn now. I’m of the North.”
“Because of Ned Stark?”
“He was a true father to me. Didn’t scowl at me or hit me for playing anywhere near him. Didn’t shout at me for asking what was happening. I respect him.” He stared back up at the stars. “I never respected Father. And now I’m not a hostage anymore. I’m Lord Greymist. I’ll have a holdfast in the West and I’ll do my best to protect my people. As a Lord should.”
She studied him carefully. “And you worship the Old Gods.” It was not a question, it was a statement.
“I do.”
“You mentioned the Drowned God. And that… you’d seen him?”
He looked at her bleakly – and then he told her all about the two dreams he had had. Every part of them. By the time he finished speaking her eyes were very wide and she was pale and shaking. She peered at the weirwood medallion around his neck – and then she refilled her mug, quaffed it in a long series of swallows and then refilled it again. “Gods,” she said eventually. “No wonder you worship the Old Gods.”
“I don’t want to think about what would have happened if I’d met… him. The Drowned God. Gone mad? Become a second Damphair?”
She shuddered. “Be glad you haven’t seen Damphair in years. He’s older and madder than ever. He’ll be there at the parlay. I’m looking forwards to seeing his face when he sees that Stannis Baratheon, the Hand of the King, is there.”
He nodded. “I’ve been thinking about that. I might be there with him. Father needs to know what I’ve done. What the King has declared. That you’re his heir now. And that I deny the Drowned God.”
She peered at him. “Are you drunk, brother?”
“Not as drunk as you.”
“Spitting in Father’s face from Winterfell is bad enough. Being right there and then when you do it…”
“Has to be done,” he said hoarsely. He’d been thinking about this a lot. The King’s announcement about his name and future was already spreading. “Father can’t pressure me into anything. I’m from the North now, the decision is made and the King has announced it. I’m Lord Greymist and Father can’t change that. And with you his sole heir that might force him to make peace a bit quicker.”
Asha stared at him for a long moment, as if she wasn’t sure what he was. “Are you serious about this?”
“I am.” He stared back at her. “And I was in the room where the Call was sent out. I heard it. That’s more important than father and his fucking dreams of independence.”
His sister quaffed some more ale as she looked at him. “Nuncle Rodrik will be welcome that. Alright. Fair enough.” She nodded at him.
He nodded back and then strode away. Damn it. He needed Ros.
Robb
When morning came he decided that it was a day for a shave. There were times when it felt odd to feel how smooth his chin was, compared to the short beard that he’d had once… in that other, terrible time.
There were times when he almost wanted to just forget every memory he had of that other, terrible, time. But he couldn’t. He had made mistakes then, bad ones, and he had to remember them if he was to stand any chance of learning from them.
Such as the memories of his wife… and what she had cost him. He couldn’t be that stupid again, putting his own wishes ahead of his duties. But… he thrust that thought aside. No. That would be a bad idea.
He finished shaving, ran a hand over his chin, and then finished dressing, pulling on a linen shirt and a leather jerkin, before sticking a knife in his right boot and a dagger in his belt on his left side. Joffrey Hill may be in a cell, awaiting an escort to the Wall, but he had no intention of ever being caught without a weapon ever again. Or, come to that, Grey Wind. His direwolf had barely left his side since the attack.
He wondered sometimes what had happened to Grey Wind in that other time. He had a bad feeling that he would not have survived for long. That made him wince and he looked at Grey Wind, who was staring very intently back at him. Then he smiled and reached out to scratch the fur just under the direwolf’s chin.
As they both wandered out into the main courtyard he could see that the King was already limbering up with that log of his at his feet. He smiled a little. The difference between the King of his previous life and the King he was looking at now was brutally clear. If he hadn’t seen it for himself he wouldn’t have believed it.
Jon was sitting at the seat he’d taken to sitting at since his legitimisation, sniffing at what looked like a freshly made bread roll. There were more of them to one side and he grabbed one and then peered at the little wooden tub filled with fresh butter, before grinning, ripping open the roll and then using his belt knife to transfer some butter on it.
“I hope that knife’s clean,” Jon groused in a good-humoured manner. “You haven’t been cutting up anything for Grey Wind’s morning meal have you?”
“Oh, just some old rancid beef bones,” he replied, before laughing at Jon’s face. “It’s clean!” The roll was still warm and the butter had melted quickly. It was delicious and he quickly grabbed another, before looking around for more food.
“You’re hungry?” Jon asked.
“Starving,” he mumbled through a mouthful of bread and butter. “Too much running about yesterday.” A servant placed a platter of meat to one side and he snagged a piece of ham with his knife. “Tension, too.” He looked about for a moment and then lowered his voice. “Tywin Lannister apparently had a word with his daughter. He took a knife into the room with him. Didn’t use it on her, but I heard that she was as pale as a ghost afterwards.”
Jon looked at him and snagged his own piece of ham from the platter, something that made Ghost’s head suddenly appear from under the table with a look that spoke of the utmost optimism. Jon looked at his direwolf with what was supposed to be a quelling look, before grabbing another piece, ripping it in two and then tossing one to Grey Wind and the other to Ghost, both of whom snapped them down with almost identical snaps and gulps.
He blinked slightly as he felt something like happiness prickle around the edges of his mind, followed by a certain wistful hope and he looked at Grey Wind carefully. The direwolf looked back and he smiled slightly. “Arya wants to give us lessons,” he muttered. “Warging lessons. But there are times when I almost…”
“Know what your direwolf is thinking? I’ve felt the same Robb. It’s… a strange feeling isn’t it?”
He nodded thoughtfully. Wargs. They not only existed, but he was one himself. They all were, the children – real and apparent – of Ned Stark. He had wondered how long it had been since that had happened with the Starks and had mentioned it to Luwin, who had frowned and then muttered something about consulting the books.
They had already been able to make use of Arya and Bran’s warging abilities, but he could already think of a dozen ways of making use of warging on a battlefield. There were drawbacks as well – what happened if your direwolf died whilst you were in his or her mind? – but he could use this. Or rather he could have in a conventional war.
That wasn’t what they were facing now. He’d have to learn new tactics and develop new strategies. Teach them too. Jon’s skills on that front were… lacking.
Breakfast soon ended and as they wandered out into the courtyard he looked around. To one side he could see various servants pulling out straw targets for the archers amongst them and he wondered if Sarella would be there soon. Doubtless she would. It would be a brave man who married that one. And then there would also soon be the Free Folk. His thoughts skittered away from one of them. No. The other one however…
“No sign of Ygritte this morning?” He asked the question lightly but grinned a little when Jon’s posture stiffened. “That one likes you.”
“She’s fierce. I like her too. Oh, stop smirking like that Robb!” His brother looked sombre. “There’ll be those who say that she’s unworthy of even a legitimised bastard.”
He nodded. “Aye, those who play the Game of Thrones. The thing is that we’re not playing that any more. Not for a while. Survival first. Oh, I know, there will always need to be alliances between families, but you’re not-”
“An important piece on the board?” Jon pulled a face. “I don’t want to be. I want to be overlooked. I’m going to be your bannerman, Robb, just like Theon.”
“Brother and bannerman,” Robb corrected him. “Never forget that.”
“Aye,” Jon said with a small smile. “I’ll never forget that.” A look of sympathy crossed his face. “At least I can marry who I want. What of you?”
Robb looked about carefully. No-one was near. “I tried that once. It didn’t end well.” He shrugged. “I’m Father’s heir. Survival or not who I marry is important. Father might say otherwise, but I know that there will be implications.”
Jon sent a sympathetic look his way and he was halfway through another shrug when he heard a horn blow from beyond the nearest gateway. High and clear, brassy and somehow ancient. And everyone who heard it stared at the gateway.
“What was that?” Jon asked.
Shouts came from the gateway and after a long moment a guard emerged from a stairwell, caught sight of them and then all but ran to them. “My Lords,” he panted. “A party is at the gates, with a banner that no-one has ever seen before. A white tree with red leaves on a green background.”
That was the banner of… he paused and searched his brain furiously. He had not the faintest idea whose banner that was. But a weirwood tree was of the North. “How large a party?”
“About thirty strong my Lord.”
“Admit them. But watch them.”
“Aye my Lord.” The man ran off and after a short time the gates creaked open to admit the party. They were all wearing green cloaks and as he saw them enter Winterfell he opened his eyes at one of the leading riders.
“Uncle Brynden?” His shout stilled the courtyard as he looked at the man with the salt and peppered hair – although was there less salt than he remembered?
“Robb!” The Blackfish said warmly as he dismounted and then tossed his reins to a groom, before striding over to him, his eyes keen. Which was confusing. It had been years since Great Uncle Brynden had met him, in his time at least. How did he know him now?
“Great uncle Brynden.” They embraced, slapping each other’s backs, before stepping apart again.
“We need to talk,” the Blackfish muttered, looking about the place and then staring at Grey Wind. “Especially with your father. And you need to meet some people.” He turned to the others in his party who were dismounting behind him. “Brienne of Tarth and the Green Man.”
Robb froze. Brienne of Tarth… Mother had known her in that other time and he looked over to see a tall blonde woman approach. And behind her was an old man – and old tall man with an air of authority – who wore a green cloak with a hood that had horns on it. But… the banner, the horns, the title…
“So you are the Boy Who Died and Fell Through Time,” the old man said softly as he loomed over him. “There is a lot we must talk about.”
He stared at the Green Man and then at Uncle Brynden. “Oh yes. We need to talk.”
Cressen
He closed the large book, drummed his fingers on the cover for a long moment and then sighed and picked it up so that he could return it to the bookshelf. As he returned to his desk he glanced out of the window and stopped to brood.
They had finally stopped searching for Patchface. Instead the fisherfolk had been told to keep an eye out for the body, but by now there wouldn’t be much left. Not after the waves, the rocks, the crabs and everything else. He just wished that he could have talked to the man for longer on the terrible night when he had died.
Something had touched the man. The more he thought back at what he had once thought was nothing more than the babblings of a madman… what if he hadn’t been? What if he had been a seer, someone who prophesised the future? He’d almost died in Shipbreaker Bay that day, he’d trailed his coat under the nose of The Stranger… what if something had marked him somehow?
Which raised the question of who. And how. And that part made him shiver a little. Anyway, he’d ordered that people who had known the Fool write down or tell others who could write, about what Patchface had said, no matter how trivial some might think it had been. There was probably nothing in it, but you never knew.
He returned to his desk and continued to brood there. There was no mention in any of the histories anywhere in Dragonstone – or King’s Landing or in the Citadel apparently – of the Godswood here on the island. The Andals had not known about it, let alone the Valyrians and Targaryens.
So that meant that it must have been hidden a very long time ago. Long enough that there had never been even a whiff of rumour about it. Which was a good thing, given the nature of some of the Targaryen kings, like Baelor the Blessed, or as he liked to refer to him in the privacy of his head, Baelor the Cracked. Someone as ‘holy’ as that king would have ordered the Godswood destroyed.
Fortunately it hadn’t been destroyed and had survived so that Shireen and Gendry could discover it. He twiddled his thumbs a bit over that. He disliked the odds of such a chance. He had a nagging feeling of unease, as if someone was looking over his shoulder. The grave in the Godswood had been that of a Green Man, they knew that much from the runes. They were rumoured to be able to dream of the future. That made him shudder. Was that why he felt so uneasy, because a man had dreamt of Shireen and Gendry thousands of years ago?
Voices outside made him look up and after a moment a knock was delivered on the door. “Maester Cressen? It’s Valmand.”
“Come in.” As the blond-haired man, who had a large drop of Dragonseed blood in him, scurried in Cressen stood. There something about the look on his face. “What has happened?”
“We found something,” Valmand panted. “You told us to locate all the seams of dragonglass on the island. There was one we knew of down by the strand, in the cliff there. There’s… paintings. On the rock. Old ones. Very old ones.”
He blinked and then hurried for the door. “Show me!”
It was a long way down to the strand and the wind was blowing hard enough that his robes clung to his legs and almost made him stumble once or twice, but he barely noticed. There was a group of men standing at the entrance to the cleft in the cliff and they made way for him, one of them handing him a torch. Valmand had one too and he led the way into the bowels of the cliff.
Yes, there was dragonglass here, a lot of it. There were marks here and there as if someone had mined part of it, and he wondered who and when. And then they passed through into another area beyond that, which contained a lantern that someone had left there.
He stopped dead when he caught sight of the paintings. They were everywhere. Swirls and sworls of paint. Patterns that made his head hurt for a moment. Handprints here and there… and he peered at some of them. Yes, some had four fingers and a thumb, but others… were smaller. And had the wrong number of fingers. And what might have been claws.
“The Children of the Forest were here,” he muttered, his mouth dry with shock. “Here with the First Men.” He turned back to the other paintings. Yes. There were images of men and Children of the Forest… meeting? Shaking hands? There were runes under some of the images and he frowned at them. Some seemed to be in the language of the First Men, but others…
“Maester Cressen.” Valmand was drawing his attention to another painting. And as he looked at it the hairs on the back of his neck stood up on end. White and blue paint had been used to paint this one. The images were of… almost ethereal things, figures with white flowing hair and hands that seemed to… He blinked. There was a glow about their hands and to one side there were other figures that looked like… corpses of men. Standing corpses. Wights perhaps?
He turned on the spot, looking at all the paintings around him. And then he looked at Valmand. “You did well to bring this place to my attention. The paintings are important. They are not to be touched. Bring me… my box of coloured inks from my study, all the foolscrap paper you can find and as many quills you can get your hands on. We must copy this. And I must write a long report for the Citadel on this.”
And write a book to add to the collection on Dragonstone, he thought. Those runes… They meant something.
Barristan
He had always thought that the moment that had heralded the beginning of the end of Aerys Targaryen’s rule had been the moment that Tywin Lannister had thrown the pin shaped like a hand at the feet of the Iron Throne and then turned on his heel and strode out, ignoring the combination of insults and cackles and mumbled orders that had come from the mouth of the Mad King.
At that moment Aerys had lost the services of one of the most knowledgeable, ruthless and above all capable men in all of the Seven Kingdoms. The one man who might have been able to stop the long slow snowballing of disaster that had led to the virtual destruction of the Targaryen Dynasty.
He was reminded of that now as he listened to Lord Lannister as they stood in Lord Stark’s solar. The Lord of the Westerlands was stating quietly but intently just what he would do in terms of supporting the war that was to come on the Wall. He spoke of moving supplies to the Wall, of sending building materials to the castles, he asked the Lord Commander about which castles needed the most work and which the least, he spoke of preserving food for the long winter that was to come, of mining coal, laying down stocks of firewood, expanding the fishing fleet and of forging weapons.
He spoke nothing but common sense and practicality. It was as if the years had rolled back and he had been Hand of the King.
The current Hand of the King had been sitting to one side, taking copious notes on paper and only occasionally grinding his teeth. Occasionally he would look askance at Lord Lannister, as if he was pondering what exactly he was.
The others also sat and listened. Lord Stark next to the great map, the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch at his side and over to his left His Grace the King, a great brooding presence, blue eyes flickering between the map and Lord Lannister. Occasionally one of them would vouchsafe a fact in answer to a question, or answer a question asked. And then Lord Stark pulled out the head of a spear with tines at its base from a bag by the desk.
“For fighting wights,” he said quietly. “The men will have to be trained in its use. They’ll be too used to fighting live men who collapse and die once you deliver a killing blow. Wights don’t do that.”
Lord Lannister took the spearhead, inspected it carefully and then nodded. “Practical,” he said eventually. “And easily replicated. With your permission Lord Stark I’ll have this sent south, to the foundries of the Westerlands. The Reach should know of it too. We will need what they have.” He looked at the King. “What are your immediate plans Your Grace?”
The King leant forwards slightly, his eyes going from the map to them. “I need to spy out the lay of the land. This war that is coming will be fought at the Wall, so I need to see it. Lord Commander Mormont, I’ll be returning to the Wall with you. The Hand of the King will going to the Iron Islands to stamp out the bloody civil war that seems to have started there after the Call was sent out. And I believe that lord Stark is headed down do Barrowton?”
“Aye,” said Lord Stark quietly. “There have been odd tales of fog on the barrows there. It might be connected to the Call.” He shook his head. “There’s a lot about it that I suspect we do not know.”
“Aye,” the King echoed. His fingers drummed briefly on the table and then he seemed to collect himself. “My Lords, Ser Barristan, I need your help on a matter of the utmost importance. We have all seen what war can be like and we all know how fickle the Stranger – or the Old God equivalent – can be at times when choosing men to die. We’ve all seen men stumble, so the arrow meant for them takes the man behind instead. We’ve all seen men who looked hale and hearty at sunset, but who were dead of camp fever at dawn the next day. We are going to war against an enemy that no-one has fought for thousands of years and there is much we don’t know and can’t therefore plan for.
“So, one thing must be settled – the succession. If I die tomorrow then my brother Stannis will be King – and I have to say here and now that he would be a good and strong king.” He clapped a hand on his brother’s shoulder, who winced just a little but who looked as content as Stannis Baratheon ever did.
“But – and it grieves me to say this – I’d be a fool if I admitted that as his current heir is his daughter Shireen there would not then be a problem. Shireen’s clever and wise and no longer scarred by the greyscale thanks to the Old Gods. But there will be fools out there who claim that we cannot have a Queen, the descendants of the fools who started the Dance of Dragons. And there will also be fools who claim that I am not a strong king because I do not have an heir born of my loins.”
The faces of Stannis Baratheon and Tywin Lannister both tightened for a moment, before they both sighed and then nodded a little – most reluctantly.
“As I see it therefore I have three choices. One is to marry again and produce children. But there’s no guarantee that she’d be fertile, there’d be a 9-month wait at least for a child and even then what if it’s a girl? The second is do nothing, other than to confirm Stannis as my heir – which he is. Lady Selyse is pregnant again and she might bear him a boy. But, again, there’s no guarantee of that and if she bears him a girl that makes Shireen his heir, leading to the problem with fools that I mentioned. And the third choice is for me to legitimise some – not all, I’m not Aegon the bloody Unworthy! – of my bastards. Naturally there’s a problem with that as well, in that only one of them, Edric, has noble blood. And Edric’s too young to be King, there’d have to be a regency. Gendry’s a better age, but he has no noble blood and he’s a blacksmith.”
The King sighed and then leant back in his chair. “Ned, you are my oldest and dearest friend, as well as the Lord of the North. Stannis, you are my Hand, and also my brother. Lord Lannister, you were hand of the King for many years. Lord Mormont, you were once a major lord in the North and now you are the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. And Ser Barristan, you have served on the Kingsguard for decades and been on the Small Council for years. Advise me, all of you. The Realm is about to go to war and who knows what will come?”
There was a long silence in the room as every man in it seemed to collect their thoughts intently. But it was Lord Lannister, who looked his age for a long moment and then leant forwards. “Your Grace, I understand your predicament. I would suggest a combination of those three options would be the prudent course of action. As you said, we will soon be in a war the like of which we have not seen for centuries. It would behove all the ruling families of Westeros to strengthen themselves by adding to their numbers.
“Yes, confirm Lord Stannis Baratheon as your heir. That would set the Succession in stone for the time being. But also look to marry again. Winter is not yet here and with it the Others will come, so we presumably have some time. As you prepare the Realm for war consider the marriage proposals that are doubtless on their way as the news spreads of my daughter’s… disgrace.” His voice hardened for a moment on that last word. Then he cleared his throat and continued. “As for your bastards here in Winterfell I suggest that you legitimise them, or at least consider the matter carefully. Watch them for their potential, the boys at least.”
And then Lord Lannister sighed wryly. “It has been made clear to me of late that there are times when potential can be right under your nose, but that sometimes you overlook it for various reasons.” The King looked confused for a moment, but then Lord Stark mouthed the words ‘The Imp’ from behind the Lord of Casterley Rock, and he relaxed and nodded.
Lord Lannister continued: “At the very least legitimising them would enable you to expand House Baratheon beyond its current size and allow you to found, if need be, cadet branches.”
There was a silence after he stopped speaking and everyone eyed him carefully. Barristan found himself wondering what that cool appraisal had cost him inside. Just days before he had thought that his grandson would be King, and now he was giving advice to the man who had disinherited the boy and his siblings.
But then they were not the King’s children. None of this was… normal? Politic? He wasn’t sure what the word was.
“Lord Lannister’s advice is sage, your Grace.” The words came from Lord Stark. “I agree with it wholeheartedly. Do not rule any one option out. Consider legitimising the bastards, marry again and in the meantime keep Lord Stannis as your heir.”
“And if anyone complains about legitimising the bastards, then they’re fools,” the Lord Commander rumbled. “You need Baratheons. Besides, all three here are good lads and lasses. So what if Gendry was brought up a blacksmith? Aegon the Unlikely ran about the Realm as squire to a hedge knight. At the Night’s Watch we see all kinds of people. You’d be surprised at who shows their true metal up there once they arrive.”
“Edric is half Florent. The Tyrell’s will be wary of him automatically,” Lord Baratheon mused thoughtfully. “But then they’d be wary of Shireen and the new babe, if it’s born healthy. Not that I give a damn about what Mace Tyrell thinks.”
The King issued a short guffaw. “Aye, well.” He paused and then frowned. “You have made excellent points, all of you. Ser Barristan – anything to add?”
“Just that the Kingsguard will serve your heirs loyally Your Grace – no matter who they are or what their background is.”
And then there was a sudden knock on the door, or rather a sudden staccato series of knocks. “Your Grace!” It was Greenfield and he sounded rather shaken.
Barristan strode to the door and at a nod from the King opened the door. Greenfield was on the other side, along with young Lords Robb and Jon. And behind them stood… the Blackfish?
“We need to see His Grace the King,” Lord Robb said quietly. He nodded at them and allowed them in, staring hard at the Blackfish and the odd tall blonde woman in armour that followed him. And then he blinked as an even taller man stepped into the room, ducking under the lintel to allow access for the antlers on his hood.
The moment that the tall man entered Lord Stark stood so suddenly that his chair slid back. Everyone stared at him and then looked back at the tall man, who seemed to be vaguely amused.
“You’re a Green Man, from the Isle of Faces.” Lord Stark seemed stunned. Then he seemed to see the Blackfish. “Brynden?”
“Ned,” the grizzled older man said with a nod. “Your Grace, my Lords. I present the Lady Brienne of Tarth. And the Green Man, of the Isle of Faces. Not a Green Man, Ned. The Green Man.”
The tall man with antlers lowered his hood – and then the world seemed to freeze in place as he felt all the blood flee his face. He knew that face. It was older, but he knew it. But that was impossible.
Given the gasp from Lord Lannister he was not the only one to recognise the Green Man. “You!”
“Me,” the Green Man said as he looked at them all. “Lord Stark. Your Grace. I am the Green Man. I was once known as Ser Duncan the Tall. And we have much to talk about.”
Perestan
He drummed his fingers on the ledge of the window that he was staring out of. The Hightower stood there in the harbour, tall and proud and… baffling. The Gate annoyed him. He had been there with Marwyn and Ebrose, he’d seen the spot where the Septon had… Died? Twice?
He’d felt the terror from that… thing. The Gate. He’d heard the sounds. The pounding. What was it? Who was it? They suspected who know, but they didn’t know. The Drowned God? Had Lord Tyrell, somehow drained and emaciated as he lay there dying, been right about what lay beyond the gate?
A door opened to one side and Ebrose walked in tiredly and then sat heavily down on a chair before peering at him. “You seem unsettled.”
“That bloody gate.” He spat the last word bitterly. “I want to know what it is. I want to see what it’s made from, I want to know what that noise is, I want to read those runes properly. But the closer I get to it the more I want to piss myself.” A bitter smile crossed his face. “I imagine that Marwyn’s language is even worse.”
Ebrose chuckled wryly. “Oh, far worse.” He turned his gaze from the window to Perestan. “Young Tarly is running around a great deal on this matter. Consulting books, returning them to the shelves, getting more down… he’s a whirlwind of activity. Reminds me of his father at times. He’s also neglecting himself. Needs to remember to eat more.”
Perestan snorted. “He can afford to miss a few meals.”
“There’s less of him than there was when he arrived. His cheekbones are threatening to make an appearance. I’m keeping an eye on the boy. I know that his father is not fond of him, due to his unmartial nature, but he would take it amiss if he died of self-neglect.”
“You’re not the only one. The kitchens are fond of him for his latest idea.”
Ebrose peered at him. “What are you talking about?”
“He’s had this idea of a simple foodstuff. Ham and cheese between two pieces of bread. It’s easy to make and a lot of the younger Maesters love them. The cooks are torn between affront as such a simple foodstuff and delight at being able to feed so many in the Citadel so cheaply.” He smiled slightly. “They call them ‘Samswells’. An odd thing, to hear people call for ‘a plate of Samwells’.”
And for the first time in a few days Ebrose actually laughed. After a moment he sobered a little. “A plate of Samwells. Fame of a sort.” He looked at Perestan. “If he solves the riddle he is working on he will have a greater fame,”
Perestan sighed. “He’s making better progress than I am. The lad has an eye for the runes. And with every record of the runes that he digs up, he gets closer to the inscription on the Gate. He was right, there are inscriptions near the Isle of Faces, and more in a cave near High Heart. The First Men were allied with the Children of the Forest, or ‘those who sing the song of earth’, as they called themselves. We know that the First Men could speak their language, Bran the Builder was said to have used what he knew to build the Wall… with magic.” He fell silent, his thoughts elsewhere.
“Ironic, isn’t it?” Ebrose spoke the very words that he was thinking. “We who seek the truth of the way that the world works suddenly need to comprehend how something as slippery and unreliable as magic ‘works’. Gods! It waxes and wanes, it relies on powers that we cannot explain… it makes me want to tear out what remains of my hair. But we must understand it. If Lord Tyrell is right about what his Father said…” He scowled.
“How do you kill a god who is, as the Ironborn say, dead but will not die?” Perestan sighed. “This Fist of Ned Stark’s… it must be the Fist of Winter. Another legend made fact by recent events.” He snorted. “We might as well rename parts of the Archives the Legendarium! Legends seem to come to life on all sides of us with every day that passes.”
A silence fell and he looked over at Ebrose, who seemed to be struggling with something. “What is it?”
“Too much time has passed.”
This made no sense. “What do you mean?”
“Too much time has passed.” Ebrose made a frustrated gesture with one hand. “I think… I think that the First Men knew that the Others would return, that things like the Gate were vitally important. I think that they must have had a plan, a warning network at the very least, something to act as a tripwire. Signs and portents. But time stifles and kills memories, especially when combined with invasions of people like the Andals.”
“Proof of the return of the Others is still-”
“Ravens arrive every day from Maesters who have seen the cages carried by men of the Night’s Watch. Cages that contain heads and hands of wights. They’ll come to the Citadel soon, it is inevitable. Proof of wights. Therefore, it follows, proof of the Others. Because without one the other cannot exist.”
He looked at his feet for a long moment – and then he looked out of the window again at the Hightower. “Everything we thought we knew is being upended.”
A grunt came from Ebrose as he stood tiredly. “No. Just… added to. The truth is just… more complex that we had thought.” He paused. “I’m peckish. I need a Samwell or two.”
Ned
“You’re dead.” The words came from the lips of Tywin Lannister, who had turned as pale as milk. “You… you’re dead. You died at Summerhall. How… how can this be?”
The tall old man looked at him, his mouth working briefly – and then he sighed slightly and strode to the nearest chair, where he quirked an eye at Robert and, on receiving a curt if baffled nod, sat down. And then he shrugged off his cape and rolled up one sleeve – to reveal horrific burn scars on that arm. “I almost died.”
Everyone stared at the arm, with the exception of the Blackfish and the odd tall woman who was with him. Brienne of Tarth – the Evenstar’s daughter? They were standing next to each other – and then he noticed that both wore similar brooches in the shape of antlers.
The Green Man looked around the room and then sighed heavily. “Very well. It’s a tale that I will only tell only the once here, as the memories are dark ones.” He paused for a long moment. “It was supposed to be the day that the dragons returned to Westeros. Instead it was the day that dragons of another sort died.”
Robert stirred uneasily and the Green Man looked straight at him. “You must let go of your hatred of the Targaryens, Robert Baratheon. They are not a threat to you, not now. And their dragons are important.”
His oldest friend went rather red in the face for a long moment, but then nodded choppily – although Ned could not tell if the nod was in acknowledgement or agreement. Stannis also stirred, probably at the way that the Green Man had referred to his brother as merely ‘Robert Baratheon’.
“We thought that we were being safe. My King… he was the best of the Targaryens. Aegon the Unlikely. He assembled seven dragons and oh so many of his family. He planned what he thought would be a safe way of hatching the eggs and binding the dragons to the Targaryens. Oh, so much planning. All for naught.”
The old man tilted his head to one side, his eyes closed for a long moment. When they opened again there was pain in his gaze. “I always wondered how the fire went out of control. I once thought that it had been a conspiracy in some form, that a Maester had tainted the wildfire somehow. There had always been rumours about how the Maesters had somehow been behind the deaths of the last dragons, especially how pitiful the Last Dragon had been. But from what I know now, it was not the Maesters. A pyromancer wanted to be a bit too helpful, he brewed a batch of wildfire that was hotter than the others. He wanted to help his King. And he doomed him instead.
“The fire went out of control so quickly. All of a sudden there was fire everywhere. People panicked. My King ordered an immediate evacuation and then organised it. I wanted him to lead the people out. But no. He and his son Duncan said they had a duty to get everyone out.”
Another sigh came from the old man. “I got the Princess Rhaella out. She was deeply shocked and almost didn’t realise that she was in labour at first. I carried her out and as the flames leapt higher and higher to one side I helped her to birth her son then and there on the ground. Rhaegar Targaryen. The moment he opened his eyes and looked at me I knew somehow that fate would not be kind to him. I wrapped him in my white cloak, left him in her arms and then ran back into the burning building.”
It was utterly silent in the room as they all looked at the Green Man, who was visibly struggling with dark and bitter memories. “I found him grievously injured, kneeling over the body of his son. My namesake. Duncan the Small. I…” The former Kingsguard visibly struggled for words. “I tried to get to them, I really did. But everything was on fire, even the flagstones in places, the roof above us was starting to collapse and then… Aegon gave me his last command. He said that it was too late for him, that I had to go, now. He told me to run. To leave him with his boy. I didn’t want to go, he was more than my King, he was my friend, we had been through so much together, he and I… but he told me to go. He commanded me to go.” His face crumpled for a moment, before he ran his hand over his face.
“So I did.” He said the words with a flat, almost stark, inflection. “I left my King to die there. Not that it was… well, it hard. In so many ways. The way I had entered was gone – a mass of flame. The roof was starting to go and as I ran to one side I heard a creak and a groan and… then it came down where my King had been and… he was gone.
“I ran through the blazing corridors, choking from the smoke, knowing I had very little time left. I knew of a servants tunnel, where they could bring in wine, and I headed for that, almost getting lost in the chaos and smoke and flames. I had to kick a door down before I could get to it, and it was at least cooler there, but as I ran I realised that my arm was on fire and I tried to beat it out as I ran. I was screaming, I was pulling off my armour… I barely remember any more.”
The Green Man clenched his scarred hand as if in remembered pain. “How I beat it out I will never know. All I remember is being outside, in the cool air, up to my knees in the water of the lake near Summerhall, looking at the funeral pyre of my friend and King… and all his hopes.”
He fell silent and there was a pause as they all kept looking at him. And then he stirred, and it was as if a spell had been broken. “I wandered after that, here and there. I was half-delirious from pain and loss and grief. I remember passing through villages and trying to help people here and there. The Gods alone know what people thought of me. The Burnt Helper, or something like that. My old life was gone, I knew that somehow, but I did not know what was to come. I think that I must have almost hoped to die. I remember fighting three bandits who had been bothering a small hamlet. I killed their leader with his own broken sword. But something drove me on and eventually I found myself on the banks of the God’s Eye, looking at the Isle of Faces. And then a voice to one side said: ‘You’re late’. And then I met my first Green Man.”
He looked at the Blackfish for a moment and seemed to find something amusing. “He told me to get in the bloody boat and the next thing I knew I was being rowed to the Isle by a wizened old man who was spitting nails about something. And there I discovered the Green Men. And I found healing. And now here I am. And here you are. We have a great deal to do. But I imagine you have other questions.”
There was a pause. And then Robert stood. “Do we really need the dragons of Daenerys Targaryen?”
“Yes,” the Green Man said firmly. “But not perhaps in the way that you might imagine at first. They are more than weapons. They represent something. They are magical – but they are not to be abused. That was the mistake that the Valyrians made. They twisted magic in ways that it is not meant to bend – until it broke.”
He stood with not a little creaking of tendons and strode over to the map. “Aha. Your map is accurate.” A great finger was placed on Hopemourne. “You know the significance of this place?”
“Hopemourne,” Ned said through suddenly dry lips. “The home of the Night King and the Others.”
“Home… yes and no. Yes, it is their fortress, but it is more than that. There are ruins there. Old ruins.”
“I have seen them,” Ned muttered. “The day that the Call was sent out. I had a vision on that day. A vision of Hopemourne. And the Others.”
“You were lucky that day,” the Green Man rumbled, his eyes keen. “Your ancestors placed protections on the Hearthstone. If they had not then you would be dead now.” He looked back at the map and sighed. “Those ruins were not built by men. Nor were they built by the Others. They are old. They were old when the Arm of Dorne was still whole, before the Neck was drowned and when Valyria was nothing more than a few shepherds on a hill. No-one knows who built them.”
They all stared at him and he seemed to sigh a little. “The Children of the Forest came to Westeros first. They wandered about the land, they discovered the weirwood trees, they became as one with the air and the land and the water. They carved the first faces on the trees, they learnt to talk to the Old Gods… and they were the first to discover Hopemourne.”
His face seemed to harden. “There was something there. In or under the ruins. What it is… the Children do not know. The followers of the Red God say that he battles something called the Great Other, a thing of darkness. Perhaps the thing under Hopemourne is the Great Other. All the Children know is that it is evil. And that it… repelled them, the first time they saw Hopemourne.
“Winter came not long afterwards. And with it came the first of the Others. They were made by whatever lies under Hopemourne. Made in mockery of the Children. The Others are tall where they are short, cold where they are warm, white and blue where they are green and brown. The Children rejoice over a burgeoning bud on a tree. The Others would see it wither. And when the Children returned to look at Hopemourne, to wonder what was there… the first of the Others killed them and drove the others away. And so it remained – the Others protected Hopemourne. The Children stayed away from it. And so everything remained, as finely balanced as a knife on a finger.”
“Until something changed?” The words came from Robb, who was watching and listening as intently as Ned was.
“Indeed. Something did indeed change. The First Men came, through the Arm of Dorne. And they discovered the Children. And then war followed. The First Men needed land to plough their crops and feed their herds. They cut down the weirwood trees and killed the Children where they found them. The Children fought back. The Arm of Dorne was smashed. The Neck almost drowned. And then, one day, a man landed on the coast east of Hopemourne and wandered West. He met an Other. Who killed him. And then he discovered that whilst the corpses of the Children stayed dead , the corpses of men… did not.”
“The first wight?” Robert asked shrewdly.
“Aye,” the Green Man said. “The first wight. And then the balance shifted. As men came North they were killed and turned – and all of a sudden the Others were on the march, using wights to kill Children and the First Men wherever they found them and reanimating the men. That was the start of the Long Night. The Children and the First Men allied with each other, because they had no choice. It was that or death. The Children taught the First Men about magic and the First Men taught the Children about war. And together they fought. They fought the Others. They discovered dragonglass together and together they fought the Others to a standstill. And then they pushed them back, in a rout. Back to the lands that now lie beyond the Wall. Back to Hopemourne.”
Another pause and then Ned said the words that had been on his mind for a while. “The Children of the Forest… you have met them? We know that they still exist, Mance Rayder, the King Beyond the Wall, met one who died as it brought in a party of Giants from the other side of the Frostfangs, but are there more out there?”
This seemed to amuse the Green Man. “Oh yes,” he said quietly. “They are still out there. They live long lives and they can be slow to have families, but they are out there.” He fell silent and his eyes seemed to flicker for an instant in his direction, but it might just have been the light.
“These Others,” Tywin Lannister said after a moment. “What do they want? And where have they been – why such a long absence from the world of man?”
The Green Man looked at him. “The first is easy to answer – as I said earlier they desire things to wither and not grow. They want all of Westeros to wither. They would have the land dead, the forests withered and everyone who is not them dead and wighted in a mockery of life. And after Westeros… everywhere else.” His gaze seemed to sharpen a little. “You cannot bargain with them, Lord Lannister, you cannot treat with them. You have nothing that they want. They do not care about your life. They merely want you dead.
“As for where they have been… they were defeated grievously at the end of the last war, they lost many of their number and many of the survivors were injured in some manner. You have to remember that they were not born, they were made, they do not heal in the same way that we do – it takes time for them. They slept and regathered their strength. Perhaps they knew that the Long Winter that lies ahead of us was coming? Perhaps they knew that magic was going to sleep for a long time in places? I know not. But they had one advantage. They have something they lacked at the start of the previous war – the Night King.”
“Who is he?” Ned asked. “I… saw him in my vision of Hopemourne.”
The Green Man turned his gaze to him. “He was a man once. He was the brother of one of the heroes of the last war, one of the greatest of the First Men. He was a Stark. The Others had taken men before, in a bid to try and understand them. They… twisted them. Changed them in terrible ways, but they did not understand them, or realise what they were doing. They made… things that just exist.”
Ned felt himself pale as he remembered the things that he had seen in that room with the mockery of a Heart tree.
“And then the Others joined with the thing that exists beneath Hopemourne and they twisted the Stark they had captured into… the Night King. He straddles the gap between the Others and men. He understands us better than they do, but he is still alien in so many ways. And he can do something that the rest of the Others cannot – he can make new Others. If they can get their hands on a human baby boy, just a few weeks old, he can touch that child… and they will grow to become an Other.”
There was a shocked silence… and the Old Bear leant forwards. “There are Wildlings who have been known to give their baby boys up to the Others. One was caught and killed by the Night’s Watch a few months ago. Craster, his name was.”
“There have always been those who have been desperate enough to worship or try and appease the Others,” the Green Man said with a disgusted shake of his head. “It never works, it merely means that they die a little later than their neighbours, but they still die.” He looked at Robert again. “Yes, they have been away. They have healed and they have learned and they have refilled their ranks. And they are coming. You should act on the assumption that war will come sooner than you think. And perhaps from a direction you did not expect.”
The old man leant back in his chair, looking a bit tired – and the others looked at each other with growing concern.
Edmure
The arrow thunked into the lower right-hand part of the target and he lowered the bow with a sigh. Gods, he used to be better at this, didn’t he? He pulled a slight face, took another arrow out of the quiver by his side, fitted it to the string, drew, squinted, loosed – and saw it hit high and left of where he had aimed at. Shit.
As he drew another arrow out, a voice broke in: “I know a great tavern two miles away, with a barmaid you should meet.”
He did not respond, just fitted the arrow, drew the string back, squinted and –
“She’s got long black hair, she’s pretty and she’s got these great big…”
He didn’t to look over, he could sense the hand movements. He just kept his irritation at bay, sighted and let fly. The arrow hit the target, about a handswidth away from the bullseye. Hah.
“Patrek, this is more important than barmaids.”
His old friend made a horrified noise. “Archery more important than barmaids with great big-”
“I almost got us all killed at High Heart,” he snapped, silencing Patrek Mallister. “I was an impulsive fool and I erred. We’re going to go to war, Patrek, war against things out of our worst nightmares. And I’m not ready yet. Are you? Is anyone? And I’ve been a lazy fool, chasing barmaids with big tits. Tully’s are supposed to be good archers. Look at that bloody target! One out of three near the bullseye!”
Patrek raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “You’ll get better.”
“I know I will,” he replied. “I have to.” He pulled another arrow out it, fitted, drew, squinted, let loose – and it flew straight over the target. Damn it. He was too cross to even aim properly. He let out a breath, breathed in slowly – and then he looked at the nearest flag. There was a breeze. Quite a stiff one. Gods, he was an idiot. He sniffed, picked another arrow, fitted it, drew it, squinted, adjusted for the breeze, loosed – and sent it true and straight into the bullseye. He nodded, pleased.
“Better.” He and Patrek both jumped a little and he turned to see that Father was standing in the archway behind him. “You need more practice, but better.” Father eyed Patrek sardonically as he hurriedly stood and bowed. “Edmure, walk with me a little.”
They strolled in silence for a while as they passed along the bank of one of the rivers that flowed past Riverrun. And then Father cleared his throat. “Stevron Frey arrived this morning. I have just come from him. He has pledged his banners and we have had a long talk. He spoke of his father a great deal.”
Edmure smiled slightly. “It could not have been easy to be the son – the leading son amongst so many! – of the Late Lord Frey.”
Father smiled himself, probably at the use of his own description of the late and unlamented Walder Frey. “Aye, hard enough. The new Lord Frey spoke of his father’s grudges. Some of those grudges were older than I am! Gods, the man was a bitter old fool. He turned minor things into slights, slights into grudges and then insults… fagh! The man could turn a compliment into an insult. I do not like to say it, but we are well rid of him. He had ambitions as well, or so is my guess after talking to Stevron Frey.”
“Ambitions?” Edmure asked carefully. Then he thought about it. “Ah. Let me guess – the Lord of the Crossing wanted to be a Lord Paramount?”
“Perhaps,” Father said carefully. “But that was WalderFrey and he is now dead. Stevron Frey is a different man. He has bent the knee, so to speak. Spent a lot of his brothers and half-brothers and nephews to the Wall as well.”
That was good news indeed, as he remembered his last visit to the Twins and the muttered rudeness that he had endured. “Does that include Black Walder?”
“It does indeed.”
Edmuresmiled. Oh, this was a good day indeed. “Black Walder in black. There is a certain justice there.”
“The new Lord Frey did not follow his father in another way – he did not bring any of his nieces or great-nieces as contenders for your hand.”
He sighed a little in relief. Whilst Roslin Frey was a most pretty girl, he had always been afraid that Fat Walda might be sent in his general direction. He might not have survived that. She had once talked to in a corridor of the Twins, whilst getting very animated and almost pressing him against the wall with her bosom.
Patrek had been no help at all and in fact had come close to pissing himself laughing.
“I take it that the ravens are still coming with suggestions of daughters and grand-daughters and sisters for me to marry?”
Father chuckled quietly for a moment, before coughing – a deep, racking cough. Edmure looked at him worriedly. Father was still not a well man. “Aye,” Father said eventually. “They are.” And then his face changed a little. “One came from Winterfell. Tywin Lannister is there.”
He pulled a face. “Is all well?”
“Cat says so. Apparently Jaime Lannister’s confession was enough for the Lion of Casterley Rock. Cat also said that there was a good chance that he will name the Imp as his heir.”
That made sense, even though he had never thought that he would ever see the Imp as Tywin Lannister’s heir. “Interesting,” he said eventually, mulling over the possibilities. “He would be a less… intimidating neighbour.”
Father stopped and looked at him. “Cat said something else. Apparently the Imp found the ancestral weapon of the Lannisters, an axe called Rocktooth. A weapon of the First Men fit to match the others that have been found, like the Fist of Winter, Stombreaker and Otherbane. She thinks that the sword Dawn, held by Lord Dayne might be another – and the word from the Vale is that the Riverlands once had a shield.”
He stared at Father, the words clattering through his head. Then he frowned. “I don’t remember any legends of a great shield in the Riverlands.”
“Maester Vyman is combing through the records now. He’s as excited as he ever gets,” Father said dryly as they recommenced their walk. “We need to find it Edmure. It would be a sign of our paramountcy here in the Riverlands. And it would help with this Call.”
His scalp prickled a little with the mention of the thing that was roiling the Realm. And then he scowled with thought. “Would the Mudd Kings have had it? Before the coming of the Andals?”
“Perhaps.”
“Then it might be at Oldstones.”
But Father grimaced. “Oldstones has been stripped over the centuries, there is nothing there of worth. Even the tombs have been robbed.”
“Ah,” said Edmure, conceding the point. And then a thought occurred to him. “What if the Andals captured it and it was despoiled or destroyed?”
“I do not know,” Father said in a troubled voice. “But if the other weapons of the First Men have survived then this shield might have as well. We must look for it.”
He nodded, even as a memory prickled at the back of his head. “Wait... Father, I once had a nursemaid who you dismissed because she would tell me tales of the Old Gods and the First Men. And she mentioned once the King who bore the…” He racked his mind. “The Shield of the Rivers? No, it was something else. The Shield of the Trident? Gods, this was years ago.”
Father frowned and then pulled a slight face again. “I think I remember her. Your mother wanted you to be strong in the Faith of the Seven, so I might have been a bit overzealous. And I think I recall the tale she mentioned. I will ask Vyman about it. I must talk with you about something else though. I have had a raven from the Foxhold. She is almost ready to travel back to King’s Landing. I have thought about this deeply but I am not yet decided on if we should send an escort to assist with her passage there to face justice.”
The words were said by a man he barely recognised, who had a face like stone. Gods, he thought, Lysa, how could you? Where did it all go so wrong? What twisted you so amiss?
But Edmure said nothing and merely nodded again – before then looking up as thunder cracked somewhere to the West. Great black clouds were billowing slowly towards them. “A storm is coming,” he said, and he knew that he was not speaking of just the clouds. “We’d best get back to the keep.”
Robb
The meeting with the Green Man did not go on for too much longer after the revelation that the Others were planning something. Sadly he could not say where or when, just that he knew that they were coming.
It was a shock to know that they were up against an ancient member of House Stark. Who was he? Or rather who had he been? He made a note to look up the records and perhaps to check the older tombs in the crypts, even in the oldest and darkest and coldest section. He didn’t like that area, no-one in their right mind did.
And afterwards there had come the surprises. After the Green Man had stood, nodded to the King and left, with a slightly stunned Father and Lord Lannister, after the King had drummed his fingers on the mantelpiece furiously in thought and then left with his brother, then Uncle (well, Great-Uncle really) Brynden laid a hand on his shoulder and directed – not pulled, it was friendlier than that – him to one side. Brienne of Tarth was next to him and he eyed her carefully. He remembered her from the previous life he had lived. The Evenstar’s last remaining child, who had witnessed the death of Renly Baratheon and who had sworn herself to Mother after.
“Rob, we need to talk,” the Blackfish.
He eyed Uncle Brynden carefully and then looked around. They were alone. “Will here do?”
“It will have to.” The Blackfish looked at him with what looked like sympathy. “We both saw a lot on the Isle of Faces. Including your death in that other world that is now lost to us, thank the Gods.”
“The Old Gods have touched you,” Brienne of Tarth. “Sent you back from a disaster.”
He swallowed hard. “You… know that?”
“We saw the moment when you woke up again after being brought back to life. Brought back through time. Brought back with a purpose.” The Blackfish smiled crookedly at him. “I’m proud of you Robb. You and Ned – you’ve done so much. The Call has been heard in so many places. But there’s a lot left to do.”
He looked at his great uncle and then at the blonde woman next to him. “I know,” he sighed. “The King will go to the Wall, and Father to Barrowtown. And Lord Stannis to the Iron Islands. But where should I go next?”
Uncle Brynden narrowed his eyes a little whilst still smiling. “You stay here. There are places in Winterfell that you need to uncover. And you must be the Stark in Winterfell whilst your father is away.”
Robb eyed the older man. “Places I need to uncover?”
“You need to talk to the Green Man.” Uncle Brynden clapped him on the shoulder and then walked off with his companion. There was definitely something odd about them, some kind of connection almost.
He watched them go and then looked down at Grey Wind. “Well,” he said eventually, “It seems I might need your nose. For something.”
The direwolf just looked at him. And then he sneezed, shook his head and wandered off. Robb watched him go with a smile, which slowly faded. What had the Blackfish meant?
Catelyn
She had gotten used to the way that the atmosphere in Winterfell had changed over the past months. The Call had shaken the place almost down to its foundations, reminding people about things that they had thought were mere legends. And then the King had come, bringing with him the energy and noise of the Royal Court.
Of course there had been problems. She had expected some of the Court to be snobbish and look down their noses at the North – and Cersei Lannister, may all the Gods rot her black and withered heart, had been exactly like that – but it had not been as bad as she had feared. The Call seemed to have woken the Court up a lot, especially the King.
And now… she looked about the hall as people scurried about to make everything ready for the evening meal. There was something extra in the air tonight. Green Men were about in the North for the first time in centuries and there was a buzz in the air.
She’d asked Father about the Green Men on the Isle of Faces long, long ago, before Edmure had been born, and his answer had been that they were highly mysterious, very old and not to be bothered, ever. There had long been a compact about them – a compact that Harren the Black had naturally ignored but had still been some how defeated by. And now there was a group of them here. Including-
“There you are Cat!”
She turned at that familiar voice with a beam of delight and ran to him for one of his hugs. Uncle Brynden had long been a voice of quiet experience that she had listened to just as much as Father. When the two of them agreed on something then it was important. And Tullys had to stick together. Family was family.
As she stepped out of his arms she looked at him and then tilted her head a little, quizzically. Uncle Brynden looked a little different. He seemed more settled, as if that was possible, and unless she missed her guess he was a shade less grizzled since the last time she had seen him. He was dressed in his usual apparel for high table, but he bore a broach that was different, in the shape of an antler. And there something about his eyes that he had not had before, but she could not, for the life of her, put her finger on it.
He looked her up and down with a warm smile on his face – and then he stopped, his eyes narrowed a little, before his smile grew again. “Ah, Cat. You’re expecting another little direwolf again?”
She ran her hands over her belly and smiled at him. “I am, Uncle. Oh, but it’s good to see you again!”
The smile became a little more wry as his eyes flickered a little. “You too, Cat, you too. Such odd times though.”
“The Call?”
He sighed. “The Call.” He looked about the hall for a moment and then gestured her to follow him into a room to one side. Once they were both in he closed the door. “Better that there not be anyone to hear this. Aye – I heard the Call at the Bloody Gate.” He paused, seeming to wonder what to say next. “Cat, I know about Robb. About how he was brought back. You know, don’t you?”
She froze for a moment. “Aye, Uncle Brynden. I know. He told me. Or rather Ned did at first, and then Robb explained further and…” Her words stuttered and died. “And everything that has happened since then has just…” She clasped her hands together.
Her uncle looked at her for a long moment and then nodded slightly. “You heard about Walder bloody Frey dying did you?”
Ah. She thought about the warm feeling of savage joy that had gripped her on the day that the message had come. “Oh yes,” she hissed. “And I do not mourn him in the slightest.”
The Blackfish nodded with satisfaction. “Nor should you. I was there when he had his apoplexy. He was his usual vile self, insulting everyone around him, doubting everyone and everything, insulting everyone there, even his own kin – and then a man from the Night’s Watch walked in and placed a cage on the table in front him. A cage containing the head of a wight. The wizened old bastard pissed himself and had a stroke there and then, pardon my language.”
She smiled a little and shook her head as she remembered when the raven had come with that news. Wine had been quietly poured and drunk. And then she looked at her uncle again – and at the broach. “Uncle,” she asked hesitantly, “Are you a follower of the Old Gods now?”
He tilted his head back a little and looked at her through slightly hooded eyes. “Let us simply say that I know that they exist,” he replied eventually, before sighing. “Cat, you know that I was brought up in the Light of the Seven. But… well, I have seen things, thanks to the Old Gods. I am not the same man that I was, thanks to the Green Man. Neither is Brienne.”
Brienne of Tarth. That had been something else to get tongues wagging a bit. Well – not so much in some than others. The Mormonts would doubtless like her a lot, should they meet her. She thought of Robb’s tale from that other time, the daughter of the Evenstar who had so obviously loved Renly Baratheon, despite his own… tastes. The woman who had sworn herself to her and then left to try and help to get her daughters back. “I have heard a great deal about her from Robb,” she said in answer to the upraised eyebrow of her uncle. “From that other time.”
Something unreadable flickered in the eyes of the Blackfish. And then he assessed her. “I hear that the Old Gods have spoken in your presence.”
“They have spoken through Ned thrice and Jon once.”
“Ah, Jon,” said her uncle in a thoughtful voice. “Yes.” He looked at her shrewdly and then pulled a slight face. “A talk for another time,” he all but whispered. “Family, Duty, Honour.” And then he raised his voice again: “So – a banquet! I trust that there’s salmon?”
“A large one. The moment I heard that you were in Winterfell I went straight to the kitchens and ordered it myself.”
Uncle Brynden clapped his hands with satisfaction and then rubbed them together. “Excellent! With that lemon and dill sauce I like so much?”
“Freshly picked and mixed.”
He laughed happily and then extended his arm. She took it and then he opened the door and led her back out into the hall, where various people seemed to be awaiting her approval. Tonight was a time for family. And to hold on to precious memories whilst people were still around, because soon people would be leaving again, possibly into danger.
Sandor
He stared at the mug of ale and then looked up at the high table. And at the tall man there in the green tunic. The old, old, man who seemed to be revered. Apparently he had once been Ser Duncan the Fucking Tall. But that would make him fucking ancient. And besides hadn’t Ser Duncan the Fucking Tall died at Summerhall?
He snorted, drank some ale and then glared at the high table again. Then there was the Blackfish. The fucking Blackfish, one of the most contrary old farts in the Seven Kingdoms. Not a bad fighter from what he had heard. Oh and he was there with the Evenstar’s daughter, a tall blonde girl who was not quite ugly but certainly not pretty. He looked at the pair. There was something there, between them. He didn’t know what, but something.
Another snort, another gulp of ale and then he glared at the table to one side. The Monster was sitting there, with an empty plate in front of him. There was something wrong with him, he could tell. Well… wronger than usual. Speaking of wronger than usual, the Monster was on the brink of one of his ‘episodes’, he could tell. That hard old man Tywin Lannister, who was also at high table, had told off two of his largest men to shadow him. Heh. Nah. Not big enough. Not if the Monster was in the grip of one of his episodes.
His gaze flickered to the arse of one of the serving wenches, as she wandered through with more ale, placing a flagon in front of him but not looking at him. Ah. Another one afraid of him. Afraid of his face morelike. Perhaps he needed to find a whore somewhere. And perhaps he needed to drink yet more ale and then stagger back to his bed and wonder what he was going to do with his life, now that he was no longer sworn sword to the little shit.
Someone had actually asked him earlier on if he was going to accompany Joffrey fucking Hill to the Wall. He’d laughed in his face.
No. Fuck no. Go to that frozen hellhole with that little bastard? He couldn’t think of anything worse.
No, he was free. And he didn’t know what to do. Or where to go. He needed to think about that. King’s Landing was a smelly shithole that ate gold. The Westerlands were Lannister territory and he’d had a gutful of those prideful, mad, incestuous bastards. The women of Dorne were amazing, but mad. The Vale was full of idiots. The Reach was tempting. The Riverlands were wet. Fuck the Iron Islands. And the North was… cold. But he liked the people. Odd, that. He’d have to think about it all.
He drank the dregs of his old ale and then pulled his new ale towards him before looking at the tables close to high table. Stark’s bastard was talking with that Wildling girl of his. Poor fool. She had her claws in him already, he could tell. And then there was the other Wildling girl, the goodsister of Mance Rayder. She was… interesting. He could tell that she was interested in Stark’s oldest lad. Oldest legal lad that is. But the silly bugger was being all noble. Twat.
His eyes flickered over the others. Stark’s oldest daughter was talking to her betrothed, the son of that truly scary fucker Roose Bolton. He’d heard of the Leech Lord and even met him once, a long time ago. There was something… not quite right about that man. The son was different, he could tell. As for the other Stark girl… fuck, where had she gone? She and that Direwolf of hers?
Odd things, those Direwolves. There were times when he’d seen some of them padding about the corridors, with eyes that looked far too intelligent.
And then there was the Greyjoy girl. She was talking to her brother. She looked like a right interesting handful in bed, lithe and wrigglesome. She probably had a dagger or two hidden somewhere and if you pissed her off she’d probably cut your balls off though.
He swigged some more ale and then mulled things over. A whore or not? Probably… not. He was tired. And then there was the fact that the Green Man was staring straight at him, with an unreadable expression on his face. He tried to stare back, but those old eyes… there was something there that made him shiver suddenly and look away.
So he stood, drank the last of his ale and walked away. Back to his bed. He’d decide where the winds would take him another day.
Tyrion
If there was one thing that he desperately envied about Father’s possessions then it was his cabinet. It was a masterpiece of the carpenters arts, something that looked like a trunk but which opened up into a small bookcase. It had drawers all over the place, with brass handles and leather covers and it was something that he coveted.
And now he coveted it even more, because Father had revealed that it had secret compartments. Some in very unexpected places. With all kinds of very unexpected information.
“I always wondered about just how much gold is still in the Westerlands,” he said bemusedly as he looked at a very old map indeed. “I had no idea that…”
“There was so much still there?” Father quirked his lips dryly as he leant back in his chair. “Lannisters in past years have not delved as deeply as they could. I’m sure you can guess why.”
He thought about it for a moment – and then enlightenment dawned. “Gold is valuable because it’s rare. The more gold that’s out there the less rare it is so the less valuable. So by mining it at a slower rate than we could, we keep the price of gold up.”
Father eyed him with what was almost approval. “Good,” he nodded slightly. “The wealth of Casterley Rock depends on that. Be mindful of that. There’s also the issue of what is stored in the Vaults. You need to be eternally mindful of that too. There is a full list of what is in there in my study in the Vault. The keys are always on my person and when I die they will always be on your person. You will see what is there the next time we return to Casterley Rock.”
His mind wanted to whirl and he almost wanted a goblet of wine, but he had to keep a clear head for this. The sheer amount of wealth that was in the Vault had always intrigued him. Not that Father had ever even hinted at what was within it. So he merely nodded soberly and muttered: “Thank you Father.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Father rumbled. “You will always have the value of gold lodged in the back of your head, like a burr that cannot be removed.”
Why, it was almost a witticism, not that he was going to say that, so instead he nodded again.
“There is also the issue of what is blocked off within Casterley Rock. You know about the passage that leads to the room where we now know that the true tale of Lann the Clever is. There are other rooms deeper in Casterley Rock, in some of the older areas that are now unsafe. I issued orders that those rooms be made accessible again before I left the Westerlands. That might take time, but the results could be… interesting.”
Now this was beyond intriguing… but perhaps something for another time, based on the look on Father’s face.
He was right.
“Joffrey will take the Black tomorrow morning. In the Sept. Perhaps in the Godswood as well. I want it to be as clear as possible that this is not something that he can avoid. The boy is a spoilt fool who should have been taken in hand years ago and who doubtless still thinks that he can avoid his fate. He cannot.” Father’s face was all angular planes and his eyes like green agates.
Tyrion’s fingers drummed once lightly on the table, seemingly of their own accord, and then he spoke the words that hung unsaid in the room for the entire meeting so far: “And what of his mother?” He knew that he dared not say that word. Not her name.
The agates threatened to catch fire for a moment – and then Father pulled the slightest of faces. “Ah. Yes, we must talk of her.” He stood in a quick and easy movement and then strode to the fire, which somehow did not then burn even harder beneath his glare.
There was a long silence, which Tyrion finally broke with the words: “Death or internal exile in the most desolate place in the Westerlands?”
There was a long moment – and then Father nodded slightly in recognition of his words. “Death would be fitting, given the nature and implications of her actions. Her crimes. But I cannot order her death. The title of Kinslayer would be a step too far – a step back to the days of the Rains of Castermere. No. I did wonder if Robert might take the decision out of our hands by doing the deed himself, but this new and sober Robert Baratheon is a cannier man than I had first thought.”
“So not death then. Exile?”
Father’s foot tapped on a flagstone for the merest of instances and then he turned and looked at him. “The question then is where? The location would be important. The more desolate and barren the better. Not anywhere near Casterley Rock. She knows too many people there, people she could manipulate. She thinks herself clever. And the Westerlands are… too familiar for her. A location there would require guards and after time has passed guards grow careless – or could be suborned.” His face rippled with disgust for a moment. “An island would be better. Fewer resources, more isolated, less accessible… more fitting.”
“Fair Isle is too large,” Tyrion said quietly. “And I know of few small islands off the coast. And sadly there is always the risk of an Ironborn raid that might see her captured as a Salt Wife.”
Something flickered in Father’s eyes at those last two words, something that was almost calculating. “That would both punish and free her – and I want her confined. No, we might have to think about the other side of Westeros. There are islands off the coast of the Vale that might suffice. Perhaps a raven to Jon Arryn about this. Or perhaps one of the islands off the east coast of the North. Cold. Barren. Isolated. Perfect.”
He looked at Father. They knew that the coming winter would be a cold one. Perhaps a second Long Night. Ah. He nodded slightly. “I can have a word with Ned Stark on your behalf perhaps?”
“Do so.” The words were not snapped, but curt all the same. After a moment Father jerked his chin at him. “Discuss your wedding at the same time. I shall want details on both before I leave for the Wall.”
“I shall.” There was a long moment of silence, broken only by the sound of the fire crackling in the grate. “You mean to spy out the land North of the Wall?”
“I do. I shall also talk to him.”
Ah. Jaime. But he might not want to talk to you, were the words that he wanted to say. “Of course,” he said instead. “I understand.”
Another long silence fell before Father finally said, very quietly: “What a waste.”
He looked at Father carefully. But he could not find the words. “You find the King a cannier man now?” It was the best he could come up with.
Something that might have been a grunted laugh passed Father’s lips. “Someone once called him the Warrior incarnate, back in the days of his rebellion. When it comes to war he is… knowledgeable. Skilled even. He knows when to roll the dice and when not to, both valuable skills for a king. In peacetime… he bores easily.”
Father turned and looked back at the fire. “And that was her greatest failure. Yes, he loved Lyanna Stark after her death. I understand that more than many. Your mother’s death left a hole in my heart that nothing can fill. Robert has a similar hole. She never tried to fill it, which was her greatest failing. She never tried. No, she wanted… him instead. So Robert had to fill the hole with wine and food and whores. Gods! What they could have done together! What a dynasty! A warrior like Robert Baratheon guided by the Lannister I thought she was!”
Another silence. A bell sounded somewhere outside, signifying how late the hour was. He stood up and looked at Father. “It’s late Father. When will Joffrey take the Black tomorrow?”
“An hour after dawn.”
“I shall be there.”
“See that you do.”
And so he left, leaving Father staring at the fire.
Robert
He needed to go to bed, he really did.
Sleep came hard some days, as he was no longer drowning himself in wine or beer and then trying to fuck every maid that caught his eye. Oh, there were still some saucy wenches out there that he very much liked the look of – there was a chambermaid who reminded him of one of his first in the Vale, with curves in all the right places – but he still had the feeling that whoring about at the moment would be a very bad idea. Especially given that Lyanna’s grave was so close.
He needed to walk away from her memory. She had told him that. But how? His mind veered away from that and instead he stared at the fire in his room as he sprawled in his chair, a half-empty mug of ale in one hand that he’d been nursing for at least half an hour.
‘Storm King’. The words almost mocked him. How could he be a Storm King when he had no idea what that meant? He looked at Stormbreaker and his eyes narrowed. He needed to stop fannying around and do… what? It was a sword. An ancient sword, an odd sword, according to Selmy a fucking glowing floating sword, which was bizarre beyond words, but he was buggered if he know how that had happened.
Selmy was still going through the records that his brother had sent over, but they were naggingly vague in places. Hints of powers, rumours of things fought, deeds done, songs sung. There was mention of memories of a book of Stormbreaker’s exploits, perhaps one of the oldest in Westeros, long since lost. Perhaps the Citadel might have more information? Perhaps. And then perhaps not. The Maesters guarded their information like misers at times, doling it grudgingly out when there was little other choice. He wondered just what those dry old bastards were sitting on in that bloody great building of theirs. Fortress morelike, defended against whoever the Maesters defined as nosy buggers who had no business daring to ask to see any books.
He tossed the last of the ale down his throat and then walked over to look at Stormbreaker. The age of it still fascinated him, as well as the look of it. It felt, somehow, ancient. He hefted it thoughtfully and then raised it over his head. Thunder stubbornly refused to growl. He lowered it and then sighed. Naturally this would not be as easy as some of the sagas said.
No, in the sagas it was easy. A hero turned up, discovered a magic sword, waved it over his head, appealed to the correct God, had the sword burst into flames or something, fought a dark god, or something horrible from the shadows, triumphed and then settled down with a princess or Lady or willing girl who was probably visibly swollen with their first child by the time that they married.
Life was not a saga. He propped the ancient sword to one side and then pulled off his jerkin and looked down at his stomach. He could almost see a rib where once there had been nothing but fat and his skin was starting to stop sagging in all directions, but he still had a way to go. Gods, how far had he fallen? Getting back to where had once been was harder than it had been when he was young. Everything was harder than when he had been young.
He sighed and blew out the nearest candles, before going to bed. As he pulled the sheets over his body he stared at the ceiling and sighed a little. His dreams had been less intense of late, but still… odd. And then he closed his eyes.
When he did dream that night his dreams were odd and jumbled. He was looking for something that he could not describe, let alone name, something that seemed to be eternally ahead of him in a haze of fog. But again and again his fingers closed in on – nothing. So by the time that he woke up he was in a frustrated and rather grouchy mood.
He knew from long habit that the best way to shake himself from such a temper was hard work – so he threw on his clothes and stamped out of his room and then down to the training yards, Greenfield a silent shadow at his back, where he hoisted a log onto his shoulders and then started his usual circuit around the yard. And then another five circuits, just because he still needed a bit more self-punishment for getting so badly out of shape.
By the time he rolled the log off his shoulders and stood there panting, his hands on his knees, he had burned off the last of his mood, and he grinned as he stuck his head in a bucket of cold water. Gods, this was the life! Better than that nest of vipers in King’s Landing.
A towel was held out in his direction and he took it – before noticing the man who had handed it to him. “Ser Barristan,” he said, a little surprised. Then he paused and looked harder at the older man. He seemed… distracted. “Are you well?”
Selmy smiled ruefully. “Your Grace is perceptive.”
“My Grace has eyes.”
Selmy sighed slightly. “Your Grace, you know that I am not a… fearful man. I have fought in many battles. The Stranger and I are old friends. When he comes for me I will meet him with a smile on my face. I do not fear death. But I do fear the prospect of not having done my duty. Twice now I have tried to seek out the Green Man and ask his advice on what to do about the Kingsguard. And twice my nerve has failed me and I have walked away. I… I fear what he might say to me. Will say to me.”
Ah. He looked at the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard and saw the way that he was looking at his feet, before placing a hand on his shoulder. “Then he should say the same things to me. I failed you, Ser Barristan. I failed you badly. I did not support you in the appointments of members of the Kingsguard. I should have. You had doubts about some of the appointments. I should have listened to those doubts.”
“Your Grace, I-”
“If there is anyone to blame, Ser Barristan, it is me. I was too drunk, lazy and indolent to help you. I am sorry. Ask the Green Man what you like. I will accept any blame.”
Selmy ducked his head. “Honour to serve Your Grace.”
There was a moment of silence and then he slapped the other man on the shoulder lightly. “The honour is mine.”
He broke his fast with Ned and Cat in the Great Hall, a place that buzzed with activity as it filled up. The Stark children exploded into the place with their direwolves, the Greyjoy – no, Greymist – boy as well with his own and he smiled for a moment, almost wistfully, as he watched them. They knew their place in the world. Ah, to be that young again. And then his mood darkened a little. It was almost time, and sure enough Tywin Lannister strode in, bowed to him, broke his fast quickly and then muttered that it was time.
Yes, it was time for the little shit to take the Black. He stood, quirked his head at Ned, who kissed Cat on the cheek and also stood, before he, Ned and the Old Lion walked off to the Sept. Lord Commander Mormont was there, with Tyrion and Kevan Lannister and they all exchanged solemn nods.
And then the guards arrived, escorting the little shit himself. Joffrey looked as if he had not slept, but at least he was no longer walking as if his balls hurt. He merely walked as if they just ached. His eyes were downcast and he looked as if he was about to cry – but to his credit he did not shed a tear as he started to take his Oath. And he made it all the way through, without any problems or repetition. He’d probably practiced it, based on the way that his grandfather’s blazing eyes never left him. Tywin Lannister had a face like stone, never moving a muscle, but those eyes… they were the eyes of a man who was furiously angry.
The Oath made, the little shit was escorted off. “He’ll be sent to the Wall with the next group that goes there, in a day or so,” Mormont rumbled quietly. “I’ll go with him, to prepare the way for your own trip Your Grace.”
“My thanks, Lord Commander,” he replied, and Tywin Lannister gave a curt of acknowledgement of his own.
He was in an awkward mood after that. Not quite angry, not quite melancholy, something between the two. He strode around the ramparts of Winterfell, noted the work that was being done on the Broken Tower and the First Keep, and then finally surrendered to duty and joined Stannis in his room, with the messages that had come in. The Kingdom would not run itself.
And then, an hour before noon, they heard hurrying feet in the corridor outside, the barked query from Selmy, and then the door opened to reveal Maester Luwin. “Your Grace,” the old man panted, “A message from Oldtown. The Hightower to be exact.”
He took the proffered two messages, frowned at them, realised that they seemed to be identical and then read one of them. Then he read the other. Then the he read the first again whilst passing the second over to Stannis, who was frowning at him. And then they both stared at each other.
“This is…” Stannis ground to a halt. Then he started again. “This is madness.”
“Aye,” he replied grimly. “But can it be any madder than what we have seen so far?” His brother looked at him for a long moment – and then he shook his head. He looked at the Maester and then at the concerned face of Ser Barristan Selmy. “Send word at once to Lords Stark, Lannister and Tarly, that I require their presence at once, in a matter of the utmost urgency.”
The two men nodded, went through the doorway and that started barking orders to passing servants. As they did he stared down at the messages again. He never thought that he would ever see such words. But… he forced down that thought.
Ned arrived first, Tywin Lannister not long behind him and after them both the Lord of Horn Hill. After they were all in and staring at him curiously he nodded at Selmy, who closed the door. Only then did he stand. “Mace Tyrell is dead. And in most odd circumstances.
Ned raised his eyebrows, Tarly pulled a face and Tywin bloody Lannister’s left eyebrow might have flickered just a bit. “What kind of circumstances, Your Grace?” the Lord of the Westerlands asked.
And so he handed the two messages over. One to Ned and the other to his former goodfather, who read it as Tarly waited impatiently. Once Tywin finished reading it he seemed to read it again – and then again. Only then did he give it to Tarly – who read it and then looked astonished.
“But this is… this is…”
“Madness?” He smiled grimly. “Aye, there’s been a lot of that lately. Madness indeed. Lord Tarly, you are of the Reach. Is that indeed the hand of Lord Willas Tyrell, the new Lord Tyrell?”
The bald man looked down at the message. “It is, Your Grace. I know well the hand of Lord Willas. Your pardon – Lord Tyrell.”
“And what is the truth of this... gate?” Tywin Lannister sounded… bemused. “I have never heard any mention of it. A gate at the base of the Hightower… for what purpose?”
“And how could it kill a man? Men, from Lord Tyrell writes.” Tarly sounded as if he had been struck on the back of his head by the Hightower itself.
“I don’t know,” he replied. And then he looked at Ned, who was still staring down at the message he held in his hand. “But from he writes he desperately wants you there, Ned. You and the Fist of Winter.”
Ned looked up, strain written all over his face. “Starks do not prosper in the South,” he said eventually. “But this is a request that would be hard to refuse. Willas Tyrell writes of his father’s last words and the possibility of… blight?”
The room seemed to grow a little colder at that word. Tywin Lannister cleared his throat. “This might be utter madness, Your Grace, but given the nature of the war that lies ahead of us, we cannot risk any threat to what the Reach produces. Lord Tyrell requests the presence of Lord Stark. Perhaps Lord Stark should pay a flying visit to the Reach?”
Ned seemed to flinch slightly – and he knew why. Yes, Starks did not prosper in the South, as Ned’s family could attest to, but the thought of blight in the Reach should terrify anyone. “Ned, you were planning to go to Barrowtown anyway. Continue on to the coast and take ship for the Reach. And right quick. Ascertain the truth of this. And take that stick of yours. I’ll be heading for the Wall with my knife. Perhaps this is the stroke that the Green Man warned us of?”
Ned stared at him for a long moment. And then he reluctantly nodded.
Chapter 43: Chapter 43
Chapter Text
(The Daeron section was again written by Sardar, who as always has my thanks for such an interesting and well-written character that fits in so well to Robb Returns.)
Daeron
As the Blue Whale approached White Harbor, he let out a sigh of relief. They had stayed in Gulltown only two days to find another ship and the rough and chilly waters of the Bite had taken its toll on the Dornishmen, who were not used to such climes. As the ship sailed further into the mouth of the White Knife, he saw Seal Rock and the ruined ringfort atop the island passing him by. Soon the Wolf’s Den came into view; the ancient fortress was the only thing that was not white in the city, though the white houses that clung to the sides of the fortress seemed to give it enough white colour for the Manderly’s liking. The vast Outer Harbor could be seen below it, with ships of every kind coming and going. Nearer to the city was the Inner Harbor, protected by a high and heavily fortified wall built on the jetty, and the Wolf’s Den from the Outer Harbor. He could also see New Castle and the Sept of the Snows from a distance, with the statues of the Seven decorating its pale dome.
As the Blue Whale continued towards the city’s Inner Harbor, the smell of raw fish and the sea only grew stronger; which Daeron found to be strangely comforting, as if the sea had gone to sleep with under a blanket of seafoam on the Northern shore. When the ship finally reached the docks, Daeron’s men were only too eager to disembark. As the Dornishmen made their way through the fish market they spotted who could only be Lord Wyman and several of his guardsmen who, to their amazement, carried shining steel tridents instead of spears or swords, waiting at a gate that led to the walled city. He was genuinely surprised to be greeted in this way; as a Southron Lord, he had expected to be received by one of Lord Manderly’s sons or grandsons, not the Lord of White Harbor himself. He was also amazed at the size of the man; Lord Manderly was perhaps the largest man he had ever seen. And as the Dornish company came closer to the Seal Gate, Lord Wyman greeted him with a voice that was just as immense as the man himself.
“My Lord! Welcome to White Harbor! Or should I say, the North!” He boomed. “You Dornishman haven’t been half as far north before, I presume?”
Taken aback by the volume of his voice, Daeron replied curtly, “Yes”.
He quickly remembered his manners however, and suddenly added, “Oh! - and, erm, thank you for your hospitality My Lord! My men and I greatly appreciate it, especially since I know White Harbor is increasingly busy”.
“Aye, your gratitude is much appreciated!”. Lord Manderly then turned and motioned to follow him through the Seal Gate, and also commanded several servants to take him and his men’s bags. Entering the walled city, they first passed through Fishfoot Yard, which sported a magnificent fountain with a statue of a Merman with a broken trident in the center of the town. However what caught Daeron’s attention the most was just how bustling with activity the city really was. The smallfolk were practically shoulder to shoulder carrying all manner of goods; iron, grain, weapons, livestock and everything in between. Merchants crowded the streets trying to sell their goods and smiths could be heard in their workshops; the city was truly alive with activity. Their lordly entourage was given ample space to walk as many of the smallfolk made way for and greeted their lord with utmost respect. To his surprise, Lord Manderly greeted them back. Lord Wyman then continued to converse with Daeron.
“We have received many a traveler coming Northwards, including His Grace the King, and another Dornishman..erm..a Lord Dayne, was it? Are you acquainted with his Lordship?”
“Ned-” Again, he stumbled over his words. “I mean Lord Dayne - is my cousin by my grandmother.”
Lord Manderly’s thick brown eyebrows looked as if they would jump off of his face when he turned to face him. A brief moment passed before he replied.
“Your cousin?” Lord Manderly returned to his immense tone. “Beg your pardon My Lord, but you two look nothing alike!” Lord Manderly scanned Daeron up and down. “Apart from your eyes that is!”
Daeron smirked. Remembering his time at the Water Gardens, he recalled how all the other children, noble and lowborn alike, would balk and him and Ned when they said they were kin. Apart from their almost identical blueish-purple eyes, the two young Dornish lords shared almost no similar physical characteristics. Ned was a short, Stony Dornishman with pale blonde hair while Daeron was a Sandy Dornishman, well over six feet tall and had a mop of curly, jet black hair.
“Aye, My Lord, you are right.” Daeron said, his grin still stuck to his face. As they made their way through the city he admired just how exceptionally clean and well organized it was, with wide cobbled streets, fine white buildings, large signs and only the smell of the sea to fill your nostrils, and all this despite the immense crowds. The lordly entourage was soon in sight of the Castle Stair; which was a long, stepped street paved with white stone that led up to New Castle, the Manderly’s immense keep overlooking the entire city. He saw that, flanking the Castle Stair were mermaids carved out of marble holding bowls of fire which illuminated the pathway in the evening. He had never seen a city such as this, though to be fair, he had never seen many cities anyway other than Plankytown and Gulltown. After the two lords had walked up the Castle Stair a good distance, Lord Manderly’s expression shifted to something more serious as he began to speak again.
“So the Call was heard in Dorne?”. Daeron’s smile quickly leapt from his face when he replied.
“Yes, My Lord. Though not as loudly as one would have hoped. Many of my fellow lords still doubt it even went out, though I know the Stony Dornish were very receptive to it”. A frown came upon the Lord of White Harbor’s face.
“A shame that is. The realm needs as much help as it can get. And you, I presume, felt it strongly?”.
“I did”. He said it with a hint of defiance, as Daeron knew that North was cold and hard and bred cold, hard men who were very skeptical of outsiders. He deserved respect from them, he had come all the way across Westeros and he be damned to the Seven Hells if he didn’t get it.
As the party approached the gates of New Castle, Daeron could see several people waiting for him and Lord Manderly. As they approached, Lord Manderly’s voice boomed again.
“My Lord Vaith, I must introduce you to my family!”. The eldest Manderly’s bright smile returned. The first and largest man appeared to be a younger version of Lord Manderly; he was not as fat as his father but certainly balder, with the only hair on his face being his large walrus moustache. Next to him were two young ladies and an older one appearing to be his daughters and his wife; who was plump, but not fat, and had bright yellow hair.
“This is my firstborn son, Ser Wylis, his wife Lady Leona, and my two granddaughters Wynafryd and Wylla”. The family bowed, and he did the same. Wynafryd, the elder granddaughter who was very pretty, shot a smile at Daeron that made him blush and butterflies enter his stomach. Girls were never his strong suit, that was always Ned’s strength more than his. Lord Manderly motioned to his other son who was not as fat nor as bald as his brother, and had a slim woman about the same age as him on his arm. She had dark brown hair, almost black, and sharp attractive features. She appeared to be recently with child as well. Daeron could not figure out why, but he thought she seemed to have a bit of Essosi in her.
“This is Ser Wendel, my second born, and his wife Lady Lyarra, formerly Lady Redstark”. That explained it. He had heard from sailors and merchants in Gulltown that the Redstarks had returned from Essos with the Company of the Rose, along with many other old and formerly extinct Northern families. Lord Manderly walked further to the right, introducing his extended family. A third Manderly man in armor, still large but made of more muscle than fat stood next to the other two with a stern look on his face and his left hand gripping his silver trident.
“My cousin Ser Marlon, captain of the garrison here at White Harbor-”.
Lord Manderly then motioned to a fourth Manderly man, who was also stout and younger than the others, and his wife, both of whom looked rather Essosi as well. They had a restless group of triplets at their feet, two boys and a girl, who couldn’t have been more than five years old. “-And Ser Godric, recently arrived from Essos, his wife lady Alearra and their children, Wyndyn, Wylan and Alys”.
Just as he finished introducing his family, the gates to New Castle swung open. Almost as soon as they entered, the triplets began sprinting down the hall and their mother raising her skirts chased after them. Ser Godric then began to laugh with that booming voice that all Manderly’s seemed to have. Lord Wyman then began to speak with Daeron again, the two lords walking side by side at the head of the Manderly family.
“I assume you are very hungry from a long journey, My Lord. The servants have already prepared dinner for all of us, and I would invite you to dine with my family this evening!”.
“It would be my pleasure, my Lord.'' He replied, smiling again. Thank the Seven, he was famished.
As they walked through the halls of New Castle, Daeron observed on the walls many banners, broken shields and ancient swords from houses which had been defeated by House Manderly. Bolton, Greystark, Peake, Gardener, and… Dayne? Daeron paused at the tattered purple banner, and Lord Manderly noticed his confusion.
“Aye, we fought the Kings of the Torrentine when House Manderly still held Dunstonbury. When the Starfire burned Oldtown, the Manderly’s helped drive him back to Starfall at the cost of many Manderly lives. This banner was taken at the Battle of the Laughing Ridge in the foothills of the Red Mountains, which was one of the Starfire’s worst defeats, which my ancestor WyramManderly inflicted”. Lord Manderly then shot Daeron a wicked smirk.
Daeron was surprised at that. He had almost forgotten that the Manderlys were originally from the Reach, and were deeply intertwined with its ancient history. I wonder what Ned had to say about this? He thought. Soon after his tour of New Castle, Daeron asked to be led to his room. He then changed into a fine dark grey silk doublet and trousers to prepare for dinner. As he made his way to the Merman’s Court, he could smell the aromas wafting from the Kitchen nearby. Even from just outside of the great hall, Daeron could distinguish the different foods being prepared; eels, crabs, clams, various fish, lobsters, pork, beef and sausages. He could also smell the various fine Eastern spices that one could only acquire in the markets of a major port city. All of it made his mouth water.
When he entered the hall, Daeron was awestruck. On the walls, the ceiling and the floor there was incredible art that depicted in great detail all myriad creatures of the sea. He had never seen anything like it, and was mesmerised by the detail and beauty of it all.
“Marvelous, isn’t it?”
“Aye”. Daeron replied, without giving a second thought to who he was speaking to.
“Never thought I’d see it in my lifetime”. That stole Daeron’s attention away from the murals. He jumped slightly as Ser Godric had seemingly appeared out of nowhere right next to him. Ser Godric chuckled a bit, and Daeron turned a shade of red.
“Do not worry, I did the same when I first saw it”. Ser Godric said through a grin. “Let us take our seats”. He was seated very close to Lord Manderly, right next to his granddaughters in fact, but he was too focused on the smell of the arriving food to have noticed that.
Daeron had never particularly enjoyed seafood, but the Manderly chefs had somehow made him change his mind that night. After the seafood, a variety of salted and deliciously spiced meats were served and he practically inhaled all of it. He had never been particularly fond of ale as well, though he washed his many meals down with several cups of the stuff. Perhaps it was the fact that he was practically starved after a long sea journey of eating nothing but salted beef and bread, but this was one of the best meals he’d had in a long time. After he had finished, Daeron slumped back in his chair and looked around the table to see the Manderlys (especially the men) continue eating and conversing. This brought him a pang of sadness, as he had never had a large family, only his grandmother and Ned. Perhaps one day, though. Perhaps one day.
The vast majority of the discussion however seemed to be involving Northern defenses and White Harbor’s management and economy, though sometimes they did crack a jape here and there. And even the women, he overheard, spoke of marriage alliances for their daughters with other Northern houses.
Daeron stayed in White Harbor for the next week, continuing to feast, converse and wander around the city. He had made sure not to stop training with his Valyrian steel blade, and fortunately Ser Marlon and Ser Godric were very glad to instruct him in the Northern ways of combat. Daeron was actually enjoying himself somewhat despite the biting cold, as he was fed well and enjoyed training with his sword. All of it seemed to make the fact that the living dead were marching on the realm seem distant and faint. However that came to an abrupt end when Lord Manderly insisted that he see the Wight head that had been left in White Harbor. Apparently Lord Stark had wanted it to stay here, so that sailors and merchants would spread the word across Westeros and the world. He saw it on his last day in White Harbor, before he made his way to Castle Cerwyn, and Ser Marlon personally escorted him to it in the Wolf’s Den which was White Harbor’s Prison. Personally, Daeron had expected the head to be a mess of rotting flesh that was barely held together, and which could do little more than twitch and grunt, while stinking quite a lot.
A mess of rotting flesh it was, though it did significantly more than just twitch and grunt. Upon approaching the cage, the head’s eyes shot open to reveal deep blue orbs, seemingly frozen in its eyes, and its mouth opened to reveal rotting teath that it bore at him like a feral beast. He jumped backed, instinctively drawing his sword. The Wight head then began to screech, even louder than before. Gathering himself, Daeron looked at the head closer, and put his sword back in its sheath. The head stopped its screeching, but still growled and snapped at his face.
“Don’t get too close, My Lord. We’ve had several men who’ve lost fingers to that...thing” Ser Marlon spat in contempt.
“I know. Just, it seems to have calmed down, though I don’t know-” Daeron hastily unsheathed his sword fully and brought it near to the head when he figured it out. The Wight’s blue eyes reflected off of the dark blade vivivdly, though that was not what Daeron sought to test. The head screeched once more and shook the cage violently as Daeron slowly brought Truth closer to the cage, and the shaking almost undid the chains that held it to the pedestal on which the cage sat.
“You’re more clever than I thought, My Lord”. Ser Marlon said with a smile. Daeron gave a smirk of his own in reply. “Word from Lord Stark said that several months ago, when his sons led a party to the Nightfort, they were attacked by a band of Wights and Others. Three of them were carrying Valyrian steel blades, and they found out that they are very effective at killing Others”.
“Interesting”. To say that he was glad that he had brought Truth along with him was an understatement. Having one of the only weapons in the world that can kill and Other was a comfort that he would gladly take, and he thanked the Seven for it. But now, he found himself even doubting the Seven’s very existence. Daeron had always been loyal to the faith, but never particularly fervent. He did listen to the Septons and prayed every once in a while, but this.. this made him doubt what he had been taught his whole life. While he was pondering at the wight head, suddenly, almost as if it was being shown to him, an image of a weirwood sapling sprouting out of the sands of Dorne flashed in his mind.
Gendry
No-one knew what to do with him. Which was a fair point, because he barely knew what to do with himself… well, himself.
They’d moved him to a slightly better room, which was still a lot better than anything he was used to. There was even a small mirror to shave with. It was very odd to see his face in it. He’d been used to small plates of shiny bronze now and then.
He was the King’s bastard son. He was sitting in that shadowy bit between those two last words. Some viewed him as a bit of dirt under their boot. Others viewed him as almost important.
Because no-one knew what to bloody do with him.
So he was doing what he’d been doing for years now, which was standing in the forge and banging the shit out of a piece of metal. Well… shaping it. And right now it looked like shit on a stick.
He reduced the power of his blows a bit and concentrated on where he was pounding. That was better. It was going to be a war hammer. Heh. Why not? Something that could be used to smash a wights head into its ribcage.
He kept hammering, shaping the metal with his blows. This was what he was used to. The head of the hammer went back into the coals of the forge and he pumped hard on the bellows as he watched the colour of the flames carefully. Steady. He had to have a steady flame. When the metal was the right colour he pulled it out, put it back on the anvil and pounded on it again, more carefully this time. That was better.
“You less pissed off now?”
It was Mikken. The old man was standing by the door, a wry look on his face. “I might be,” Gendry muttered. “People keep looking at me funny.”
“You looking over your shoulder as much as before?”
Ah. That was a point. “A bit,” he confessed. “But not as much as before.”
“Good, because you were getting bloody jumpy.” Mikken looked around and lowered his voice a bit. “And that Lannister brat’s going to be gone soon, as he’s not the King’s son. Off to the Wall and the Night’s Watch.”
He thought about that little blond shit dressed in black in what he’d been told was a massive wall of ice. “Good riddance,” he grunted and then went back to shaping the Warhammer. Mikken looked at him for a moment and then nodded firmly before getting to work on his own work, another spearhead.
Gendry lost himself in the metal and the heat for a while, as he finished off the head of the warhammer. It was a brutal thing, like all warhammers. And as he slid it into the right quench barrel he wondered why he had made it.
As he looked around the room and wondered what to do next a head appeared at the door, a familiar one. Shireen peered in carefully, looked about and then gazed at him. “Have you seen the Terrible Threesome, Gendry, Master Mikken?”
He shook his head, as did Mikken, and his cousin groaned. “They’re somewhere out there and I can’t find them. And they’re plotting something, I know they are. If you see them, will you let me know?”
He grinned at her. “You’re like a mother hen for those three, Shireen, you know that?”
Shireen just looked at him. Then she sighed. “Someone has to keep an eye on them. Just like someone has to keep an eye on you. Are you alright?”
His grin flickered. “I’m fine.”
“He’s not fine,” Mikken grunted. “He doesn’t know what to do with himself.”
Shireen looked at him again. She seemed to be counting to ten in her head. “You are Uncle Robert – the King’s – natural son. Wait until Uncle Robert decides what to do with you.”
He stared at her, his eyes widening. “Do with me?”
His cousin nodded. “You might be his heir. Or he might make Edric his heir with you after him. But he will keep you close, Gendry. He has to. You’re his son.”
That familiar sick feeling of horror crept over him. “I don’t want to be a prince, Shireen. I don’t know how to. I’m just a bloody blacksmith!”
Once again his cousin just stared at him. Then she smiled at him. “You’re Uncle Robert’s son. And my cousin. You’re a good man – you’re Gendry Strongarm. All you have to be is just… Gendry.”
He looked at her for a long moment. “How did you get to be so wise?”
“Practise,” she said pertly. “I need to find those three troublemakers.” And with that she turned and left.
Gendry watched her go with an odd feeling, a combination of fondness and bemusement. Mikken on the other hand was just amused, because he laughed openly and shook his head. “That one’s a right handful, isn’t she? The Old Gods help the man she marries, she’ll ride over him roughshod. Might let him think otherwise though.” The old man glanced at him. “She’s right though, lad. Just be who you are. You can’t do nothing else but that. The Long Night’s coming and there’s the Others to deal with. And by the time that’s done who know what you’ll be used to? Take each day as it comes, lad.”
He sighed and looked at the warhammer he had made again. And then he almost jumped out of his skin, because a voice behind him said: “Words of wisdom, all.”
The two man turned. The Green Man was standing there in a corner, next to the other door. How had he entered so quietly? He was about to open his mouth to ask what he wanted, when old green-cloaked bugger tossed something at him. He caught it one-handed, almost dropping it in bemusement. It was a worn piece of armour – part of a gauntlet perhaps? It was metal – steel, with a bronze inlay and… runes?
“I need that replaced,” the Green Man rumbled.
Gendry looked at it helplessly and was about to hand it over to Mikken when the Green Man spoke again. “Gendry Strongarm must do it.”
“I must?”
“You must. Mikken, you need to keep making your halberds. The Others are coming.” And with that he left through the door.
Baffled, Gendry looked at the closing door, then at the piece of armour and then at Mikken, who shrugged. “Don’t ask me, lad. Green Men haven’t been seen outside the Isle of Faces for centuries.”
So he just shrugged himself and then looked at the piece of armour. Life was getting odder by the day.
Theon
By the time that a giggling Ros collapsed off the top of him and fell into the bed by his side he had stopped seeing double. Just about.
She looked down between her legs and then looked back at him with her eyebrows raised. “Saving it up for me were you my Lord?”
He grinned as his breathing slowed a little. “Been too long, Ros.”
“You been too busy courting the ladies of the Court?”
He blew a raspberry. “Gods, what ladies? The Westerlands snobs? The scattering of Stormladies?” He shook his head, sweaty hair flipping about. “And the less said about the Queen the better. Snobby cold bitch even before she fell from grace."
Ros shuddered. “Fucking her own brother. Having his children. Beggars belief.” She wrinkled her nose. “Southern perverts.”
“They’re not all like that,” he said chidingly. “Not like us here in the North.”
“’Us here in the North’? Ah, you’re a man of the North now, my Lord,” she giggled, her breasts shaking. “Lord Greymist.”
“You’ve almost called my Theon Greyjoy twice tonight,” he said with a smile. “Aye, I’m of the North now.”
“And where will your keep be, my Lord?”
“On the Stony Shore. And I will build it high and strong, and build a town next to that, so that the shipyards I build there as well will be fully manned as I build the Starks a great fleet.”
Ros looked at him, her head tilted to one side. “Ah, now there’s the old Theon Greyjoy I remember! You and your plans!”
And this rattled him, that reference to the old him. Something of what he felt must have shown on his face, because her smile faded. “What?”
“I’m not boasting Ros. I’m not. I will do it.” He fingered the little weirwood pendant around his neck. “I have sworn it by the Old Gods.”
She stirred uneasily next to him. “That tale you told of how you got that pendant… it still gives me the collywobbles. And I know you promised… it’s just that you always had such plans in the old days.”
He stared grimly at the ceiling. “I know.” And then he sighed. “I was a boastful twat.”She looked at him levelly and he stirred a little. “I am not still being a boastful twat in all my talk about my keep and town and dockyards, you know. Lord Stark has promised me every help.”
Ros nodded at that and then they just lay there for a long moment, content in each other’s company. And then eventually Ros broke the silence. “So, who will be your Lady Greymist? One of the new girls from Essos?”
He laughed softly. “Anyone I want. Would you like to be Lady Greymist?”
There was a moment of utter shocked silence – and then she burst out laughing. “Me? Give over Theon! Don’t be so daft! What a joke!”
“It’s not a joke. Honest.”
She half sat up. “Theon I’m a whore. You can’t have a whore for a wife.”
“You wouldn’t be a whore. You’d be my wife.”
“A Lord’s wife can’t be a former whore!”
“Why not?”
“Because… a lord has standards, or something! People would talk.”
And now he laughed, bitterly. “Ros, they’ll always talk about me. I could live to be 100, build the best fleet in history, stand back to back on the Wall with Robb Stark fighting against the Others, have half a hundred children like Lord fucking Frey and yet I’ll still always be ‘that former squid’ to many in the North. How long did it take the Manderlys before they were no longer known as ‘that lot from The Reach’? Five hundred years? Six hundred?” He shrugged. “So, people will talk. Let them. I want to be happy. Don’t you want to be?”
She gaped at him – and then she lay back down next to him. “You are truly daft, Theon. Life’s never that easy. Life…” She seemed to struggle with the words. “Life isn’t a song! It’s harder and nastier than that.”
“I know it’s not a song. The Others are coming for us all. That’s not a song that’s a nightmare. I’ve seen them, I know what they’re like. They’re a nightmare like the one I had about my brothers and the Drowned God. I broke out of that when I chose the Old Gods. And some people speak of lordships as being chained down by duties. But why not break out of that as well? I’m founding a new house, by my rules.”
Ros stared at him for a long moment, and there were tears in her eyes, tears that she wiped away with her hand. “It’s not possible,” she said eventually. “I’m just a whore.”
“Don’t you want to be more than that? How long did you even want to be in this life?”
This threw her for a moment. “I want to be one of the lucky ones. Be careful, choose the right men, never get the pox, or never get turned ugly by the cure to the pox if I ever got it, own my own house. If I got that far.”
“I like you.” He licked his lips nervously. “Like you a lot. And I know that you’ve got a soft spot for me, because you’re always available for me. You have your letters and your numbers. Why not?”
Blushing a little Ros once again stared at him. “Theon, you are daft. What would Lord Stark say?”
“He’d… I’d talk to him.”
“What would your father say?”
“Bugger him,” Theon replied bitterly. “I renounced his legacy when I changed my name, remember?” There was a tense moment of silence and then he sighed and ran his hands through his hair. “I’m headed for the Iron Islands with my sister in a few days. To Pyke, to help Lord Stannis Baratheon broker a peace there. And when I am there I’ll tell my father that I’m not his heir any more. I’m Lord Greymist now, with my own direwolf. And there’s nothing he can do or say to change my mind. I’m of the North now.”
He said the words with such a drive and intensity that she just stared at him, as if she was no longer sure who or what he was. “You mean that,” she said eventually. “All of it?”
“All of it,” he replied. “Every bit of it. And what I said earlier. I’ve chosen a new path. So can you.”
Something happened to her eyes at that point, something deep and emotional, like a fire appearing from the other side of a wall of ice. And then it vanished as she looked away and then stared at his crotch and his stiffening cock. “You’d better come back alive from Pyke, Theon Greymist. Because we need to talk. Now – get your money’s worth and fuck me again. Hard.”
Ned
“The Reach?” Cat said the words with deep dismay. “Ned, that’s at the other end of the Seven Kingdoms! You’d be away for months! And what’s all this about a gate?”
He took her in his arms and held her close for a long moment, trying to calm her down. He failed, he could feel that by the tautness within her frame, but she did relax just a hair.
“I won’t say I’ll be gone and back before you know it, but I’ll be away for less time than you think. Asha Greyjoy has promised me a fast ship and a crew that will get me to Oldtown, sailing from Torrhen’s Square.”
Cat looked at him uncertainly. “Do you trust her? She’s Ironborn.”
“She needs our help. And the help of Robert. She will not let us down. She dare not. And her ship will get me there fast. She ordered it North and it should be there by now. I have to deal with Barbrey bloody Dustin and this fog in Barrowtownfirst, but then I’ll be off down South – for as little time as possible – and then back again. I’ll be back well before it’s time for the baby to come, I swear it.”
She looked at him again and then hugged him. “I’ll hold you to your word, Ned Stark. You’d better come back. There’s a war to be won at the Wall, after all.”
He smiled and kissed her lips. “I’ll be back. Now. There’s a lot to be done. Robert and many of the other lords leave for the Wall to see the lay of the land in a few days. I leave tomorrow. It’s important, Cat, this thing with this… gate. Don’t ask me why or how. I just know it’s important.”
His wife sighed. “I don’t like it Ned.”
“Neither do I. But it’s got to be done. I… I have a feeling about it.”
And so Cat sighed and nodded and left to make the arrangements. He had issued his own orders, but he had a feeling that they would be inadequate compared to what she could do. He was, merely, her husband. And that made him laugh a little.
His feet took him through Winterfell afterwards, as the sun started to make its way down towards the horizon. He loved this place so much. The place that his ancestors had built. He sighed and then strode towards the Godswood. Perhaps he needed some guidance from the Old Gods? But then, before he reached it, he saw Robert. The King was sitting on the log he’d been using to train and was wiping his face with a piece of cloth. Judging from the sweat stains on his jerkin and the bucket of water at his feet, he’d been training. He was also staring at the nearby wall of Winterfell with a frown. So he went to join his friend.
“Are you well, Robert?” He asked the question in a low voice.
Robert started a little and then looked at him. “Fine, Ned, just fine. Just sitting here and thinking. And looking at that wall. Dropped the log earlier on. It scraped some of the moss off the lowest course of stones. Are those runes carved there?”
He looked and then nodded. “Aye, there are runes here and there on the stones. Never really thought much about it.”
Robert sighed a little. “Storm’s End has similar stones. First Men work, all. They knew things that we don’t.”
“Aye, but we have things that they did not.”
Robert chuckled slightly. “Usually I’m trying to cheer you up, ‘cause you’re a dour bugger at times. But I am thinking that Bronze Yohn’s worries about the runes are right. We do need to know more.”
“I was thinking about that. We should ask Luwin and Maester Aemon. They’ll take it very seriously indeed. I think that there are runes on the Wall as well.”
Robert nodded. “I’ll ask Aemon at the Wall.”
Ned thought about how Robert would treat the old Targaryen and something of that must have been visible on his face. But Robert placed a hand on his shoulder in reassurance. “I’ll treat the old man with all due respect, Ned. I know he’s nothing like Aerys or Rhaegar. He’s a Targaryen to respect. Those are words that I never thought I’d say, but it’s true.”
Ned nodded and then looked over his shoulder. Yes, they were truly alone. “He knows about Jon,” he whispered. “And gave him advice. To do his duty to House Stark and stay alive. No ambitions, he said. No false sense of entitlement. No, Jon will do his duty and found a new House here in the North.”
Robert studied his face carefully and then nodded. And then he grinned. “Is that red-haired Wildling lass going with him to Pyke? You know that she has her eye on him, don’t you?”
“I know,” Ned said with a sigh. Gods, he felt as if he needed to have eyes on the back of his head these days. Jon was dancing around with Ygritte, someone who expected certain things in a man. Ironically he had a feeling that Robert would approve of a match with Ygritte. If the truth about him ever came out then a Wildling wife would not be something that any Targaryen loyalist would find attractive. As for Robb and his yearning looks at Val… well, he needed to have a word with that boy. “I still don’t like the idea of him going to Pyke. Balon Greyjoy is a fool.”
“Stannis will be there. Not even Balon Greyjoy would be fool enough to go against the Hand of the King. The Reader’s men should be there as well.”
Ned nodded. “I know. But there’s something about this Iron Islands matter that puts my teeth on edge. I don’t know what it is. It just… bothers me.”
Robert nodded. “I know, I feel it too. I’ve talked to Stannis. He’ll be careful. You leave tomorrow with them?”
“Aye. And you go to the Wall after. Who’s going with you?”
“The Lannisters. The Valemen too.” He paused. “And Gendry too, I think. I want to see how he does on the Wall. Might bring Mya too. I’ve been watching them both, quiet-like. He’s a good lad. Kind. Bloody good with a hammer. And she’s good with horses. Got a hell of a mouth on her for those who cross her.” He fell silent. “I’ve been a shit father to them both. That said, I didn’t even know about the lad until this year. Still… he deserves better than he’s known. And my Gods, they both look like me. Why didn’t I see the truth about Joffrey and the others?”
“You didn’t expect Cersei to betray you in the way that she did.” Ned shook his head. “What’s to become of her?”
A shrug was Robert’s initial answer. “I think that Tywin Lannister has sent a raven to Jon asking him if there was a handy – and remote – island off the Vale somewhere. Exile. Just her and a female servant. Might not even allow the servant. Let her rot.”
Ned sighed slightly. Good. He didn’t want her blood on his hands. “Joffrey goes to the Wall before you?”
“Oh yes, with Jeor Mormont.” Robert’s eyes glittered. “Do you know, there were times when I was beset with boring shit in the Red Keep, with a thousand and one little things to bog me down, and I thought about tossing my crown on the table and telling them that I was abdicating and buggering off to Essos to found my own sellsword company. Do you know what stopped me? Two things. One was the thought of letting Jon down. The other was the fact that Joffrey would be King after me. And I knew that he’d be a shit King. Well… Robb’s tale confirmed my worst fears.”
There was a long moment of silence and then Ned sighed – and stood. “Well, now. We both have a lot to do.”
“Aye,” Robert rumbled as he stood as well. “I won’t be trying to match your great ride South. I heard Rayder singing that song of his about it earlier. Catchy.”
Ned could not help but to laugh a little. “Aye, he’s a talented fellow, for a King beyond the Wall.” They clasped forearms and then slapped each others shoulders, before breaking apart and walking off in different directions, he to talk to Luwin and Robert to hopefully change that sweaty and stinking shirt.
But it was Tywin Lannister who waylaid him first. The Lord of Casterly Rock strode towards him with his brother Kevan behind him. “Lord Stark, I would like a word if you please.” The green eyes that swept over him were… intent, but not worryingly so.
“Of course Lord Lannister,” he replied. “Is this a matter that requires my solar?”
A nod. “Perhaps so.”
Frostfyre was waiting for him in his solar and as he sat in his chair she padded next to him and then sat by his side, her eyes on Tywin Lannister – who hesitated for a heartbeat and then sat himself, with his brother sitting behind him. Jory Cassell, who was a constant presence, closed the door at his nod and then stood there as a doorwarden.
“I would like to discuss the immediate marriage of my son Tyrion to your cousin Dacey Surestone,” Tywin Lannister began. “You leave for the Reach tomorrow, I leave the Wall with His Grace the King not long after that. They are both of an age to marry, they seem to be fond of each other and above all it will forge a link between our two houses – and the North and the Westerlands – that will be important.”
Ned blinked slightly. Bloody Hell, was Dacey a mindreader? And then he nodded. “Aye, I agree. Given the short notice it will not be particularly extravagant, but I agree.” He looked to one side and then pulled out a sheath of papers. “Dacey has already made some plans for it.”
Tywin Lannister’s right eyebrow twitched upwards. “She has?”
He handed the papers over. “Oh yes. She is a Surestone to her bones.”
The Lord of Casterly Rock looked through the papers quickly – and then for a fraction of a second smiled. It was gone in an instant, and then he passed the papers on to his brother, who took and read them with a frown. “Her father would be proud.”
Ah. Her father. Ned nodded sombrely. “He is much missed.”
After a moment of silence Tywin cleared his throat. “You should be aware that Tyrion is my official heir now. Ravens announcing that have gone back to Casterly Rock.” He pulled a slight face. “You should also know that despite some… rumours about his height, he is more than capable of fathering children. He has had a… reputation as someone who enjoys the company of… certain women, and he has always had a supply of Moon Tea on him. On the occasions when certain women have not taken that, ah, concoction, I have always made sure that they were made to if they showed signs of pregnancy.”
He looked at the man who would soon be his cousin by marriage. “Thank you,” he said eventually. “I know that Dacey wants to make sure that there are Surestones after her.”
“Which brings me to my other point,” Tywin Lannister said. “The issue of inheritance. I know that there is a saying in the North that there must always be a Surestone in Surestone. As Tyrion is my heir, he is also responsible for making sure that there are Lannisters in Casterly Rock. I therefore propose the following: that their firstborn be a Lannister of Casterly Rock, but that their secondborn be a Surestone of Surestone.”
“That is also agreeable to me,” Ned said, before looking at Kevan Lannister. “The tenth page. Towards the bottom.”
The older man frowned at him, shuffled through the pages – and then he stopped. His eyebrows went up and then he passed the page to his brother whilst winking at Ned. Tywin Lannister read the proffered page – and then he laughed for a moment. “Clever girl. Yes, her father would be proud. We are agreed then?”
“We are agreed.” He held out his hand. And Tywin Lannister took it.
Old Griff
It was late. He was late. The man who called himself Old Griff carefully positioned the brazier on the deck of the ship. You had to be careful with fire on a ship. Too much tar, too much canvas and rope that might catch light. He looked at the flames and then scowled, before suppressing a yawn. It had been a long day.
He glowered at the flames. Too much had gone wrong these past months. Mopatis dying had been bad, although he hadn’t mourned him that much. The Magister had only been interested in their enterprise because he thought that he could introduce slavery to Westeros and profit from it. Heh. No, he wouldn’t have profited a single bronze coin from it if they had succeeded when the man was still alive. Not after being stuck full of arrows. Him and his Unsullied guards.
He heard the distinctive sound of boots on the gangplank that led to the shore and he placed a hand on his sword and looked at the entranceway. After a moment a cloaked and hooded figure came into view. As it reached the deck of the ship it looked about, spotted him and then hands came up to pull the hood down. Ah. Varys. The cockless wonder.
“You’re late,” he grated as the eunuch sat down opposite him and warmed his hands by the brazier. “I expected you hours ago.”
“My apologies,” Varys muttered. “However, you did choose a quite isolated anchorage, shall we say? The next boat is almost half a mile away.”
“I’ve found that caution is better than boldness these days.”
“Wise words,” Varys simpered, and he looked at him. There were times when he didn’t trust anyone and those times seemed especially heightened when he was around the Master of Ships of Westeros.
He looked back at the brazier. “We can talk freely here. The crew’s buggered off to the nearest whorehouse and the boy is asleep.”
Varys looked about. “Where is he?”
He jerked his chin at the forrard cabin. “Over there. He was tired.”
“Good, then we can indeed speak freely. About many things.”
Oh yes. “The Martells have gone silent on us. No letters, no promise of gold, nothing.”
“Ah.” Varys nodded as if he knew something that he did not. “I expected that.”
“You did?”
“Indeed. The Call has made them cautious.”
Fuck. The Call. The fucking Call. “I don’t see why some bloody Northern superstition should have affected so many people.”
Varys tilted his head to one side, like a bird peering down at something it didn’t understand. “Well, it’s both simple and hard to explain.”
He waved a hand in utter denial. “No, enough. The Martells have cold feet. Fuck them.” Yes, fuck them. He would have his revenge, despite them. “At least we have the gold that Mopatis left you.”
Varys tilted his head the other way. “Ah, that. Yes, he did leave me gold. But not in the quantities we might have wished.”
He opened his mouth, closed it again as he stuffed his temper back into the black hole where it seemed to spring from so easily these days and then said a single word: “What?”
The eunuch sighed. “Yes, he did indeed leave me a substantial amount of gold. But he also left a legacy to his illegitimate children, who were rather more plentiful than I might have imagined. I shall be looking into some of them, just to be on the safe side. Oh and apparently rather more money was left to the Magisters of Pentos than I had been lead to believe. Most peculiar. I have already asked about the truth of that with the Iron Bank, where his gold was deposited. I imagine that his last Will and Testament will be examined rather more closely than some would have hoped.”
He repressed a snarl of fury. “Fools. We should deal with them later. Well, that should be enough to at least give the Golden Company a taste of what they need. We can make other arrangements and… what?”
Varys was staring at him as he didn’t believe what he had just heard. “Your anchorage is remote indeed. You seem to be somewhat behind the latest news.”
“What news?”
“Well, firstly the Golden Company is no more. It has broken up.”
This was so unexpected that he stopped in mid-yawn. “What? Impossible!”
“All too possible I’m afraid,” Varys said with a shake of his bald head. “They have split into three parts. One is off to Volantis I believe, to take up a contract. That part is mostly made up of the more Essosi of them. Another part is trying to get ‘home’ to Westeros, in answer to the Call. And the third seems to be drifting, irresolute and generally clueless as to what to do.”
“The Call!” He hissed the word as if it pained his lips – which it virtually did. “The fucking Call! Mummery and lies! Stark’s lies at that! Tales of Northern ghosts and snarks and grumpkins!”
“I fear not.” Varys spoke the words in a hard voice and he looked at him in surprise. “The Call is true. I have seen the head of a wight. The men of the Night’s Watch have been bringing them South in cages from the Wall. Cages that somehow stop them from rotting. I thought them nothing more than a trick at first, a mechanism from Myr. But no, they are real. They exist. And if wights are real, then the Others must be too.” He tilted his head to one side. “Did you hear it? The Call?”
Sweat prickled his brow for a moment. He had heard it in his sleep. He still heard it in his dreams. House Connington went back a long way. How long? There were times when he didn’t want to know. And he wanted to go home. To Griffin’s Roost. He was needed there, he knew it. But… not yet. His revenge came first. “Mummery,” he snarled. “Northern nonsense.”
Varys sat there, his head still tilted. “Ah.” He said softly after a while. “So you did hear it. I see it in your face.” There was a pause and then he seemed to shrug. “The second thing is that Braavos has seized Pentos. Again.”
“What? For what reason?”
“When Illyrio died he took a lot of the common sense of the Magisters with them. They spent a lot of time boasting about what they were going to do with Daenerys Targaryen’s dragons. Such as burning Braavos to the ground.”
He blinked. “Her dragons are real? Not just a tale?”
“Oh very real. I’ve seen them. Three dragons – the first born in more than a hundred years.”
“And now Braavos has them. Them and the girl. Well, I know the city well. They might be… let’s say rescued.”
Varys had an odd look on his face. “Rescued? Oh, the Braavosi don’t have them. They vanished from Pentos during the attack. All most mysterious.”
He just looked at the cockless wonder. Mysterious? Really? “You have them,” he said flatly. “Where have you stuck them?” Another yawn ripped its way out of him and he cursed the hour. The moon had risen.
“Me?” Varys simpered. “You have great faith in my abilities.”
“I know you,” he said flatly. “Where is she?”
“Safe.” Varys said the word just as flatly.
There was a long moment of silence as they stared at each other and then he threw his hands up. “Very well, have your secrets!” He leant back, his mind working. “Well, this is a stroke of luck. We can marry the girl to the boy. How large are the dragons?” Another yawn.
“Very small,” Varys replied. “Am I boring you?”
“It’s been a long day. How long before they can be ridden?”
“I am no expert on dragons, but I imagine that it would be years. I see your plan, but there is a problem. You think that three dragons and two dragonriders would be a standard around which you could recruit all kinds of people? There’s just one problem. The boy can’t ride one of the dragons. And we both know why.”
He looked at the eunuch and then quickly at the forrard cabin. “Keep your voice down, you fool!”
“Why? We both know the truth about the boy. He’s not a Targaryen.”
“Be silent!” He almost roared the words, but then a wave of weakness washed over him. Gods. This was more than tiredness. Was he ill? He looked down at his hands, which were trembling.
“Ah.” Varys said the word with something odd in his voice. “Are you alright?”
“Just… tired.” He squinted at the other man. He was so tired.
“It takes a while for it to reach full effect, depending on how large a person is.”
The hairs on the back of his neck stood up on end. “What does?”
Varys smiled sadly. “I was not as late as you thought I was. I was here earlier. I was the cook who served the stew. I added some… seasoning. For you and the boy. A merciful poison, if such a thing can be described as that. Based on Slumberberries, or whatever the name is here. Concentrated of course. You go to sleep, I am told, and then every breath you take after that is shallower and shallower, until you die.”
He gripped the handle of the dagger and tried to rise, but his legs betrayed him in an instant and he sprawled on the deck, the dagger slipping from his hand. Varys swept it up in an instant, moving like a cat and then standing over him. And then the full weight of the eunuch’s words swept over him. No. He looked at the cabin.
“I’m sorry,” Varys said regretfully. “The boy’s been dead for at least an hour now. He felt its affects first.”
Slowly, fumblingly, he scrabbled his way across the deck towards the cabin, getting weaker and more tired with every yard. It took an endless moment of fumbling to open the cabin door – and then he saw the motionless figure in the bunk. He somehow dragged his way to the bunk and then with trembling fingers felt for a pulse. There was none.
He slumped down by the bunk, his mind moving oh so slowly. Despair clouded everything, along with such weariness. He heard the footsteps and looked to one side. Varys was there with a lantern. “Why?”
Baratheon’s Master of Whispers seemed to sigh a little. “Because the plan has gone to pieces and the Game of Thrones is in abeyance. Because your plan would never work, not now. Because the last thing that Aerys Targaryen did was to order his Hand, the Pyromancer Rossart to ignite the wildfire caches that had been secreted beneath the city. Because the Targaryens cannot rule Westeros, not just now, not while people remember such madness. We need a new plan. And you, with your need for revenge, would never agree to a more long-term plan. You would object, or get in the way, or just be yourself. I had to remove you from the board, as it were.So. Goodbye Jon Connington. Fare you well. And again… I’m sorry.”
He glared at the wretched cockless wonder, wanting to spring to his feet and strangle the bastard, but he was tired.
So tired.
So very tired.
His eyelids fluttered – and then closed.
Tired.
Tyrion
Books about the Hightower tended to be... well, bulky in some places and thin in others. There was a lot about the raids by the Ironborn and quite a bit about the Andal invasion and even more about the Gardener Kings and their terrible fate at the Field of Fire. But when it came to the founding of the Hightower itself... well, not a lot.
He peered down at the book and then mentally made a note to try and send a raven to Casterly Rock about the Hightower. Surely something had to be in the archives. He thought about what the Citadel might have in its archives and pulled a slight face. Something nagged at him every time he thought about the Citadel these days. He wondered just what the Maesters might have buried in those priceless and oh-so-inaccessible book stacks of theirs.
Boots sounded on the floorboards to one side and he looked up to see the door open as Father entered the room. To anyone who did not know Tywin Lannister he was his stone-faced usual self. To those who knew him as well as Tyrion did, he was in a slightly amused and yet slightly bemused mood.
You just had to learn how to read the lines around his eyes.
“Is something the matter Father?”
Father sat down and directed a slightly glowering look at him. “You,” he said quietly, “Are marrying a rather remarkable young woman. As I have said before – treat her right, or there will be a long list of people who will be more than willing to chastise you.”
He thought of Roose Bolton, GreatJon Umber and above all Ned Stark and repressed a shudder. “Oh,” he replied quietly, “I am very much aware of that fact. Can I ask why you are mentioning this now?”
His father made no reply other than to hand over a sheaf of papers. Bemused himself now he looked at them. And then he noticed that the handwriting was Dacey’s. Ah. He riffled through a few pages. The word ‘progeny’ left off the page and he felt sweat bead his brow. “Ah,” he said, a most inadequate word for what he was reading. And then again: “Ah.”
“Yes, Lady Surestone has laid out the various options in terms of your children and their titles. Your firstborn son will be Lord of the Westerlands after you. Your firstborn child will also be the lord or lady of Surestone. Therefore, should you have two children then the titles will depend on the sex of the children, and should there be more than two, well, provision has been made for all eventualities. A clever and imaginative girl, no, woman. She will be a great asset for you, at your side.”
As Tyrion stared down at the papers Father stood. “You are researching the Hightower I see.”
More than slightly thrown Tyrion looked at the books. “Erm, yes. I was trying to find more information for Ned Stark when he leaves tomorrow.”
“His forthcoming departure has caused a great deal of discussion about many things. He wishes to be present at the wedding of his cousin, obviously. As he leaves tomorrow, and will be gone for possibly many weeks, if not months, that means that you will marry Dacey Surestone tonight.”
His brain seemed to stop working for a long moment. When he spoke again he made sure that it was not in a squeak. “Tonight?”
“Tonight. You are not accompanying the King and I to the Wall, as you know. I suggest you use the coming days to make your bride exceedingly happy.” The words ‘Get the girl with child’ hung unsaid over the conversation. Ah. Father was actually trying to be pleasant. He wasn’t sure if he could get used to this.
“I’m delighted, but surely this is a bit short notice in terms of clothes and so forth? I mean, I don’t want Dacey to complain about-”
“Save your breath. She has already had a cloak created by the Starks. The ceremony will happen in the Godswood. You can assuage Westerlands sensibilities later with a confirmatory marriage in the Sept, or even do both again at Casterly Rock.”
More shock. Then delight. And then a vague feeling of worry. He was going to marry Dacey. Right now. He did not want to disappoint her. She’d see him naked for the first time. There would be, well, sex. What if he was not what she had in mind? What if... what if he stopped asking stupid questions? Heloved her. She had made it very clear that she loved him. They were going to be married.
And so the next few hours were spent in a whirlwind of preparations. Father had had some fine clothes made in his exact size, along with a fine belt for the Warnings to sit in. Rocktooth would be a bit much, but it was important to show Lannister heirlooms that had been made by the First Men.
As he stood in front of the Heart Tree in the middle of Winterfell’s Weirwood he made himself calm down a bit, as his heart was hammering at his ribs. This was happening, it was actually happening. Ned Stark, resplendent in his fur-trimmed cloak, Frostfyre at his side, stepped in front of him and directed a look at him that was part welcoming, part reassuring and part terrifying, before he cleared his throat. “Who comes before the Old Gods on this night?”
He looked back to see that Dacey had arrived, escorted by Robb Stark. She looked beautiful. Robb cleared his throat slightly and then intoned: “Dacey, of the House Surestone, comes here to be wed. A woman grown, trueborn and noble. She comes to beg the blessing of the Gods. Who comes to claim her?”
“Tyrion, of the House Lannister, heir to Casterly Rock. Who gives her?”
“Robert, of the House Stark, cousin to Dacey.”
He seemed to be an observer to the rest of the ceremony, almost watching as some presence controlled his body and gave the correct responses. He could see the King standing off to one side, a hulking figure who said not a word. Uncles Gerion and Kevan were off to the other, both grinning, whilst the Starks seemed to combine smiles with glowers. But his eyes were on Dacey. Just Dacey. Her smile and her eyes were a little nervous – but also promised him everything.
Oh, he was going to have to be at his best tonight.
Domeric
Sansa had sewn him a new patch with their concept for the new banner of House Bolton on it, and he looked at it with deep approval. Yes. Close enough to the old one to reassure, but different enough to matter. It had been a fine line to thread, literally, but they (or rather Sansa) had done it.
He looked at the South Gate and sighed. He felt as if he should be going with Lord Stark. He felt as if he had been doing next to nothing for weeks now. The future of the North, no, the future of Westeros itself, was at stake. And he was sitting in Winterfell, doing next to nothing.
Now, Father had made it very clear that he was to do nothing. Until he married Sansa and they had children he was the last direct heir to the Westerosi branch of House Bolton. Yes, there were cousins here and there, but they did not bear the name of Bolton. And yes, there were the Boltons who had served with the Company of the Rose, but they had been abroad in Essos for centuries and were therefore – according to Father – not quite right.
He had a sneaking suspicion about what was not right about them, they had abandoned certain…traditions that he suspected that Father wanted to keep open as options. And that was the gentlest possible way that he could describe such things.
No. Never again. He and Sansa would never allow it ever happening again, and their children would be brought up to be more like them than Father. He thought about Ramsey, the brother he had never met, again and he shuddered. Oh, from what he had heard about Ramsey, he would have embraced the old days with a vengeance.
“Your little bird not here then?”
He started a little with surprise at the voice, before looking about. Ah. Sandor Clegane. The man with the horrific burns to his face was standing to one side, clutching a mug of ale and looking his usual bitter and sardonic self.
“’Little bird’? Domeric asked. “Do you mean Sansa?”
“Aye. The little fluttering one? Do my… looks make her feel uneasy?”
He looked at the scars on the man’s face, or what he could see of them through the curtain of hair that he left hang over it. “Aye,” he said eventually. “Can you blame her?”
Clegane snorted and then shrugged. “Oh, you’re smitten with her. You’re from the family that flays, aren’t you?”
He knew that the man was trying to bate him and he just tilted his head to one side in response, drawing on the lessons that Lord Redfort had taught him. “No longer.” He was proud of the way that he said the words – flat and firm. Clegane looked at him, his eyes filled with something that he couldn’t quite describe – and then he drank some of his ale and shrugged.
“You sound very sure of yourself, Ser.” Clegane said the title as if it disgusted him.
“I am very certain. I have sworn an oath upon it. On the Fist of Winter no less.” He looked coolly back at the tall man. “You do not seem to like titles like ‘Ser’, do you?”
Clegane bared his teeth at him in something that was not quite smile and not quite snarl. “The man who did this to me,” he pointed at his scars, “Was later seen to be fit to be made a knight.”
He stared at the man and barely knew what to say. Fortunately someone else did. “Leave the boy alone Clegane.”
Rather aggrieved to be called a ‘boy’ he turned to meet this newcomer – and then he stopped and blanched a little. The Green Man. The man whose very presence gave him goosebumps, for reasons that he could not explain.
“You again,” Clegane grunted, before swilling more ale, some of which dribbled out of the hole in his cheek. “What the fuck do you want old man?”
He bristled at that. Could the wretched man not at least moderate his language a bit? He was no knight, and seemed to despise those with that title, but surely he could show some respect. But before he could say anything the Green Man walked past him, laying a hand on his shoulder briefly as he passed. The older man then just stood there and stared at Clegane, as if sizing him up – before shaking his head a little and sighing.
“What?” Clegane grunted sourly. “What do you want? I keep seeing you staring at me every now and then.”
“The Old Gods have a strange sense of humour at times.”
Both he and Clegane frowned at this. What did he mean? And then Clegane spat to one side. “Fuck your Old Gods. And the New Gods. And fuck you.”
Domeric was about to remonstrate with him when the Green Man did something unexpected – he laughed. “Ah, Clegane, do you think that you intimidate me at all? The things I’ve seen would freeze you to the marrowbone. I’ve met people who would make you piss yourself with terror. And I’ve been through things that would have you crying like a girl. You think that your face is bad?” He held up his hand and unrolled his sleeve to reveal the burns on it. “This was from wildfire, boy. And you want to know why I have been watching you? For this moment. Now.”
There was another moment of confusion – and then the Green Man’s arm lashed out and grabbed Sandor Clegane’s unburnt ear, as he would a small and errant child. Clegane howled with pain and rage – and then the Green Man turned and strode off, pulling Clegane as he went. Domeric gaped at it all, confused beyond words. What was happening. “You too, Bolton,” the old man called over his shoulder. “Come along. We need a witness for this.” So he followed them both as the Green Man strode along to the Godswood of Winterfell.
“Let go of my fucking ear you old cunt!” Clegane roared as he tried to regain his balance, but the Green Man seemed to keep veering his arm around just enough to frustrate him. Domeric trotted after them, a fascinated and both amused and baffled spectator.
“You need a lesson in manners young Clegane,” the Green Man said as they approached the Heart Tree. “And a lesson of a different sort. You don’t believe in the Old Gods do you?”
“Fuck you! Let go! How are you doing this?”
The Green Man pulled Clegane up to the Heart tree and let go – and then he put one hand on the tree and the other around Clegane’s neck. The Hound clutched at the hand – and then he froze. So did Domeric. There was red fire burning in the eyes of the Green Man. He’d seen that fire before. The Old Gods were here.
“You don’t believe in the Old Gods, do you Clegane?”
The Hound made a noise of inarticulate terror.
“Well, they are here now. And seems that you need a lesson in balance. That’s what the Old Gods preach. The scales of life, as it were. You were burned once by your brother. I was burnt too. And now I know why. It’s time to level the scales.” And with that he removed his hand from Clegane’s neck and placed it on the burned part of his face.
Clegane roared with pain – and then light seemed to shine from the Green Man’s hand, light that suffused the Hound’s face. The big man froze. The light brightened, from a glow to a blaze and Clegane whimpered with what was either pain or sheer terror. Brighter and brighter went the light and Domeric could hear people shouting outside the Godswood, asking what was going on – and then it faded.
The Green Man sagged against the Heart Tree, his chest rising and falling as he panted. As for Clegane, well he fell to the ground like a wet sack of meal. For a long moment Domeric thought that he was dead – and he stirred and tried to push himself up.
“What… what… the fuck… was… that?” Clegane slurred the words out.
“Look in the pool.”
And so Sandor Clegane looked into the pool in the Godswood – and saw that his burns had gone, replaced with pink unscarred skin. And he wept.
Robb
Father was already in his riding gear when he arrived in his Solar, with Frostfyre asleep by the fire. He did his best not to sigh as he started to list all of the things that he needed to keep an eye on, ranging from making sure that Mother did not fret too much in her condition to ensuring that the former Queen was kept well-guarded until she could be moved to whatever her final fate would be. He wondered what that fate would be.
And in the meantime there was the constant need to look to the Wall. To support the Night’s Watch. He sighed a little and then smiled slightly when Father sent a questioning look his way. “I thought that life was complicated enough in that other time, when I was as war. But this… this will be harder in a way. There’s so much to do.”
“You’ll be fine, Robb. You’ve been the Stark in Winterfell before – in this time, which is what people will think of. Use your other experiences well. And listen to the others when you have to.”
He looked at Father and nodded. “I wish I was going with you. To Barrowtown at least.”
Now it was Father’s turn to sigh. He reached out and placed a consoling hand on his shoulder. “I know, Robb. And I know that you have memories of some very dark days after I left Winterfell in that other time. But I know that you can do it.”
“Thank you Father.” He looked back at him. “And final words of wisdom until you return?”
“Lady Dustin is a contrary creature, so if I need help I will send for it. I hope that I do not though – not with the Fist of Winter with me.”
He frowned. “She sent me very little help when I called the banners in that other time. You know her better than I do though.”
“Aye,” Father said with a slight grimace. “Oh and keep thinking about marriage alliances. Lord Westerling is here, but not his daughter. Have you been thinking of her?”
“I have,” he muttered. “But as you said she is not here and… things are different now.”
“I’ve seen you talking with Mance Rayder’sgoodsister, Val, a lot. Robb, I know that your mother and I want you to be happy, so we have not pressed a match on you. But you must think very carefully on this matter.”
He thought about Val and then realised that he was blushing slightly. “Father, I don’t know. I have not decided on anything right now. I like Val a lot, but I know that there would be problems with some of the Lords of the North if I married a Wildling – even if we are now allied with them. I know that alliance is new and that people have long memories of bitter enmities with them.” He paused. “I need to balance my heart and my head.”
There was a pause and then Father nodded. “A second LongNight is coming,” he said quietly. “We don’t know how long it will last. We don’t know hoe many will die in this war that is to come. We don’t know how many things – traditions and other things – will have to be torn up as we do our best to survive. As you said, balance your heart and your head. House Stark must survive.”
The moment of silence that followed was a long one – and then it was broken as Frostfyre awoke with a start and then a fist pounded against the closed door. Father turned with a frown. “Come!”
The door opened to reveal Jory and Domeric. Both were pale. “My Lord,” the Bolton heir almost stammered, “Something has happened that you must know of at once. The Green Man has healed Sandor Clegane of his burns in the Godswood. He… he placed his hand on the burns and his eyes burned with red fire and then – light came from his hand the burns were healed! I witnessed it myself.”
“Aye, and I saw the light from the Godswood myself my Lord,” Jory added. “Quite a few people witnessed that light.”
He exchanged a startled look with Father – and then they both strode out, followed by Frostfyre.
They found Sandor Clegane sitting on a bench that a white-faced guard had obviously pulled out for him. The smaller of the two Cleganes was pale, his eyes wide and stunned and his hands shook as if he had had a palsy. And his face… was indeed healed.
Robb stood there are just stared at the pink skin on Clegane’s face, stunned. And then after a moment he shook himself mentally. If the Old Gods had brought him back in time from his death, why should he be so surprised at the Green Man healing Clegane?
Clegane himself was too stunned himself to speak and when Jory thrust a mug of ale at him he had to grip the container with both hands in order to still his shaking hands and then lift it to his lips and quaff vigorously.
As for the Green Man himself he was leaning against a nearby tree, looking a bit pale but quite pleased with himself. When he saw that he and Father were looking at him he smiled slightly. “It needed to be done,” he said enigmatically. “Clegane needed to understand.” And with that he strode off.
The hour that followed was a long one. He and Father had to order Clegane back to his room and tell the servants and guards to not follow and stare at him. Which many did anyway. Various others came up to ask what in the Hells was going on, including the King and his brother.
But after that Winterfell seemed to settle down a bit and everything seemed to rush towards the departure of the joint party to the South. He saw Theon first, his direwolf at his side. “Are you sure that you don’t want to leave Mist here?”
Theon shook his head and then grinned cockily at him. “A direwolf at my side should convince my father that I’m a Northman now!”
“What if your father disagrees, or hurts Mist?”
Theon’s smile vanished. “If he touches Mist I’ll… well, he’d be sorry. Besides – Jon is taking Ghost with him.”
Which was true and Jon appeared next, his own direwolf at his side, carrying his saddlebags. “Clegane’s getting drunk in the Great Hall,” he said as he started to saddle his horse. “Sandor Clegane that is. Oh and his brother went to see him.”
“Those two hate each other,” Theon frowned as he saddled his own horse. “What happened?”
Jon shrugged. “The Mountain just stared at the Hound as if he’d seen a ghost and then wandered off, his shadows following him. They looked worried. Is the man mad?”
There was an awkward silence and then Robb shrugged as well. “He’s the Mountain. He’s a not man, he’s a weapon.”
And then there was the sound of boots to one side and Ygritte strode in, carrying her own saddlebags. She was wearing riding leathers that fitted her rather well, had a plain sword at her hip and had her unstrung bow and quiver slung over one shoulder. As she saddled a horse she glanced over at them. “What are you looking at?”
“What are you doing?” Jon asked the question with strain in his voice.
“This is a horse,” Ygritte replied, as if talking to a small child. “Some call them horsies. And this is a sad-dle. The sad-dle goes on the horsie. I’ll then ride the horsie. Is that clear enough or is that all too complex for you, Jon Stark?”
Theon and Robb swapped a glance and then both suppressed a snicker. Jon flushed. “You are not coming with me.”
“Yes I am.”
“I forbid it!”
“You forbid it do you? And who are you to me to forbid things?”
This was a question that left Jon spluttering with baffled rage and she smirked at him. “You know nothing, Jon Stark. Now that that’s settled, get used to it. I’m coming with you to Pyke.”
This was enough to make Jon throw his hands in the air with frustration, before finally, after a long moment of glowering at Ygritte, returning to the job of saddling his horse.
As Robb and the three riders walked into the main courtyard there was a frenzy of activity. Father was hugging Mother, who looked teary-eyed, whilst Sansa, Domeric, Arya, Bran and Rickon watched, their faces showing different emotions.
“I’ll be back in time to see the babe born,” he heard Father tell Mother, before kissing her gently and then hugging her again. And with that he hugged the remaining children, shook Domeric by the hand and then turned to face Robb. “You will be the Stark in Winterfell when I am away, Robb,” he said loudly. “Lead the North in my absence. The Long Night comes again and with it war against the Others.”
“I will not let you down Father,” he said with a formal nod, before stepping into his father’s embrace. “Come back this time, I beg of you,” he whispered in Father’s ear. “I don’t want it to be like the last time I remember you leaving.”
“I’ll be back,” Father whispered in reply. “Count on it.” And then they stepped away from each other.
“Good luck in the South, Lord Stark,” the King boomed to one side, before sweeping Father up in a fearsome and possibly rib-cracking hug of his own. “Let Lord Tyrell know that what you do there is with my full support.” The King smiled. “Good luck Ned. You have a long journey ahead of you. I will help Robb to protect the North in your absence. You have my word on it.”
A final trio of people emerged to one side and Robb turned to see Stannis Baratheon emerge with his wife and daughter. He did not hug his wife but he placed a hand on her cheek and smiled at her for almost three heartbeats. “Be safe here, wife,” he rumbled. “Listen to the Maester in all things about the babe. You will always be in my thoughts.” It was typical of the man and Selyse Baratheon nodded choppily.
“Do your duty – and come back to us,” she said quietly and there was something in her voice that seemed to move the Hand of the King.
Stannis squatted down to face Shireen, who looked at him worriedly. “Look after your mother,” he said with a kind look. “And take care of the Terrible Threesome.” And then he hugged her gently and seemed to mutter something in her ear that made her throw her arms around his neck. When she released him she was red-eyed.
“MOUNT!” Father roared and there was a general movement in the courtyard and men and women stuck feet into stirrups and then pulled themselves up into saddles. Father watched it all, standing up in the stirrups once or twice and then looked down at Frostfyre, who was watching him. Jon and Theon had their own direwolves on their saddles, as they had on the great ride South. There was a long moment – and then Father raised a fist in the air and pumped it once. “RIDE!”
The twin parties turned to the South Gate and then started to trot out, slowly at first due to the congestion at the gate. The banners of Houses Stark and Baratheon started to snap in the wind as the men holding them released the leading edges. Out they went, a cavalcade of leather and steel on horseback, until eventually the courtyard was empty and the work of shovelling up the horseshit could start.
Mother stood at the gateway for a long time before seeming to sigh and walk off, but it was Robb who ran up the spiral stairs of the tallest guard tower to watch the column ride off to the South. Smaller and smaller the dots became, until the rearguard rounded a corner and descended a little and were lost to sight.
It was only them that he realised that the King was standing next to him. Robert Baratheon just looked at him. “Are you alright lad?”
Robb stared South at where Father’s column had disappeared, before looking around carefully. “Your Grace, my last memory of my father from that… other time, is when he went South with you, to be your Hand. And I never saw him again.”
The King sighed and patted him on the back. “That was then. This is now. Come on. Joffrey Hill is off to the Wall in a bit. You can tell him to bugger off and never show his face again in Winterfell.”
Which was of some small comfort.
Jaime
When the booming thuds that were reverberating around the passageways of Casterley Rock ceased he did not merely speed up, he ran. He did not care what the men thought, he just knew that something must have happened at the Lion’s Mouth. He had no idea what, he just knew it.
He was right. As he approached the second gate a flood of bloodied and visibly terrified men ran past him. “Hold!” he cried in s loud a voice as he could still muster after so many days of shouting. “Where is Ser Addam? I mean Lord Marbrand?”
“Here, Ser Jaime!” Addam looked every bit as bad as the rest of the men, bloodied and limping. His sword was broken and there was what looked like the remains of fingernails stuck in his shield, as if that was even possible. “The Lion’s Mouth is lost. The gates have gone. We must close the second gates at once.”
Jaime paled, but roared out the orders and watched as the gates closed. In the darkness beyond them, in the great cavern that was the Lion’s Mouth, he could see shaped moving in the near distance, with other, fat taller, shapes coming closer. As the gates slammed shut men ran to get timbers to brace them.
“Addam, what happened?” Jaime hissed at his old friend. He could not believe that the gates of the Lion’s Mouth were gone. They had been old but well-maintained, a visible sign of the pride and wealth of House Lannister.
“Wighted giants holding tree trunks happened to them,” Addam said as he threw his broken sword away and then gestured at his pale-faced squire, some cousin of his, to get him his other sword. “The gates didn’t last long.”
He thought about the booming that he had heard and then sighed. So that had been it. “What about Tyrion’s dragonglass arrows and the oil?”
“They worked damned well. Right up until the moment that we ran out of them both. There had been ten of the giants. We destroyed eight of them, but the last two...” he shook his head. “The gates never stood a chance.”
Jaime sighed and then looked about. “How many men did you lose?”
“Too many,” Addam replied grimly. “And those that killed them must have been on the Field of Ice.”
This time he winced. Well, at least Addam hadn’t called it what others were whispering – Tywin’s Folly. That said, the latter was the more apt one. Father’s decision to fight the forces of the undead had been more than folly, it had been a disaster. Fifty thousand Westerlanders had faced a horde of who knew how many wights, led by those terrible creatures from legend, the Others. An hour later less than two thousand living men were running or riding for their lives. All because Father had not listened. All because Father had made the army act as if it had been facing living foes, not the undead. He had all but sneered at the tales told by the fleeing Riverlanders.
If only he – no, they, Uncle Kevan and himself as well had been doubtful of the messages from the Wall and Winterfell – had listened to TYrion. But now it was too late.
“The Second Gate is still partly in the cave,” he told Addam grimly. “So what they did to the Lion’s Mouth they’ll be able to do to that as well with their wighted giants. Fall back to the Third Gate. Barricade that as much as you can.”
Addam looked at him and then nodded. After a moment he straightened slightly. “Honour to serve, Ser Jaime.”
He placed his hand on the shoulder of his friend.”No, the honour has been mine, Lord Marbrand.”
Addam’s face twisted just a bit at the reminder that his father was dead and then he turned and snapped out orders to the men. And then just as they started to move away from the gates, they shuddered as from a mighty impact. “Back!” Jaime roared. “Back to the Third Gate!”
They ran and, wonder of wonders, made it back to the Gate before the Second Gate failed before the assault. Jaime left Addam as he had the men brace the Third Gate with everything they could get their hands on. That should hold. The passageway between the gates was about ten feet tall, too small for a giant, or so he hoped. Wights... he was no expert on wights.
As he pattered – and then trudged as the exhaustion started to take its toll – up the Long Spiral that headed upwards his cudgelled his tired mind into action. They had few options now. They had to flee South. But the tunnels that led their way Southeast were few and narrow and the full garrison would be too many for them. Heh. Not that the full garrison was left, after the Field of Ice. What a name. The same result as on the Field of Fire. He set his jaw. Well, if Father still thought that he knew better than everyone else, he had another think coming. The wound he’d taken had shown him that, a blow from a panicking soldier who hadn’t cared who he was trying to run over.
As he reached the corridor where he had been aiming for he saw Tyrion trotting towards him. His brother was holding a crossbow in one hand and was grim-faced. “I can see from the balcony of Father’s quarters that the wights are streaming into the Rock. The Lion’s Mouth is taken then?”
“It is. Wighted giants with tree trunks. Addam said that they killed most of them, but the two that remained were enough to do the job.”
“Then we have to flee.”
“Agreed,” Jaime said tersely as they walked up the corridor. “We need supplies though.”
To his surprise Tyrion smiled. “Already done. I sent a party of guards with donkeys, laden with supplies, out of the Southeastern tunnels this morning. Just in case.”
He smiled at his ugly little brother. “Good. You will lead them Tyrion. I will stay back to buy you time.”
Tyrion’s smile vanished. “Jaime-”
“No arguments on this little brother. If we had listened to you earlier... well, it’s all too late now. Go to the tunnels. I’ll send the others on.”
“Father won’t go. And Cersei...”
“How is she?”
“Worse than she was. Be careful.”
He nodded and then strode off towards Father’s quarters, which was being guarded by an exhausted-looking Hound. As he approached he could hear the voice of his twin. She seemed to be issuing orders. He slipped into the room and discovered that Cersei was indeed ranting at a young Maester who he did not recognise. To one side stood Father, leaning on a chair and looking out of the window panes that looked out onto the balcony. He was white-faced and breathing heavily, doubtless from his cracked ribs. As for Joffrey... well, the boy was a mute witness from the table he was sitting at. He too was pale. His first battle had been an utter rout and his reaction to that rout had been to withdraw to as place within himself.
“Jaime,” Cersei said after she finally noticed him. “Where the Seven Hells have you been?”
The Maester slipped past him, his eyes mournful and as he did he slipped Jaime a piece of paper. He looked down at it. Ah. A raven had come from Winterfell. Apparently Winterfell still stood and... Lord Stark bore the Fist again? He shrugged internally. Madness. Not that any of that mattered.
“At the gates. The Lion’s Mouth has fallen. The Second Gate too. I left Lord Marbrand working to brace the Third Gate.”
Cersei stared at him and he could tell from her eyes that she did not believe a word he was saying. “Impossible,” she finally said. “Marbrand is lying. Strip him of his lands and title Father.”
“NOT impossible, I was there,” he pointed out through gritted teeth. Cersei’s reaction to recent events had been to deny everything. He had to admit that Tyrion’s conclusion was the right one: she was mad. “The men have fallen back to the Third Gate. The Others and their wights are in the Rock.”
This seemed to enrage Cersei. “Then lead a charge and throw them out!”
“What with? Only dragonglass, fire and Valyrian steel affect them. Tyrion was right about the dragonglass. It kills them!”
“How can that disgusting little monster be right about anything? How can rock be better than steel?”
“I don’t know, but it works!”
“Then find some and use it!”
“Do I look like a miner?”
“Enough.” It was Father who spoke. He looked as if he was clinging on to his temper by the merest hair. “Cersei, you are overwrought.” He swallowed and then closed his eyes. “We have lost. The Rock is falling. We must leave.”
This only enraged Cersei even more. “The Rock has NEVER fallen to an enemy! It is not falling! Am I the only one of you with any balls?”
“Cersei, you are the only one of us with no brains,” Father snapped, his eyes flickering to Joffrey as if he was about to add a qualification. “The Lion’s Mouth is lost. The Gates are falling one by one. Soon there will be only one way to fall back to – upwards. And once we reach the top, where will we go to then? Fly?” He seemed to slump a little. “Tyrion was right about many things. I take it he’s headed for the Southeastern tunnels?”
“He is,” Jaime sighed. “You must join him at once.”
“I will not,” Father said quietly. “I would be a hindrance to you. Jaime, you will lead them.”
“I am staying to lead the rearguard,” Jaime argued. “Someone will have to and...” He paused. There was a strange noise. Faint but then louder. Like a... scratching.
And then something from the darkest nightmares of a madman appeared at the balcony. It was a spider. A giant white-blue spider. It heaved its way up and then paused as far too many eyes that should ever be on a face seemed to notice them. It chittered, a horrible noise that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. He drew his sword.
Several things happened next. The first was that Joffrey saw the spider and screamed. It was a high-pitched jagged noise of pure terror and he winced. The second thing was that the spiders forelegs flexed and smashed the door to the balcony with ease. And the third thing was that he could see that the spider had a rider. An Other.
“CLEGANE!!” He bellowed the word as he sprang back, clutching at Cersei. The Hound sprang into the room, swore violently and then grabbed Joffrey and pulled him bodily out of the room. “Father, get back!”
It was too late. As Father tried to stand the Other jumped down off the spider and drew its sword – before slashing out almost negligently. Father fell, his throat a bloody ruin. His face bore an expression of surprise. Cersei was screaming something incoherent and he couldn’t keep hold of her. She squirmed away, grabbed a sword from the table and aimed a blow at the Other.
She didn’t stand a chance. Her blade met that which the Other bore and shattered like glass. The Other then thrust its sword deep into her chest. She fell without a word.
Jaime looked at the body of his father and then at that of his sister and lover. His sword was useless. So he threw it at the face of the Other and then turned to run. Something shattered behind him and then... PAIN...
Something was in his back, something cold and sharp and more terrible than he had ever thought anything could ever be and as for the pain... He tried to scream as he fell to the floor, tried to say something, but the pain was everything and crowded everything out. He could hear other people screaming about the Others being here and about wights climbing the Rock as well, but the pain was everywhere. Something sliced into his neck as well and he felt his lifeblood start to gush over the floor.
Everything started to darken and as it did his thoughts slowed to the speed of treacle. He was dying, he knew that now and he hoped that Tyrion got out and that the Hound had been able to join him with Joffrey. But as the darkness took him he realised, to his horror, that Father and Cersei had jerked themselves upright and were walking towards him.
But that was as nothing to what he felt just as the life left him. There was a voice. “Get up meat-creature,” it seemed to hiss into every fibre of his body. “Get up meat-thing. You serve us now. Now and forever. Get up!”
Jaime woke with a start, his head coming off the cloak that he’d wadded under his head to protect it from the tree root beneath. He sat up, brushing his hair back with shaking hands, before calming down and making his breathing return to normal. It was a dream. Just a dream. Nothing more than that.
A few of the other men in his party were awake and a few gazed at him levelly as he stood and placed his blanket to one side. They had camped in a grove of trees the previous evening, not too far from the road. From the colour of the sky dawn was just minutes away and as he looked about the rest of the party started to bestir themselves.
As for him, well he needed a piss and he walked to the back of the weirwood tree that he had been sleeping next to. But as he passed around the trunk he saw that it was not just any tree. A face had been carved into it, untold years ago from the state of it. It looked almost as if it was laughing at him. He stared at it, unsettled and then he walked to one side and found a different tree to piss against. There was even a pool to one side where he could dip his hands into and use the water to wash his face and smooth his hair back.
As he strode back to the others he noticed that one or two of them watched him and then seemed to shrug a little. No-one was guarding him, not really. He’d wondered about that at first, until Will, the grizzled man of the Night’s Watch who had taken his orders from the Old Bear himself, had told him on the second day of travelling North that they did not need to guard him.
“You swore an oath on the Fist of Winter, boy, in the presence of the Old Gods. If you break that oath then you die. It’s as simple as that. We’ve all heard what happened to Bootle, him that murdered Lord Surestone. As to the matter of when or if you break it...” The man had grinned a rather unpleasant grin. “Well. There’s them that are placing wagers on that.”
As he saddled his horse he thought about what the others thought about him again. He was the object of both fascination and scorn. An oathbreaking sisterfucker seemed to be the general conclusion about him, even if they all understood why he had broken his oath to Aerys. The word was spreading on that. As for his oath to Robert Baratheon... well he still had nightmares about the revenge that the man had taken on him. That trial by combat, with him being utterly unable to lay a blade on the man... well, the nightmares kept coming.
At a gesture from Will they all mounted. They were an odd lot, the odds and sods of Westeros. But one thing united them. The Wall. And they weren’t the only ones. As they trotted out of the grove and back towards the road he could see the travellers who must have started off at least an hour or so ago. Most were headed North, but he could see the odd horse and cart headed South. All had answered the Call and he winced a little as he remembered the first time that he had heard of it – along with Cersei’s sneer and then automatic dismissal of it, followed by a vague word about how perhaps it was some kind of strange plot by that fool Ned Stark?
No, this was no plot. They swerved onto a path that ran parallel to the road to avoid a large group and then cantered past them. Will had told them the other day that they were not going to ‘do a Stark’ with them and based on Tyrion’s tale of that painful ride he was grateful of that.
No, he was headed North to his new life there, where he would be sneered, denigrated and perhaps eventually tolerated. If he lived that long that is. He looked to one side at the men and women who were felling trees and brushwood for either log piles or new building work. He’d seen at least one old keep being rebuilt, the work of a house he’d never heard of before.
With every mile North he rode the more uneasy he felt. He just hoped that Tyrion was coping with Father. He felt like a coward for leaving his brother like that, but he had had enough by that point. And as for Cersei... he hardened his heart and put her out of his mind. Enough. No more madness, because to love her in that way had been pure madness and had destroyed both of their lives.
North they rode. North to war. He could feel it.
Bronn
Lord Flinters was pale with rage by the time that he left the room in which Lysa Arryn was being held. It was more than rage – it was contempt as well. Bronn observed him with a careful eye and then ushered him into his solar and poured him an ale from the jug that he’d ordered drawn for them both. “There are times when you need to quaff. Now seems like an appropriate time, and ale is better to quaff than wine.”
The older man grunted in agreement and then quaffed mightily, before lowering his mug and wiping his mouth. “By all the bloody gods,” he said after a long moment, “I knew that the woman was mad, but meeting her…” He shook his head. “The one and only time my wife met the woman she told me afterwards that Lysa Arryn was an unstable, flighty, bitch. And my Ella is not someone who usually talks like that.”
“You met her on a good day,” Bronn said drily. “On a bad day she gives insistent orders that ravens be sent at once to Winterfell to order that her son be sent South to meet her at the Eyrie in a week’s time. That alone is impossible.” He shook his head. “Oh, she’s mad.”
Lord Flinters quaffed a bit more and then sighed. “I honour Jon Arryn as a good and decent man, who has done nothing but good for the Vale. But that said – his luck when it comes to women has been abominable. And Lysa Arryn’s attempt to kill him was beyond abominable.” He shook his head. “I’m almost tempted to say that she should see the Eyrie again, or rather just the Moon Door. And that’s something I never thought I’d say about a wife of Jon Arryn. So – when does she leave for king’s Landing and his judgement?”
“A week, or so the Maester estimates. Losing her arm like that has taxed her body severely. As for what Lord Arryn plans for her, well, I have no idea.”
“Send a raven if you need more men for the escort.” The old man peered at him shrewdly. “Will you take a large escort or will a smart young fellow like you take a small, fast, easily concealed group just in case?”
He suppressed a smile. Oh, Flinters had his measure alright. “As small and fast as possible. I was thinking about a small enclosed carriage, if need be with her asleep from juice of the poppy. I can’t imagine anyone trying to rescue her. She’s hated in the Vale and as for the Riverlands, well, I did hear that Lord Tully has disowned her.”
“Aye, and if Hoster ‘Family, Duty, Honour’ Tully disowns his own daughter then no-one in their right mind will want to ‘rescue’ her. The only one who might have was Baelish, and he’s dead, the slimy little bastard.”
“Meet him did you?”
“At Gulltown once. Never trusted him, there was something about his face that made me want to punch him for no reason. His voice too.” He peered at him. “You met him of course.”
“Aye. He tried to bribe me with money that he didn’t have. Bloody fool. But then he’d gotten away with things for so long that he probably thought that he could get away with anything. I guarded him the night before his trial, to make sure that no-one from the Iron Bank had a little word with him. Longest night of my life.”
Flinters grunted in response before quaffing the last of his ale, so Bronn refilled his mug. The old man was brooding about something. He raised an eyebrow at him and Flinters started slightly and then shook his head a little.
“Sorry, just thinking about a few things. My eldest son is leading a party to the Wall in a few days.” He sighed. “There’s a lot of people talking about sending help to the Wall. Never thought I’d see the day when the Night’s Watch was getting the kind of help it had in the old days. This Call… well I heard it, weakly at least. My sons heard it louder than I did. Their mother’s family, you know. Her grandfather was of House Royce and Bronze Yohn himself is in the North now. Gods, I’m rambling.”
Rambling he may have been, but all of a sudden a very shrewd pair of eyes were looking at him. “The Call has woken a lot of things up, Bronn. Old things. People are looking for more of such old things. You heard about some of the things that the King and Lord Stark have found?”
“I have,” Bronn sighed. “Stormbreaker and the Fist of Winter. Names out of old legends. I heard that the Tyrells have found the spear of the Gardener Kings, Otherbane, as well. I suppose that Tywin Lannister’s ordered the Rock upended in search of old things. The Gods only know what’s in Dorne – so does that mean that there’s things in the Riverlands and the Vale?”
“Runestone would have it, if the Mountain Clans don’t,” Flinters said. “And the word is that the Tullies are searching Oldstones and other places for a shield of some kind.”
Something seemed to tug at the back of Bronn’s mind for a long moment, but he shook it off. “Well, the Foxhold is old, I know that much. The lower courses of the walls are First Men work. Some of the stones even have runes on them.”
The old lord grunted and nodded. “At least you’re not one of those fools that deny the Call.”
“Gods no. Seen too much to deny that. I heard that Lord Derkin denies it though, doesn’t he?”
“He did. Denying it helped to kill the young fool.”
“He’s dead?”
“Died yesterday. He was always boasting about his pure Andal blood, not that that’s possible given how cross-bred all the families are these days, but he heard it, or so his wife said. He woke up from a nap screaming the words. But then he denied hearing a thing and then when a man of the Night’s Watch passed through his lands with a cage with a head in it he tried to prove to his wife that it was all a lie, a Myrish toy or something.”
“I sense a bad end to this tale,” Bronn quipped as he refilled the mugs again. “What happened?”
“The young fool stuck his finger into the cage and the wight’s teeth latched onto it. Bit the end clean off. And because he was an idiot he didn’t clean the wound.”
“Didn’t he have his Maester look at it?”
“He’d dismissed him the week before, for talking about the Call. Next thing I heard there was a red line going his up his arm and he was raving nonsense. Blood poisoning of course.”
Bronn thought about the chinless wonder that had been the late and unlamented Lord Derkin. “What a shame.”
“His widow is looking for a new husband.”
“One with a chin I presume.”
Lord Flinters guffawed in genuine amusement. “Oh yes.” He peered at Bronn. “There’s going to be some talk on if you might court her.”
He shook his head. “Me? I’m too new here. Besides, I’ve never met the woman.”
“So?”
He pulled a face. “Something my father told me once. ‘Meet the girl first, marry her once you know she’s not a shrew.’ Wise man my father.” Besides, he had his mind on someone else for a wife. It would be a challenge.
Lord Flinters did not stay for much longer and eventually he left, complimenting Bronn on the ale as he departed. He seemed… not quite worried, but certainly a little preoccupied. Bronn returned to his solar afterwards and sat there, his mind working through things. Gods, but he hated King’s Landing. Expensive, smelled like shit, full of liars. But Lysa Arryn would have to be delivered there, alive and ready to face judgement. And who knew what Lord Arryn would do to her?
And then there was the other thing that was nagging at the back of his mind, but which he couldn’t put his finger on.
The sun had long since set by the time he went to bed, that niggling feeling still there. As he sat on the bed with the new mattress that he’d ordered – the old one had been far too soft, it had given him a bloody backache at times – he pondered on the changes to his life so far. And then he went to bed.
Afterwards he could never put his finger on what it was that woke him. A creak of the floor, the sound of a bare foot on a floorboard, it might have been anything. But suddenly he was awake. There was someone in the corridor outside his room. He got up, threw a robe over his nightshirt, picked up a knife just in case and then went to the door, where he opened it a crack.
Much to his shock Ursula Cawlish was walking down the corridor. Walking very slowly. And very nakedly. She was naked. He reeled mentally. What was she doing? What did she want? Was she there to seduce him? He’d known a high-class whore in Lannisport who’d once tried to sashay her way into his bed wearing nothing more than a flimsy piece of gauze covering her bellybutton, although why that needed to be covered he had no idea and – and was his mind reeling that much? Oh. Ursula Cawlish’s eyes were open but all he could see was the whites of her eyes. How could she walk and not see?
He tossed the knife back onto the bed and then paused. She was walking past his doorway. He felt a vague sense of let-down, along with a fresh sense of bewilderment. She went on down the corridor, towards the end of it. But there was nothing there. Just a stone wall with an old entrance that had been bricked up, possibly centuries ago. On she went, slowly walking, right up until the moment that she walked into it. As collisions went it was a very gentle one, but it still stopped her dead with a slight thud. After a long moment she said “Ouch” very quietly – before looking about in a confused manner.
“I think you were sleepwalking,” Bronn said very quietly, as he took off his robe and held it up as he knew what was about to happen.
Ursula Cawlish, the Steward of the Foxhold, froze for a long moment and then shrieked, spun partly around, panicked, plastered herself against the wall and put one hand on her arse and one on her breasts, not that that was an issue with the wall being there. Bronn quickly strode forwards, draped the robe on her and then retreated quickly.
There was the sound of frantic dressing. Only then did she say, in an iron voice: “What am I doing here? Where is here?”
“The corridor outside my room. You walked straight past my room and into that wall. I did wonder if I should stop you, but you were, erm, well, lacking clothes.”
“I don’t sleepwalk,” she said, sounding baffled. “Never have. Why would I walk here?”
He was tempted to say ‘For me?’ but suppressed it. She was staying at the blocked off doorway. “Why would I walk here?”
“What’s on the other side of this?” Bronn asked as he joined her at the wall.
“Nothing. There was a door, back about a hundred years ago. It lead to a stairway headed down, a wooden one, but it was an increasingly rotten one from what I read. The stone spiral staircase to the South replaced it.”
He frowned. “I’m amazed you could even see the corridor. Your eyes were rolled up so far in your head that you couldn’t see a thing.”
She wrapped the robe a little more tightly around her and sent a confused look in his direction. “I’m… confused.”
“What did the old staircase lead to?”
“Courtyard below. Entrance to the crypts.”
The crypts… that niggling feeling returned at the back oh his head. And then he nodded slightly. “Ursula, get dressed and meet me in the crypts as soon as you can.” She turned to look at him, her eyes very wide at the tone of his voice – and then she nodded and turned on her heel.
As his Steward ran off he went back to his room and dressed quickly, his mind racing. This was unlike anything he had known and it was important, he could tell. Something had happened to her, some past wraith of her family was trying to tell her something, or something like that.
When he entered the crypts, lantern in hand, he looked about through narrowed eyes. There was something here, he could feel it in the fucking air. But what was it?
Boots scuffed on a flagstone and he looked up to see Ursula Cawlish enter the crypts. She was fully dressed, was also holding a lantern and was not looking at him at all. Although there were two spots of red on her cheeks. “Why did you want to meet me here?” Her voice was rough, as if she was suppressing some very strong emotions.
“You were trying to get here. Or something was trying to guide you here,” he replied. “Something old, something that didn’t know that the staircase was gone.”
She went white. “You think that something possessed me?”
He shrugged. “Perhaps. Possession might be too strong a word. I don’t know. Does anyone, in these odd times, as the echoes of the Call go out?”
She looked at him oddly. “That was eloquent.”
This time he just smiled and then looked about the crypts again. “There’s something here. Something we’ve missed. But what?”
And that sparked a hunt. They both walked through the crypts, from one end to the other and then back again, looking, peering, poking, wondering. But there was nothing there, nothing obvious that is. Frustrated and annoyed he looked down the serried ranks of tombs of past Cawlishs and thought furiously.
“There’s nothing here,” Ursula growled, “But there has to be something. What was driving me here?”
He tapped a finger on the nearest tomb – and then that nagging feeling at the back of his head finally slapped him around his chops. “Wait… come with me.” And with that he strode off to the older tombs and the one with the dust and cobwebs – and the shield that was covered by those things. “This is it. It must be.”
Obviously confused she stared at him and then at the shield. “It’s an old shield. An archaic one.”
“Look at the sword.”
“What sword? This rusty smear?”
“Aye.” He looked at her. “Don’t you see it?”
“See what?”
“The sword has rusted to nothing. Why hasn’t the shield done the same? Look how old it is. No-one’s borne a shield like that since the days of the First Men! But it’s somehow survived? How?”
And now she realised what he was talking about. She gave the shield a startled look. “What – you think that this is the shield that the Tullys are looking for?”
“It’s on the tomb of a Cawlish who bore the blood of the Mudds. The Mudd kings! This has to be it.”
Obviously uncertain she looked from him to the shield, to him and then back to the shield. “Are you sure?”
“I think I am.” He waved a hand at it. “Pick it up. It’s not mine – it’s yours.”
“Mine?” The look she sent his way was both baffled and made his blood boil.
“The blood of the Mudds is within you. Not me. Take it Ursula Cawlish.”
There was a long moment of silence – and then, with trembling hands, she reached out and picked the shield up, brushing off the dust and cobwebs that slid off in a noiseless cascade from the curved surface. “I don’t believe it,” she said after a stunned moment. “The straps are as supple as the day it was made.” And with that she slid her hand into those straps.
The surface of the shield seemed to brighten and then, just for a moment, brightened almost as to rival the Sun. He lifted his hands to block out the light, and then when he lowered his hands he paused. Red fire seemed to burn in the eyes of Ursula Cawlish, just for a moment. She looked at him. “What?”
“I think we need to send a raven to the Tullys.”
She nodded choppily. And then she looked at him – before suddenly rushing towards him. Before he knew it she was in his arms and her lips were on his.
And all was suddenly very right with the world.
Chapter Text
Sorry for the delay on this. It's been a rather mad few months, from a combination of my great new job and the coronavirus lockdown. I was supposed to be in New York this week and then go on a cruise from Southampton to Gibraltar for a week with my family. Neither happened.
Stay safe everyone, be kind to each other and remember that this will all pass one day.
Barristan
The walls of Winterfell were tall and strong and for some reason there were those runes on them. Once you knew what to look for you could spot them easily. He stared at the walls and at the stone and at the runes and then he cursed himself for being a coward and a fool.
He stole a look at the Godswood of Winterfell. Strange things were happening here, fey powers beyond his ken were being employed. Things were happening that had not been seen or heard of for many centuries, and he had to admit that he was shaken deeply by everything.
And now here he was, standing here by the Godswood, cursing himself again for being a coward and a fool. He put a hand on the pommel of his sword, stared at the walls again, noted yet another rune on a stone, and then stared at his feet for a long moment. When he looked up again he could see that Robb Stark was walking towards him from the Godswood.
“Ser Barristan,” the red-headed boy said with a respectful nod. “A good day to you.”
“And to you Lord Robb.”
“The Green Man would like you to join him in the Godswood.”
He started slightly. How had the Green Man known he was out here? Had he been looking out via the trees? What kind of powers did the man have?
Something of what he was thinking must have shown on his face, because Robb Stark smiled slightly. “I caught sight of you when I went into the Godswood to pray and mentioned to him that I had seen you.”
Ah. He ran a hand over his chin and chuckled lightly. “My thanks lord Robb.” And then he set his jaw a little and strode firmly into the Godswood. He’d been in it before of course, but there was something about this place that still made him just a bit uneasy. It was old. Old in a way that made him aware just how young places like King Landing were.
He found the Green Man sitting on a log and looking at the Heart Tree and that eerie face that someone – or something – had carved into it so long ago. As he came to a halt he sighed a little and then peered at the man who had once been Ser Duncan the Tall. The older man was lost in thought, his eyes almost half-closed.
After a long moment in which Barristan considered clearing his throat to announce his arrival, the Green Man seemed to return from wherever he had been and looked up at him. “Barristan.”
He opened his mouth to reply – and then he closed it again as his mind swooped like a drunken swallow. “I do not know what to call you,” he blurted out eventually. “I always knew you as Ser Duncan, but are you an anointed knight now? What are you? A knight? A priest? A conduit for the Old Gods?”
The old man nodded and then chuckled a little. “I did wonder why you were fluttering around so much, trying to talk to me and then shying away. I suppose that in a way I am all three. I am just the leader of the Green Men, Barristan. I serve the Old Gods, but I am still me, Barristan.”
He nodded choppily and then sighed a little. “What you have gone through…”
“Changed me in ways that I cannot even try to explain. But more of that at a different time perhaps. You have not been trying to talk to me for days now just because you do not know what I am. What do you really want to talk to me about?”
Barristan nodded after a long moment and then looked about for somewhere to sit down, before sitting carefully down on a tussock, his sword held out behind him. He stared at the grass beneath his feet for a long moment, seeing the lush greenery there and the little red-leafed saplings.
“I have been charged by His Grace the King with a single task. To make the Kingsguard…” He wanted to say ‘what it was’, but he had a feeling that those words were wrong. “To make the Kingsguard more effective.” The words still felt wrong.
The Green Man sat there for a long moment and then he ran a hand over his face. “You wish to remake the Kingsguard into what it was when you first joined it?”
He thought about the old Kingsguard, in the days of Aerys – and he found that suddenly he had no words. “I… I do not know. I must remake it somehow and I do not know how. I remember the old days, but… those days were not perhaps what I thought that they were.” He hung his head in defeat.
The Green Man stood suddenly and laid a hand on his shoulder. “I understand. The original goal for the Kingsguard was that it would be a sworn band of brothers, a group of the finest swordsmen in all of Westeros.” The hand tightened for a moment. “That goal was a noble one. And it died almost from the first days of the Kingsguard. The corruption was there, right from the start.
“Too many nobles realised that a place on the Kingsguard for a brother or a son was a wonderful way to try and influence the King. Not overtly, or directly, but it was always there. And then there were the other ways to corrupt the men themselves. Gold. Power. Other influences. Oh, Criston Cole was always the exception – that man’s armour should have been black from corruption – but you and I both know that the Kingsguard was corrupt. It was in my day, even if there were those who did their best to try and hide it. I became the Lord Commander to help my King, who was also my friend. I thought that Gerold Hightower was worthy. I was wrong, as Lyanna Stark found out. Yes, I know what happened. They all betrayed their oaths.”
Barristan nodded, despair in his heart. “Then my task is impossible.”
“I did not say that. Recognise the problem for what it is. Change the Kingsguard. You have an opportunity that I did not. Members of the Kingsguard were appointed by a queen who betrayed her husband right from the start of their marriage. Change is now inevitable. Dismiss the unworthy and seek out and find others that are worthy. And if someone wants to join the Kingsguard look askance at them and wonder why. Choose the talented but genuinely reluctant. Does the Kingsguard have to be for life? What about a year? Two years? Five years? You can change things.”
He thought about what the Green Man had said for a long moment and then he nodded slowly. The despair faded a little and a small amount of hope kindled in his heart. “You… you might be right. I will think on it. Think carefully.” He sighed and then shook his head. “I cannot imagine doing what those three fools did on the orders of Rhaegar Targaryen. Cruel madness.”
The Green Man walked back to his log and sat down on it. “Arthur Dayne regretted it. Of the three, he was the one who most knew that it was beyond wrong.”
He thought of Arthur, his old friend. The man had been deadly with that blade of his, but always ready with a smile and a quip. “Arthur… Truth be told I always wondered about how he was defeated. Lord Stark is a mighty warrior, but Ser Arthur Dayne, with Dawn in his hand, was a bladesman like no other.”
“The blade… I will not say betrayed him. T’was the other way around. It rejected him as unworthy. No longer the Sword of the Morning. I can show you if you like.”
He peered at the older man in some confusion. “I don’t understand.”
The Green Man stood again, walked over to the Heart Tree and laid one hand on it, before extending the other at him. “Take my hand.”
He swallowed. And then he stood and grasped the scarred hand that was proffered in his direction.
Darkness fell and he fell with it. Down he fell, and he had no idea how far or for how long. But then suddenly there was ground beneath his feet again and then light about him.
The ground was burnt red by the Sun, which was going down in the West. There were mountains and hills all around – where was he? It had to be Dorne, or the border between the Stormlands and Dorne. He looked about wildly. The Green Man was standing to one side, looking up at a half-ruined tower that was nearby. It had a door on it and there was a man sitting on a rock not far from it.
“The Tower of Joy,” the Green Man said with utter contempt in his voice. “Or so Rhaegar Targaryen named it after he lost both his honour and his wits. Let us see who guards it.” And with that he strode off towards the guard. After a long moment Barristan joined him, noting with interest that their feet did not disturb the red earth.
“Are we really here? They cannot see us?”
“They cannot. Few can. Sometimes those who are touched by the Old Gods, or other powers, can sense our presence when we look into the past, but not enough to see us.”
As they drew near the man on the rock his feet faltered a little. Arthur. It was Arthur Dayne. Dawn was at his hip but he did not touch it. His white cloak was smeared with red from the earth, his armour was unpolished in places and there was a look of utter despair on his face.
“What is wrong with him?” Barristan asked eventually, but he knew what the answer would be.
“He knows he is no longer a knight,” the Green Man responded, confirming his suspicions. “He knows that he is damned.”
He sighed and then nodded as he looked at his long-dead friend. And then he looked up as the door in the tower opened and a familiar figure passed through it. Oswell Whent. He too looked a little shabby, but the look on his face was merely tiredness and resignation.
“Arthur, there’s food inside,” Whent muttered. “Stew.”
“I’m not hungry,” Arthur replied tiredly.
“You have to eat.”
“Why?”
Whent shook his head in exasperation. “If you do not eat then you will die!”
“That would be a mercy.”
Feet scuffed on a lintel and as Barristan looked up Gerold Hightower loomed into view. The White Bull looked as the other two did, tired and a little dirty, but there was a look on his face that Barristan recognised. That look of thundering rectitude that only Gerold Hightower could get away with. “Ser Arthur, you must eat. And then we will spar. You must hone your skills.”
Arthur’s head drooped a bit as he closed his eyes for a moment. “No,” he said eventually. “I must not. I cannot. And I am no Ser. None of us are.”
Hightower stared at him and then set his chin a little. “More of this foolishness?”
“That and more. We are not knights. Not after what we have done.”
“Arthur,” Whent said with reluctant misery in his voice, “Enough. We-”
“We did what was ordered by our Prince,” Hightower said in a voice like iron. “It is not our place to judge him.”
His words earned him a disgusted laugh from Arthur. “Really? You choose to use those words yet again? Do you remember the words of our oaths as knights, Gerold? We were charged to protect the innocent. That girl up there was an innocent. Was. We failed to protect her from a rapist. There. I have said the unspoken word out loud, the word that we have not been able to say until now. Our Prince raped that girl. Forced a child on her. And now he is dead and we are damned. So – yes. I have judged him.”
Hightower’s face mottled with rage, but then he seemed to force himself to calm a little. “You know nothing of what-”
“Know nothing? We are no longer knights, gentlemen.” Arthur stilled. “Not any more.” He flexed his right hand. “I cannot spar with you anymore. I dare not.” He looked down at his hand and then pulled off his gauntlet. “I cannot.” And then he held up his hand and the long red burn mark across his palm. The other two Kingsguards stared at it, as did Barristan.
“Ser Arthur, what have you done to your hand?” Hightower barked, visibly shocked.
“Me? Nothing.” Arthur held his hand out. “That was from Dawn. The sword… the sword is rejecting me. It knows that I am no longer the Sword of the Morning.” He hung his head for a long moment, before pulling his hand down.
Whent and Hightower stared at him and then at each other. “Arthur,” Whent said, confused, “Swords cannot reject their wielders. They are just objects.”
“Dawn is not.” Arthur ran a shaking hand over his face. “You do not understand. And I cannot explain. The blade is old. Older than anything you can imagine. And it is not… not normal. It was made by the First Men in the days of the Long Winter. And that is all I can say. You would not understand anyway. Dawn is rejecting me. Bearing it is painful. Holding it is even more painful. Should Ned Stark come here after his sister then you two must face him. I cannot. If I harm him then Dawn will… that will be the final straw for it.”
“Dayne,” Hightower said, pulling a face of strained fury. “Cease your prattle and make sense again. And do not think to give your Lord Commander orders!”
“I have no choice! And do you really think that we are still Kingsguard? We are lost! We are damned! We are walking dead men.” He looked down at the sword and smiled bitterly. “Wights in all but name.” And then he closed his eyes tightly.
“Dayne,” Hightower roared. “We are Kingsguard! We guard the babe! He is our king!”
“The babe is a bastard! And the girl is dying! We have failed her!”
“The girl has played her part!”
And with that Dayne stood quickly, his hand on the hilt of Dawn, a snarl on his face. After a moment he pulled his hand away and then looked down at it again, before holding it out again. The red line was longer, redder and angrier. “You never were a very good knight, Hightower,” Arthur said, before looking over at the track. “And now our time is at an end. They come.”
Barristan stared in the same direction. Red dust was billowing up in the distance. Riders were coming. Hightower went pale but then set his jaw. “Sers, we must protect our King.”
“No,” Arthur said with an infinite weariness in his voice. “It’s time for us to die. Ned Stark will lead them. It’s time for us to pay for our sins.” He put his gantlet back on.
“Dayne-” Hightower grunted through gritted teeth.
But Arthur Dayne just shook his head at them both. “I will fight. But we are all going to die.” And then, just for a heartbeat he looked right into Barristan’s eyes and winced just a little.
Barristan stared at the three men, Hightower pale with fury, Arthur slumped in resignation and Whent torn between the two – and he knew that Arthur was right. Lord Eddard Stark was riding towards them, his face pale with fury, men with hard faces at his back.
The Green Man looked at them all with sadness in his eyes. “And of them all only two will survive. Lords Stark and Reed. We must leave this place and the ghosts of the dead.”
And then, with a shocking suddenness they were back in the Godswood. He all but reeled around as he stared at the trees. “What… did Arthur see me?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. He might have seen us as a shadow, a distant shape. Or perhaps he saw me and knew that the Old Gods were touching him in that moment, one last time.”
“Arthur was a follower of the Seven though!”
“For the Daynes the matter of the Gods has always been… complicated. Because of Dawn. During the fight at the Tower of Joy it came down to Arthur Dayne and Ned Stark. Dayne’s hand was a mass of burns by that point. The moment he wounded Lord Stark the sword was finished with him.” He gestured at the pool and for a moment the image of a white-faced Arthur Dayne appeared in it, sinking to his knees, clutching at his right hand, which seemed to be smoking, whilst Ned Stark pulled his sword up and around for what would obviously be the death blow. And then it was gone.
Barristan sat down again, shaking more than a bit. Yes, the Kingsguard needed to change indeed.
Jon Arryn
He was coming to the conclusion that Stannis Baratheon had uncovered a gem in Ser Davos Seaworth. A rough-cut gem, who was far too humble given his undoubted talents, but a gem.
Right now that gem was standing in front of him, next to a red-faced Lord Harys Moxton and his exceptionally ugly son and heir Boros. Seaworth was stony-faced and the Moxtons were squirming with a combination of fear and fury.
“Very well then,” Jon said dryly. “Lord Moxton, it would seem that we have something of a situation here. When you and your son arrived back here in King’s Landing from your rather lengthy business trip to Essos, the exact details of which seem to be rather murky, your son decided to, erm, shall we say purchase some affection. He seems to have lacked sufficient coin, for reasons that also seem to be murky, there was what I shall describe as a fracas, you arrived at the same time as the City Watch and you then decided that you would try and make the whole thing go away by bribing the guards.”
He sighed a little and then continued. “When the guards said no, you announced that you wanted to talk to the Commander of the Goldcloaks, one Janos Slynt. When told that Slynt had been dead for many months now, you lost your temper, berated the guards for fools, demanded to see Slynt at once and refused to co-operate. When Ser Davos Seaworth here happened on the scene and announced that he now commands the City Watch, you told him that he was a liar and a fool and then you tried to bribe him as well with a snarl and a further insult. Whereupon you were placed under arrest, you and your fool of a boy. Is that an accurate summary?”
Moxton came very close to snarling something in reply, before choking it back and then nodded choppily. “Lord Arryn, I am sure that this is all a misunderstanding, caused by my long absence from the capital on urgent business, along with my son’s foolishness.”
“Your trying to bribe the head of the City Watch is just a ‘misunderstanding’?”
Moxton actually curled his lip for a moment. “Ser Davos is not nobly born and he might have misunderstood me and-”
This was a mistake. Jon leant forwards, his eyes blazing with fury and the Moxtons both went pale and stepped back.
“Ser Davos Seaworth may be low-born, as you say, but he has been an exemplary commander of the City Watch and is a vast improvement on his predecessor! And you will not sneer at him!”
The Moxtons directed almost identical looks of baffled terror at him – and it was then that Quill slipped into the room, looking grimly pleased with himself. As he approached him he passed over a small journal marked with a red ribbon. Jon took it with a frown and then opened the book to the page indicated. It was one of Baelish’s books and – ah.
Jon looked up and directed a look of very real loathing at the Moxtons, who looked highly uneasy. “Lord Moxton, where in Essos did you travel to?”
The man’s eyes darted all over the room, but not in Jon’s direction. “Volantis, Lord Arryn.” The lie was very near to being a blatant one.
“Lord Moxton, I have here in my hand a book that was formerly the property of the late and entirely unlamented Petr Baelish.”
At the very mention of Baelish Lord Moxton went pale and stiffened, his right hand going for a moment to where his sword hilt should have been.
“It seems,” Jon said stonily, “That you had a poor choice of friends. Your business dealings with Baelish are laid out in this book. Names, dates, amounts. And your links to Slaver’s Bay. That’s where you have been, isn’t it?”
The elder Moxton paused and then shook his head, whilst the younger man shot his father a look of pure terror. Jon looked at them darkly and then exchanged a glance with Seaworth, who nodded slightly and then made a small gesture with one hand that made some of his Goldcloaks step surreptitiously closer.
“Quill?”
“My Lord?”
“Lord Moxton and his son are to be detained at once. In the Black Cells.”
Both Moxtons were seized at once in what looked like a grip of iron by the Goldcloaks, before being marched off. Jon beckoned Ser Davos over. “Separate cells if you please Ser Davos. I sense that the son will tell all before his father does.”
Seaworth nodded shortly, a small smile on his face, and then he strode off, barking orders as he went. Jon watched him go and then sighed. Damn it. Would they never get to the end of Baelish’s corruption? He stood tiredly, dismissed the people around him and walked off down the corridor to one side, Quill an ever-attentive presence at his right hand and his guards from the Vale behind him.
When he emerged into the courtyard at the far end of the corridor he found Oberyn Martell practicing with his spear there against a straw target that had armour placed onto it. The man had a great deal of skill, the spear flashing in the sunlight, but he did have to wonder just what was on the edge of that blade. The Red Viper of Dorne was rumoured to use poison, which seemed a bit much. He just wiped the edge of his blade against rotted meat once in a while, as his father had taught him. Which, in turn, made him think of Lysa and his mood darkened for a long moment.
“Most skilful, Prince Oberyn,” he said after a particularly extravagant flourish of the spear. “You are very skilled with that.”
“Meh, there’s always more to learn,” the Dornishman panted as he finished by jamming the spear in the face of the target. “You are well on this fine day?”
“Yes and no. Yes it is indeed a fine day. But no, I do not like it when Lords are fools and have dealings with slavers.”
Oberyn Martell laughed shortly. “Who is it?”
“Moxton.”
“Lord Moxton… Crownlander lord, not as clever as he thinks he is, has a truly stupid and ugly son and heir, goes to Meereen a lot. I wonder why?”
“He had links to Baelish.”
Martell pulled a face. “Ah, Baelish. The arrogant fool whose appropriated holdings have been most profitable. He seems to have gotten very complacent at the end.”
Jon nodded. And then he pulled out the letter that had arrived in the morning from the North, via a fast ship from White Harbour. “In your time in Essos, did you have any dealings with the Company of the Rose?”
The Dornishman raised an eyebrow. “A little. They were the most boring and conservative of the sellsword companies. They never did anything that was too risky, too violent. I always thought that they were, well, a group of Northern exiles who were caught between Westeros and Essos. Both and neither. Of course I have heard rumours now that they seem to have been waiting for something – something like this Call.”
He held the letter out. “From Lord Stark. He explains much about the Company of the Rose and their links to the Starks.”
Oberyn Martell took the letter with a frown and then started to read it at the proffered page. After a long moment of what looked like very rapid reading, based on the movement of his eyes, he stiffened a little and then seemed to re-read certain parts, before turning to the next page. After a long moment he sank onto the nearest bench. “Torrhen Stark seems to have been a man with a very long-term plan,” he said eventually. “A man who wanted the very best for the North.” He looked down at the letter again. “I always wondered about what made him bend the knee the way that he did. It seemed… not Northern. Although now I am wondering what ‘Northern’ truly is. The blood of the First Men seems to sing a great deal.”
Jon nodded. “The next page should interest you.”
The Dornishman looked at him quizzically and then turned the page and read. When he looked up there was an odd look on his face. “The Isle of Faces. Aye, for his ancestor to have gone there… that does explain a great deal. A peculiar place. Three times I have tried to go there and three times I have been… diverted. I will not say prevented, but certainly distracted away from the place. I wonder why now.”
“The Green Men are said to be abroad again.”
“I wish that I could talk to one.”
Jon nodded. “Me as well.” He shook his head. “Well, now. The nobility of the North has grown – thanks to the foresight of the last King in the North. I cannot believe that I have said those last words. The Call. So much has changed because of it. I never thought that the Game of Thrones could be… well, suspended in this way, or most certainly changed beyond all recognition.”
“I will be leaving for the North myself soon,” Oberyn said with an upraised eyebrow. “Heading for Winterfell. I have a source of my own in the North and I am hoping that I receive a report from that source soon.” A troubled look crossed his face. “I hope to meet that source as well. Dorne will need to mobilise to a plan.”
There was a long moment of troubled silence and then Jon sighed. “Aye. The Vale too. The King will be sending more orders soon. Instructions for the harvest, instructions for mobilisation. A plan to defend the Wall.”
“The Wall.” Oberyn Martell shivered a little. “A wall of ice in the far North. It chills my blood just to think of it. Sending any Dornishman there will take some planning in terms of clothing.”
He laughed softly for a moment, before pausing when he saw Quill approaching. “Ah, Quill. Are the Moxton’s secure in their new quarters?”
“They are my Lord. But I am here for another reason. There is a man here who wants access to the Red Keep’s Godswood.”
He stared at Quill. “The Godswood? Who wants access to that?”
Quill looked uneasy for a moment, as if he was not sure that he was going to be believed. “He says he is from the Isle of Faces my Lord. And his attire… I think he is a Green Man.”
Oberyn Martell stood suddenly, before looking about. “I wish that I had a million dragons in coins!” He looked about again, stared at the sky and then shrugged. “Well, it was worth a try.” And then he looked at Jon. “Shall we meet this man?”
They walked up to the Godswood together, Oberyn Martell with a look on his face that spoke of excitement. As they approached the entrance a tall man dressed in dark green clothes and a green cloak with an oddly-shaped hood behind him stood up from the bench by the entrance. He had a grave expression on his face and as they approached he bowed in an oddly archaic way, one hand over his heart and the other extended. “My Lords,” he rumbled in a deep voice. “I am Callan, son of Allyn, of the Isle of Faces. And I beg admittance to this Godswood to tend to it and the weirwood Heart Tree.”
Jon frowned a little. “The Heart Tree is just an oak tree. No weirwood tree exists in the Godswood, none have ever grown there.”
The Green Man nodded in acknowledgement of his words – and then he stole a look at the main body of the Red Keep that for some reason made the hairs on the back of Jon’s neck stand on end. After a moment he smiled slightly and then reached down and pulled out something that had been carefully wrapped in a bag, with something red poking out of the top of it. He then unwrapped the lower part – to reveal a weirwood sapling. “This one will thrive here, you have my word on it.”
Somewhat bewildered Jon paused – and then nodded. “Very well, Callan, son of Allyn. Enter.”
The Green Man nodded back before pulling up his hood to reveal a pair of horns and it was at that moment that the hairs on the back of his neck behaved in such a way that he shivered with… what? Fear? Dread? Anticipation? What? He followed the green-clad man into the Godswood and then watched as he looked about the place, sniffed the air, pulled up a small amount of grass and inspected it carefully and then pulled out a small spade and dug an equally small hole in the ground, into which he almost reverently pressed the base of the weirwood sapling.
“It will do well here,” the Green Man said with an odd note of satisfaction that seemed to reverberate a little in the grove. “It will thrive.”
“You are sure of that?” Oberyn Martell asked, an odd, almost assessing, look on his face.
The Green Man stood and placed a hand on the leaves as if to reassure them. “Oh,” he said with a slight smile, “I am certain of that.” And when he removed his hand the tree seemed to have surged upwards at least a foot in height. “Most certain.”
Ned
Riding South was… difficult at first. He missed Cat and the children of course, he was horribly aware of the fact that he was riding away from running the North in the middle of one of the greatest crises in its history, certainly since the last Long Night, but there was something else. He felt as if he was needed at the Wall, but he was riding away from it.
Was it the Fist of Winter? Was it some aspect of being the Stark in Winterfell? Was it Winterfell itself? He was still frustrated by the lack of information that was out there, by all the unanswered questions that he had. If only Father had been able to talk him through the family history. If only Father had lived. Or Brandon. And if only the other half of that book had survived, the old half-burnt one. Torgen Surestone and what he had known had been on his mind much of late and he had talked to Dacey about what might be in the library, or the solar, of Surestone. Was there a hidden room there as well, as there had been in Winterfell and the Dreadfort?
But then, as he rode South, something else started to tickle down his backbone, the feeling that he was going in the right direction, that he was needed somewhere to the South. It was a strange, confusing, feeling, something that was right there at the edge of his senses.
At least he was going South in company. There had been some discussion about how Stannis Baratheon and the others were going to get to Harlaw. There were two options. One was to go to Torrhen’s Square and then use the ships there to do down the river and then out to the Iron Island. The problem with that was the majority of ships there right now belonged to Tywin Lannister and in the words of Asha Greyjoy “Westerlanders are a bunch of useless fucking lubbers who can’t build decent ships to save their lives”. Stannis had pointed out that those self-same Westerlanders had been amongst those who had taken Pyke, which had earned him a glower from the Greyjoy girl.
The second option was to get a ship from Barrowton. It was a shorter trip downriver, it gave Ned more time with Stannis to discuss what needed to be done and to make decisions. Ravens flew ahead, riders came from behind, and the Hand of the King and the Lord of the North were kept up to date with what was going on.
They stayed at Castle Cerwyn the first night after a hard ride South. Old Medger Cerwyn had greeted them with all due respect and then quietly explained that he had been there when ‘that old rascal Tywin Lannister’ had seen his first wight’s head. Ned had smiled a little and shaken his head at the tale, before listening to Lord Cerwyn’s careful briefing on what House Cerwyn was doing to answer the Call.
The day after that they had continued South, with Frostfyre at his side from wherever in the woods she had been the previous night. Judging by his dreams, which had been about a chase involving a deer, he knew that she had been hunting and he had the persistent feeling of sated hunger at the other end of his senses.
Gods, life could be most odd at times.
South they rode, not as hard as the ride South from Castle Black, but hard enough. The Ironborn contingent were… not complaining, they dare not show weakness in the face of so many men of the North, but they were trying to pretend that they weren’t saddle-sore and were surreptitiously asking about some of the liniment that Dacey had made for the party.
He was proud of the way that Jon and Theon were holding themselves in their saddles. Theon was not rubbing his skill at riding in the nose of his sister and her men, whilst Jon was behaving like the Stark he was now, organising, encouraging, leading. Lyanna would have been so proud of him.
South they rode and as they went he could see with his own eyes how the North was preparing for the coming war. Fields of oats and barley being harvested as men and women stared at the ground of the fields currently covered in sheep or cattle dung and talked of ploughing and sowing on there next, to let the soil recover on the other fields. Northmen were not idiots when it came to farming. The idiots had starved to death in previous centuries after not making the most of their fields.
And then there was the other thing, which made him feel that odd combination of bewilderment and pride at the foresight of his distant ancestor. On three occasions he laid eyes on what had once been slowly crumbling ruins, the remains of castles and strongpoints that had been abandoned decades or centuries ago – but which were now being rebuilt, repaired, made strong again. The Company of the Rose had strengthened the North in so very many ways. Lords of all kinds were spending hoarded coin – and it was starting to show, in the hustle and bustle along the roads.
Day after day, night after night, staying at castles and holdfasts and at inns. They passed the road to Torrhen’s Square then kept riding South, dealing with ravens and riders all the time.
And they spent one night at Castle Coffeen. A small house, minor lordlings, but old Domeric Coffeen had been a friend of his father and had sent him not a few letters with words of wisdom over the years.
Bran Coffeen had been the man at the main courtyard to offer bread and salt however, the oldest son of Domeric. The large red-headed man had seen Ned’s flickered eyebrow and grinned at him afterwards as everyone was dismounting. “Father’s alright Ned. He just strained his leg after riding too much and running around like an old fool. He’s in his solar, complaining about the Maester’s instructions. He’d like you to meet him there.”
Sure enough an extremely grumpy and impatient Domeric Coffeen had been waiting in his solar, a crutch by his chair and a certain look in his eye. “Lord Stark,” he said with a seated bow. “Your pardon, but I am incapacitated and cannot greet you properly.”
“’Tis no matter Lord Coffeen,” Ned answered with a smile that turned a little sly. “Bran said you’d been running around like an old fool.”
The older man turned a little pink. “Aye.”
“What was her name?”
The older man turned a little pinker. “Erm, Alysanne.”
He pretended to think about this, not that the other man bought that for a heartbeat. “The same Alysanne as before, the widow of that merchant?”
“Oh, stop that Ned. Yes.”
“You should marry her.”
“At my age?”
He stopped for a moment and then just looked at the old fool. “A chance at being happy is better than no chance at all.”
The old man grumbled and shifted in his chair a bit, but he could tell that he’d planted a seed in his mind. “Word on the road is that you’re off South to Barrowton.”
He sighed. “Aye. Just between the two of us, there’s trouble there.”
“I know,” Lord Coffeen said almost sharply. “Word’s spreading. Fog on the barrows there. Some say it’s the spirits of the dead, awoken by the Call. Some say it’s ghosts of the original First Men, calling for vengeance against the Andals. Whatever the truth of it, Ned, it’s trouble. And Barbrey bloody Dustin is losing control of the situation, or that’s what the latest word is. She’s not listening to anyone, especially the Dustins that came from Essos. But then she always was a proud idiot.”
Damn it. He’d sent the Dustins South ahead of them days ago in the hope that they could bring back intelligence on just what was wrong, but it looked like Barbrey was being her usual stubborn self. He’d had a nagging feeling that something was wrong for a day or two now, a strange scratch behind his eyeballs that had been growing with every mile South that they rode and he’d wondered why the Dustins had sent no word back. “How much trouble?”
“Enough that I was on the point of sending a raven to you when word came that you were passing my way anyway. The fog’s not natural, Ned. And there’s smallfolk around there that are starting to panic a bit. Here – have some ale. You look peaky.”
He was entitled to look bloody peaky and he sighed as he quaffed his ale and then brooded a little in companionable silence.
He had a bad feeling about this.
Robert
He really couldn’t put it off any longer. He was leaving for the Wall in the morning – they should have left that morning, but some ravens had come in from Kings Landing about such a wide range of things that he’d put their departure off a day. They’d leave in the morning, at dawn.
In the meantime he was drifting about Winterfell, scowling at things and wondering how far South Ned had gotten so far. His old friend rode bloody hard. He’d done his exercises – he’d need to find a log or ten on the road to the Wall, as it wouldn’t make sense to burden the supply horses with the one he’d been using – and he’d approved the latest game pie that the cooks had brought him. The head cook, a large woman who baked amazing pies, had announced that she was going to call it ‘The Stag King’s Triple Game Pie’ (as it used venison, boar and rabbit) after him. It was delicious and he’d ordered three of them for the road.
He'd have to add an orbit or two of whatever exercise yard he was in on the road to burn the pies off.
He was bloody woolgathering again, but then he was saved from further procrastination by the sight of three small forms running towards the crypts yet again. He sighed and then quickened his stride. “Edric!”
The Terrible Threesome skidded to a halt, collectively visibly considered if they should make a bolt for it in the other direction and then caught sight of Ser Preston Greenfield (who was smothering a grin) and subsided to a sullen slouch. It was fascinating to see how close those three were. And it made him smile sadly when he remembered his early years in the Vale. But then he caught himself and smiled at them.
“Right then – where are you three off to in such a hurry?”
The Terrible Threesome directed what they probably thought was entirely surreptitious sidelooks at each other, but which were blatantly obvious to him. He answered for them: “The Crypts – to look for Vermax’s eggs?”
The three boys froze in place, their eyes very wide and he dared not look at Greenfield, who he suspected was really fighting that grin. He rubbed his chin and then went down onto one knee so that he was level with them.
“Lads – how big were the dragons?”
Edric and the others stared at him and then they all stood on tip-toe and threw their arms up as far as they could reach. He raised his eyebrows for a moment and tried to ignore Greenfield who had a sudden coughing fit that sounded awfully like suppressed laughter.
“They were a bit bigger than that, lads. A lot bigger in fact. The dragon skulls that are in the lower levels of the Red Keep, well, some of the skulls alone are big enough for a man my size to walk through. Now, tell me. Could something that big get into the Crypts through a door that size?”
There was a long moment of silence – and then the three boys visibly sagged with disappointment. He sighed a little. “But that doesn’t mean that Vermax didn’t lay eggs somewhere else. Perhaps you could consult the histories? With Maester Luwin’s help of course.”
The Terrible Threesome perked up a little but then seemed to be caught between cautious excitement about a new Vermax theory and vague horror at studying. As they nodded slowly he smiled. “Now – I need Edric to come with me for a bit. I need to talk to him and his half-brother and sister.”
The other two nodded and briskly trudged off, leaving a rather puzzled Edric. “Now – you’re not in any trouble. But we need to talk to Mya and Gendry.”
Mya was (of course) with the horses and she followed them to the forge where (of course) Gendry was working. Or rather not working, just sitting and staring at two pieces of armour, once with a glowing rune on it and the other without.
“The same rune, inscribed the same way, same dimensions, but one glows and the other doesn’t. Why?” Gendry was staring hard and so engrossed that he didn’t know that they were there until he cleared his throat, making Gendry look up, startled. “Your Grace – I mean Father – I mean Your Grace…”
Gods the lad looked rattled again. He raised a hand and then gestured at the others to sit down. And it was at that point that his nerve, or at least his voice, failed him. He paced about the forge for a long moment, glaring at various things. His three children – the true children – sat there and stared at him with some bewilderment. He looked at them – at their black hair and blue eyes – and then he steeled himself and sat down opposite them.
“Right. I leave for the Wall tomorrow. I wanted to have this conversation with you all this morning, but too much had to be done and I… had to put it off.” They were still staring at him and he sighed. “Right. I am off to the Wall, as I said. And there is… there is something that I need to tell you all. Ravens flew this morning, ravens to King’s Landing. You are all legitimised now.”
There was a moment of utter silence – and then the three exchanged baffled looks with each other, although it was Edric who started to look the most stunned.
“Father,” Edric muttered, staring at him. “Are you saying that… we are… are…”
He nodded. “You are all Baratheons. I have decreed it. None of you are now bastards, you are all my children. But-” He held up a finger. “The issue of who is to be my heir is not something that concerns you. For the time being at least my heir is your uncle Stannis.” He looked at them all and then sighed.
“Life can be brutal at times and I might not come back from the Wall. This might be the last time we all meet. And then again it might not. But I had to tell you all that as of this moment – well, as of this morning – you are all Baratheons. House Baratheon needs you. The Gods alone know how small it is at the moment. But at the very least – it now has you lot.”
There was a long moment of utter silence – and then Mya, with tears in her eyes, stood and then ran into his arms. Edric followed her, whilst Gendry stood, looked deeply uncertain and then finally took his proffered hand, with a look of stunned bewilderment.
He smiled. Family. Family was all.
Sandor
He sat there in Great Hall and stared into his mug of ale. As all the Gods were his witness, he had absolutely no idea what to do with his life next. Not the faintest fucking clue. His face was healed. For the first time since he had been a child he wasn’t in constant pain. He could eat and drink without needing to tilt his head to one side to stop things dribbling out of the hole in his cheek.
He was whole again. Because of Gods that he had never really believed in, not truly. But now a man out of legend had healed him. And if he hadn’t really known what to do with his life much before, after the little shits’ disgrace, he really didn’t know now.
All his adult life he’d wanted to take his vengeance on the Monster, the walking thing that was supposed to be his brother. And now? Oh, his hate was still there, it would never leave him, it was a part of him. But he had the oddest feeling that… well, somehow he couldn’t put his finger on it. It was like he was on a knife edge of… something he had no fucking words for.
Tywin fucking Lannister had asked him again if he was willing to go to the Wall and protect his grandson. Well, his double grandson, which had to be eating up the old bastard inside. He’d told him no, that there was no way he was riding North to catch up with Mormont and the little shit.
Oh, he’d treasure the moment that he’d seen Joffrey bloody Hill, pale, gaunt even, a huddled figure in huge black furs, leave Winterfell and ride off North. The little shit had been a shadow of his normal arrogant self. Maybe Mormont would beat him into some kind of shape? Was that even possible? Did he care? No, he really did not.
But what was out there, North of the Wall? The wight heads spoke of something dark and terrible that made him shiver with something that felt… odd. Fear? Terror? What was it? He couldn’t put his finger on it.
He shuddered and then drained his mug of ale, before sighing and then wiping his mouth. What was he to do?
“Another?”
He looked up to see a serving girl standing there. Well – a serving woman. He’d seen her before, fluttering about like a pigeon about him, half scared and half attracted by him. Beth, her name was. Some might call her plain, but she had an arse like a peach and tits that caught his eye. But… his face had repulsed her.
Until now, it seemed, which provoked some odd feelings inside him. Resentment that it wasn’t until now that she seemed to like him? Well… perhaps he should get used to that. He smiled a little at her and watched her blush a little. “Another, please.”
The ale from the jug she was carrying gurgled into his mug – and then she looked to one side, went as pale as a ghost and scurried away from the table. He looked in the direction that she had been looking at and went so very still. His brother, the Monster himself, was standing there and staring at him.
He glared at the man, making it very clear that he wanted him to fuck off and die in some squalid part of the world somewhere. But the Monster did not take the hint. Instead he just stood there and stared at him, as if he had no idea what he was.
Beth returned quickly with the fresh ale, keeping well away from the Monster and handing the mug over quickly before all but fleeing again. Sandor kept glaring at the Monster and the Monster just stood there and stared at him. After a long moment he finally sat down on a wooden stool that protested with a wooden groan.
Sandor quaffed his ale and then checked that the nearest brazier was a long way off. He wouldn’t put it past his ‘brother’ if he tried to burn him again in order to make sense of the world again, or whatever passed for such thoughts in the huge man’s head.
There was something wrong with the Monster’s eyes. They were flickering about his face and odd little frowns kept coming and going. He looked as if he was trying to say something, but failing utterly.
“What,” Sandor growled at last, “Do you want? Say what you want to say and then fuck right off again. Yes, my face is healed. Yes, the Old Gods did it. They repaired what you fucking did to me. Now bugger off.”
But still the huge figure in front of him sat there, his eyes still flickering over his face. And eventually he finally said something. Just one word. “Dreams.”
“What?”
“Dreams.” The Monster said the word as if he was being dragged out of him. “Terrible dreams. And something… something’s not right. Voices…” His face worked slightly for a moment and then went still.
Sandor stared at him. The Monster was not acting as he normally did. And the eyes, there was something about the eyes that disturbed him, but he couldn’t put his finger in why. Eventually he shrugged. “Don’t eat cheese before you sleep.” He paused. “Now fuck off.” And then he quaffed his ale some more.
The Monster sat there and then stood suddenly, with an abruptness that made Sandor almost – almost – pause in his quaffing. He was ready for whatever shit the Monster was about to try.
But instead Gregor Clegane just stood there, a strange look on his face. And then, just before he turned and walked away, he said something in an odd, bone-dry almost old voice. “Something dark is coming.”
He eyed the retreating back of the Monster and despite himself shivered a little. There had been something about his voice that… again, he couldn’t put his finger on it. And then Beth came over with another ale and oh yes, there was something in the upturn of her lips and the swing of her hips that spoke volumes.
Samwell
Archmaester Ebrose was not a man who could ever look gaunt. However, as he read the report that Sam had written so very carefully after finishing his research and then sleeping for eight hours, there was a ghost of gauntness about his face.
The old Archmaester finished reading and put the report down, before staring bleakly across the table at some undefinable place on the wall over Sam’s head. “I talked to Perestan about your report. Marwyn too. Both endorsed it in the highest possible terms. You should be very proud of this, Lord Samwell. You really do have the making of a very fine Maester. I know, the very thought of that would make your father have an apoplexy, but my comment still stands.”
Sam nodded and smiled slightly for a moment, before the smile fled. Yes, he was proud of what he had written. The problem was that what he had written had terrified him. “Archmaester, we need to tell Lord Tyrell. It’s just that… what we have to tell him is, well, somewhat horrifying.”
“We have to tell Lords Tyrell and Hightower that there’s a dying god in the cellar of the Hightower itself, lad,” Ebrose sighed. “Come on, let’s get this done.”
They crossed to the Hightower on one of the Citadel’s boats, rowed by servants who looked nervously over their shoulders at the Hightower until the man at the tiller roared at them to keep their minds on the stroke and not clash their fucking oars like a mob of lubbers. He didn’t look at the Archmaester, he could almost sense the glower on the man’s face. The general population knew that there was something to worry about at the base of the Hightower. If they knew the truth… He shook himself slightly, unwilling to appear to be too apprehensive and then hoping that the men were not watching him. They were not – they were concentrating on their stroke, thanks to the furiously glowering man at the tiller.
As it happened Lord Tyrell was in his grandfather’s office at the very top of the Hightower and he was surprised that it was the Archmaester who was huffing and puffing more than he was when they got there. He had to admit that he was a little lighter on his feet than he had been before. It might have been all that dashing around in the Citadel and the fact that he’d been forgetting to eat every now and then.
When they were admitted they found Lord Tyrell sitting at the desk and Lord Hightower at the window, glowering at the horizon. There was a map on the desk, a map of the Reach.
“Lord Samwell, Archmaester Ebrose,” Lord Tyrell acknowledged them as they sat in front of him. “How can I help you?”
Archmaester Ebrose harrumphed a little, directed a beetling brow in his direction and then sighed. “Lord Samwell here has translated the runes around the gate.” The words were short and simple but they made Lord Tyrell sit up straight in his chair and Lord Hightower spin on his heel and stare straight at him, his eyebrows raised.
“How?” That one word was directed by Lord Tyrell at himself and he nodded at his liege lord.
“The runes were written by the Children of the Forest, my Lord. They built the gate, and the lowest course of the Hightower. Now, we did not know their language. But they were allied to the First Men and they taught the First Men how to write in runes. There are a number of places where they made agreements and alliances, or something similar, and wrote those agreements down in runes carved in rock in their separate languages, but with the same words. I translated the words the First Men used and compared them to the other carvings and, well, worked out the language of the Children of the Forest.”
There was a slight silence that was broken by the Archmaester. “My Lords, what Lord Samwell has done, very carefully and diligently but above all accurately, is an extraordinary piece of work that if he had been a Maester would have earned a great deal of acclaim. As it is, I have been asked by the other Archmaesters of the Citadel to give Lord Samwell this.” And with that he handed Sam a bronze ring, one that might have been a part of a Maester’s chain.
He flushed a little and then looked at the two Lords, who were still staring at him. “My Lords, the runes were very plain. The Drowned God is trying to get through the Gate.”
Lord Hightower turned as white as a sheet, whilst Lord Tyrell sighed heavily and leant back in his chair. “Then my father’s last words were the truth. Do the runes on the gate say why he’s there?”
Sam leant forward a little, after seeing the tired nod from the Archmaester. “Some of the terms used by the Children are… archaic, so the meaning is unclear in places, but the gist of it that the Drowned God was one of the Old Gods who was sent mad by the war against the power that made the Others. Which is itself worrying, as if something made the Others then that’s another thing beyond the Wall that the Call needs us to deal with.” Catching the meaning of the harrumph from the Archmaester and correctly translating it as meaning ‘get on with it’, he continued.
“Apparently the Old Gods worked through the Children of the Forest to create the Gate as a portal into death, or something like that anyway, and somehow got the Drowned God to manifest himself so that he could be thrust through it. But it seems that somehow he… well, the best analogy I have for it is that he’s stuck just on the doorstep on the other side of the Gate, unwilling to pass on but not strong enough to pass back. And he’s been there for thousands of years. So if he was even just a bit mad before, he’s stark raving bonkers by now. Oh, and the runes say one last thing. Apparently he had worshippers in the First Men, those that he spoke to personally. They lost track of where he was, but realised that he’s sort-of still there. Apparently…” And then he lost the ability to say the next words.
Fortunately the Archmaester spotted this and continued on his behalf. “Apparently what the runes described as the ‘dark magic priests’ of the Drowned God, which might refer to necromancers, a particularly dark form of blood magic, realised that their god was weakening and have been trying to strengthen him by the means of certain rituals that involve blood and violence.” He looked bleakly at them all. “I believe that that was the earliest reference to the Old Way and the Iron Price. The believers of the Drowned God seem to have relocated themselves to the sea and became what we now know today as the Ironborn.”
A long silence settled over the room, crushing many of Sam’s hopes for a quiet life any time soon. It was finally broken by Lord Tyrell, who looked at his grandfather. “Well, that might explain the Ironborn obsession with Oldtown, eh Grandfather?”
Lord Hightower nodded slowly. “It might. They don’t know where their mad creature of a god was effectively imprisoned, but something keeps dragging them here.” He looked back at Sam. “Did the Children hand the Gate over to the First Men then?”
“They did,” he said with a nod. “And it seems that Bran the Builder, well, built on their work. But that’s all that the runes say, apart from a strange reference that might refer to the Starks. It said that ‘the One Who Speaks Straight’ and who ‘bears the hammer from the sky’ will be the one to call upon should the Drowned God ever try and get back into this world.”
Lord Tyrell looked at him and then ran his hand over his face. “Lord Stark is on his way now. Which is a good thing. Lord Samwell, Archmaester, what I have to say now does not go beyond this room. Do you both understand me?”
A bit bewildered he nodded. After also receiving Archmaester Ebrose’s nod the Lord of the Reach stood and walked to the nearest window, his hands clasped behind his back. After a long moment he turned to them. “My father’s last words were also that the thing behind the Gate – the Drowned God as we now know – also brought something else apart from fear. Blight. And… blight has been reported. In certain orchards near Oldtown the fruit has started to shrivel on the branches. Grapes too. And wheat and barley. It is not widespread, it’s just a few places so far… but it’s out there.”
He fell silent. It was Lord Hightower who said the next words, the words that sent his heart into his boots: “And it’s slowly spreading.”
Tyrion
The Sun was shining, he was freshly bathed in the excellent hot water bath that their rooms had, breakfast was a happy memory, certain bits of him ached after some very pleasurable activities and he walking about a rather beautiful bit of Winterfell, next to the Godswood.
He had some very mixed feelings at the moment. One he one hand he was happier than he had ever been in his life, from a purely selfish standpoint. He was married to a beautiful women who was clever and kind and funny and above all extremely inquisitive about the kind of pleasure that could be had once naked and intertwined with him. Dacey had read a lot of very interesting books about the art of lovemaking and she had a very open mind, not to mention an active imagination. They were both desperate to make the other happy.
There were times when he felt as if his head was going to burst from pleasure.
Oh and he was also the heir to Casterly Rock and Father was treating him as if he wasn’t made from pond scum but possibly actually worthy of a little respect. In addition Jaime was alive, having been virtually rescued from execution, and Cersei was in disgrace.
On the other hand he was also getting paranoid. The last time he’d been this happy had been… well, Tysha. And that shining moment of happiness had been shattered by his father.
Yes, Father approved of this marriage of his. But… well, what could the but be? What could possibly happen. He paused in his leisurely meander. A guard in Lannister red was approaching, before coming to a halt and bowing his head. “Lord Tyrion, your Lord Father requests your presence in his study.” He could almost hear the capital letters in the words, and it was not ‘his study’, it was a room that Ned Stark had let him have. But he suppressed a sigh and walked off behind the guard.
He found his father writing at the desk he was using, the map of Westeros in front of him. As he entered Father looked at him and then nodded at the guard. “Leave us.” The red-cloaked man bowed his head and left.
Father leant back in his chair and looked at him. “I leave for the Wall tomorrow, due to various delays. And there are things we must discuss that I have put off. Sit.”
He sat at once, eyeing Father carefully. There was a certain something in his voice. “I have sent off various messages to various places, on various topics. Casterley Rock will soon now that you are my heir, acknowledged as such by the King himself.” He nodded at Father’s words and then wondered what Aunt Genna would say. Her whoop of pride would probably made the Rock shake. “Kevan will ride with me, so that we can send the latest instructions to the Westerlands and then he and Gerion, along with their sons, will ride to the Shadow Tower and then take ship for Lannisport. Apparently Gerion wants his son to see the family home.”
And then Father huffed a little. “Then there is the issue of her.” He said that last word in tones of the blackest fury and contempt, which was quite impressive given that it had just three letters. Ah. Cersei. “I have written to Jon Arryn about a suitable location for her exile. We cannot send her to any island off the coast of the Westerlands – for the one thing she knows too many people there and then there is the danger posed by the Ironborn. Whilst her being taken off to be a saltwife might have a measure of… irony, given her sluttish whims, she is still a Lannister.”
Tyrion nodded carefully, blinking slightly at the black and terrible look that had crossed his father’s face during that slight pause in his words. Father was still Father. Crossing him was… inadvisable.
“Instead we must look to the East coast of Westeros. Which is why I wrote to Jon Arryn. There are certain islands off the coast of the Vale that might suffice. When a message arrives to say that she can be sent there, agree to it at once. I want her exiled, isolated and out of my life. Out of my misery I might say. It will be up to you to tell her of her exile. I dare not visit her. The last time I talked with her I battled against the desire to slit her throat. Now that I have fully thought about the implications of her actions…” And with those last words Father looked… well, old for an instant, before he looked up. “You will have to make sure that she is kept locked away after I am dead. And as I am going to see what the war at the Wall will be like, we must take every precaution as to the line of succession. I might not come back from the Wall. You need to be ready.”
It was a sobering moment. “I will do my best, Father. I know what the Wall is like and what the threat there is also like. Father – be careful on the Wall. The Night’s Watch are… an eclectic group and fell very far over the past century, but the volunteers that have flocked there since the Call went out have raised them back up again – and they know what is out there.”
Father’s hard emerald green eyes assessed him for an instant and then he received the briefest of acknowledging nods. And then the eyes softened just a tad. “I saw your wife this morning. She seemed… happy.”
He tried to control his face, but a bit of a happy grin played about his expression for an instant. “I hope so.”
“Good. Keep her happy, otherwise many of the Lords of the North will be very unhappy with you, especially Ned Stark. And Lord Bolton. Get her with child in other words.” Father sighed a little and then leant back. “Is there any word yet from Surestone?”
He nodded. “Yes. The Maester there has reopened everything and the things that Bootle had stolen have been returned there safely. Surestone is being restored to what it was. We will visit it in a month or so.”
Father nodded. “And the Library there?”
He blinked. “Intact, from what the Maester wrote.”
“Good.” Father stood and then looked at him gravely. “Torgen Surestone put a great deal into his book about the First Men. I do wonder though what he left out because it was secret. Do your best to finds out, for all our sakes.” And then Father nodded at the door in dismissal.
Well now, he thought as he left the room, talking to Cersei about her exile might require armour.
Sarella
She looked down at the little scroll in her hand and thanked the Gods for small mercies. But then she pulled a face. Well, so she was headed to Castle Black again. At least this time she was travelling North knowing what were the right things to wear. She had almost died the last time. Now she knew better.
Her fingernails clattered softly on the tabletop – and then she nodded and stood. Well, it wouldn’t take her long to get her things together. But first she had to tell a few people.
She found Lady Stark talking quietly to the Maester in one of the courtyards, not too far from the forge, which was huffing and puffing in a way that meant that someone was in there. As she waited for the Lady of Winterfell to finish talking to the old man she observed them carefully. Storing the information in her mind the way that Father had taught her.
Lady Stark was an interesting one. Clever but with limitations. Inflexible, but apparently learning to bend a little. She had oh so many internal walls, some with holes in them, others thicker than the walls of Winterfell. Oh and she had her fair share of prejudices.
As the Maester bowed and hurried off Lady Stark nodded at her and she walked up. She knew that Lady Stark was having trouble classifying her. She was a bastard, which many people outside Dorne found a threat, but she was also the daughter of one of the Great Lords of Westeros. Who just happened to be the Red Viper of Dorne. Oh and she had fought side by side with her beloved eldest son against rogue Wildlings and wights and Others. Yes, no wonder she was having trouble working out what Sarella was.
“Lady Stark, I have received a raven from King’s Landing, from my Father, Prince Oberyn Martell. He is sailing from there with the first consignments of wildfire, bound for Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. I am therefore riding with the King’s party tomorrow for Castle Black and after that along the Wall for my Father’s destination. I thought that I should inform you of my imminent departure.”
“Thank you Sarella,” Lady Stark said with a small smile. “I shall inform the steward who will ride with His Grace.” The smile vanished. “Your Father sails on a ship with wildfire in it?”
She nodded, letting the unease that she was feeling cross her face. “He wrote that it is a calculated risk and that measures have been taken to weaken the substance. But yes, it is still a risk. He also says that the King has been informed.” She could only imagine what Robert Baratheon’s language might have been like. Probably something on the lines of: ‘The balls on that man!’
Lady Stark shivered a little – and she understood why. The wildfire would make anyone shiver. But Father knew that. Knew the risks. She trusted Father to know the risks. After all, he wasn’t crazy. Well… impulsive, yes. Crazy, no.
“I would like to thank you, Lady Stark, for your hospitality. I have greatly enjoyed my time in Winterfell.” Which was true and she had much to report to Father. She also felt that she understood the North far better now. Yes, parts of it were a frozen hellhole, but the people of the North were… interesting. She bowed to Lady Stark, muttered further pleasantries and moved away at her acknowledgement.
Her path took her past the forge, where she saw the newly legitimised Gendry Baratheon stripped to the waist and pounding on what looked like the makings of a halberd. He did not look in a good mood. So, she leant on the doorpost, enjoyed the view of the half-naked man and noted the fact that Allarion Lannister was off to one side, at the far end of the courtyard. He looked as if he had just arrived and was watching her cautiously.
“How does it feel? Not being a bastard anymore, I mean.”
Gendry eyed her as if he did not quite know what to make of her. After a moment he shrugged. “Doesn’t feel a bit different. There’s still things to forge. There’s never a lack of things to make. Having a different last name doesn’t change that, does it?”
She tilted her head. “You are the newly legitimised son of the King. You don’t have to be here.”
He eyed her as if she was raving mad. “Where else would I be?”
“Anywhere you like.”
He looked confused for a moment and then he shook his head. “This is what I know.”
She looked at him, amused. “You’ll need to know more.”
“Why?”
“You might be King once day.”
Gendry stared at her and then laughed. “Me? King? Give over. Edric will be King before me. He’s noble-born.”
“And you’re older than him.”
“So?”
“Your Father is going to war. Wars are nasty unpredictable things. You need to widen your horizons, Gendry Baratheon.”
The lad scoffed a bit. “I need my horizons widened enough to work out how to make those fucking things work.” He gestured at a pair of bracers, one with glowing runes and one with runes that didn’t glow at all. “I can’t make runes that glow.”
She walked over to the bracers and picked them both up. “Then you need to think differently. Widen your damn horizons! You are thinking like a modern blacksmith.”
He eyed her as if she was mad again. “Aye, I am. So?”
“So think like a blacksmith of the First Men.” She put the bracers back and strode out of the forge. As she did she noted that Allarion Lannister was approaching.
“I hear you are riding with us,” the son of Gerion Lannister muttered. “As far as Castle Black at least.”
She nodded, uneasy with the feelings that were coursing though her. They would be riding together again. “I will then ride to Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, to meet my Father.”
He nodded, forehead apparently creased in thought. “Tell him to be careful with the wildfire. Oh, and that he shouldn’t make fun of Umbers. Or those who might be part Giant.”
She stared at him as the infuriating bloody man smiled enigmatically at her and then walked off. Well, boy. Man-boy. Lad. Why did he always leave her in such a state of bafflement?
Ned
With every mile that they rode South the nagging feeling that something was very wrong somewhere got stronger, like an itch that he could not scratch. He put it down to irritation at first at being made to do this journey, but as they passed further down the road and the itch got worse he had to admit that this was something more.
It was also leading to some very mixed feelings. He was proud of what he was seeing as they rode South. The North was responding magnificently to the Call. He’d never seen so many fields under the plough or being sown, or being reaped or just standing there, filled with wind-stroked barley or wheat. There were windmills, both old and new, their sails rotating in the wind, the millstones within grinding out flour.
The windmills seemed to fascinate young Ygritte, who used to turn and watch them as they passed them. Sometimes she’d watch so hard that she’d almost ride into trees, before her horse swerved, startling her. He had Jon keep an eye on her, aware that things between those two were… peculiar might be the word to use. They were dancing a very pretty gavotte around each other and he had a feeling that the dance might end up at a fascinating place, given their respective origins.
He'd long agonised over Jon’s future. He had to keep him safe, that was the most important thing. He had made a promise to Lyanna to keep him safe, and also sworn to Robert that he’d keep Jon somewhere in the North. And in terms of marriage… well, now that Jon was a Stark there were offers from various Houses, with more probably coming. Would marriage to one of them make him happier than he might be with Ygritte? A Wildling? The red-headed girl was a set of contradictions - impulsive, amusing, perceptive and utterly ignorant about a lot of things South of the Wall. She was also learning by leaps and bounds, absorbing information about everything around her. Oh and she had a mouth like a fishwife when provoked.
So – he would let the gavotte proceed. Robert had had a quiet word with him as well about it, as the girl amused him, and as he had also pointed out, the thought of Aerys Targaryen’s grandson marrying a Wildling was something that really amused him and would also make the Mad King’s shade scream in pure rage.
It was something to think about as they kept riding South. Something to keep his mind off the roiling sense of unease that was starting to grip him as they rode across the Barrowlands. The road was being worked on in various places, as it was seeing a great deal of traffic, mostly heading North-East for the Kingsroad.
Most knew who he was by the banners flown by the outriders, and there were the occasional cheers from men and women, but for the most part he was struck by the intensity he saw. People were worried and working hard, either in the fields or on the roads. Which made him wonder something. Was the Call affecting some people even now, or was this down to what was happening at Barrowtown.
A day away from Barrowtown they encountered another half-ruined castle, one that was being repaired by a minor Barrowland House. And it was there that they found Brandon Dustin and his sons, all waiting for him with grim faces as the sun started to set.
As the rest of the party dismounted and started to prepare a meal the former member of the Company of the Rose looked at Ned and Stannis and then gestured at a door to one side in part of a repaired section. “Lord Stark, Lord Baratheon, a word if you please?”
They passed through the door and into a small storeroom that seemed to contain building supplies where they turned to look at Lord Brandon Dustin, whose face was still grim. “Lady Dustin barely spoke ten words to me, my Lords,” he said quietly. “She wouldn’t even look at me after a while. I didn’t know what to do or say, but she somehow found me at fault, Lord Stark, my Lord Hand. I started to ask questions about the fog and Barrowtown and above all the books that Lord Willam Dustin, my cousin, had, but after a while she claimed that I had come to steal Barrowtown from her and told me to leave.” He made a frustrated gesture with his hands. “I did not want to go, but… she did not give me a chance to explain that I do not want Barrowtown, that I was there to help with the fog, but… she looked like a woman at her wits end, my Lords. She made no sense.”
Ned sighed and ran a hand over his chin. Damn it. He’d had a nagging feeling that something like this might happen. “And the fog?”
Brandon Dustin paused, sighed and then ran a hand through his hair. “It’s not natural, Lord Stark. Not natural at all. It was confined to the Barrows itself, by Barrowtown. But… well, it’s spreading. And people are talking about it. There’s a lot of very nervous people in Barrowtown at the moment my Lords and some of them are even talking about leaving the area if the fog spreads any further.”
This was bad. Very bad. Ned swapped a troubled look with Stannis. “How far has it spread already?”
“Beyond the Barrows, my Lords. Not into the fields nearby or the town itself, but I was told that it’s creeping closer. And it’s… odd. As odd as they said it was. Wind won’t touch it. And…” he fell silent, with words left unsaid.
“And, my Lord?”
Brandon stood straight and thrust his chin out a little. “My Lords, when I stood not far from it I… I heard voices. Men and women speaking in the language of the First Men. I thought I was imagining it at first, so faint was it, but I heard it, I know that I did. My sons heard it too, but fainter.”
Ned stiffened a little. “Could you hear what the voices were saying?”
He was answered with a reluctant tilt of the head. “Sometimes. I heard commands to muster. I think I heard the words ‘Stark’ and ‘The Fist’. And I think I heard ‘Oathstone’, if I have the word right in the Old Tongue.”
“’Oathstone’?” Ned muttered. “What do you know of that?”
The former member of the Company of the Rose looked slightly uncomfortable. “I do not know exactly what it is, but every when every Dustin comes of age they are told that they have to protect and maintain the Oathstone. It’s said to be by the barrow of the First King of the First Men, but I don’t know anything more than that my Lords. There should be more information in Barrowtown, but…” he spread his hands. “Lady Dustin commanded us to leave. She did not forbid me from returning, but the words were close to being said.”
Barbrey bloody Dustin. Was she born to plague him? He had no wish to strip her lands from her, he had given his word at Castle Black, but if she continued to act like a fool then he might have no choice than to at the very least name Brandon Dustin or his sons as her heir – as she had no heir herself of Dustin blood. And that was important. Domeric could not inherit the title of Lord Dustin, even though he was her nephew. Ah – and that was probably it.
“Well now,” Ned said grimly, “We will ride into Barrowtown tomorrow and have words with Lady Dustin. I have to tell you both now that Lord Willam Dustin died fighting at my side during the rebellion and Lady Dustin still blames me for that. It cannot be helped. However, this matter of the fog must be divined correctly and dealt with – no matter what Lady Dustin might want. And you Lord Brandon will ride with us. Your sons too.”
The other two men nodded shortly. “And now my Lords, let us eat and go to respective beds.”
They did just as he said. Dinner that night was venison that had been hanging at the castle – he ordered that it be replaced with a haunch that they had brought with them – and there was some good cheer as they ate and drank. But his thoughts kept turning to Barrowtown and the fog and he could tell that the others were also thinking the same thing. Nevertheless he watched with a smile as Ygritte and Jon sparred over what was better, venison from North of the Wall or South of it, and he had to say that Jon just about won it, barely.
He did not sleep well that night. He woke several times with a feeling of oppression, almost terror, as if someone had walked over his grave. The dreams he could recall were half-remembered fragments, jagged memories of moments of pain and regret and yet somehow determination and hope as well.
As he joined the others in the morning to break their fasts he smiled a little as he looked at the freshly baked bread rolls that that someone had been able to bake. They were still warm and the butter that he spread on them melted a little. It was delicious, along with the smoked ham that was shared out and he left the castle with a full belly and a lighter purse after gifting the people there with a dragon or two.
South they rode again and as they rode through the Barrowlands he could see that word of their ride was going on ahead of them again, judging by the looks – and the cheers – that they were getting. And he saw something else on more and more faces – worry mixed with hope that the sight of him.
When he finally caught sight of Barrowtown, with Barrow Hall in the middle of it, he clenched the reins so hard that he heard his leather riding gloves creak more than a bit. Beyond the hill that Barrowtown was nestled on was a flat area – and it was covered with a fog that to his eyes looked wrong. But then he forced himself to relax his grip and concentrated on looking as the Lord of the North should look – focussed and intent and above all in charge.
The cheering started as they approached the gates of Barrowtown and the standards of House Stark and to a lesser extent House Baratheon were sighted by the crowds of people on the streets. As a way was cleared for them by men in Dustin livery he wondered what Barbrey Dustin thought about her people cheering so hard for House Stark.
As they finally arrived in front of Barrow Hall he got his answer. Barbrey Dustin was in the main courtyard, her father standing at her side and the household of Barrow Hall behind them. Lady Dustin was as white as a sheet, black shadows under her eyes and a look of badly hidden worry and strain. Lord Ryswell did not look quite as bad, but he was obviously worried, especially as he caught sight of Stannis Baratheon – he actually flinched a little.
But that was as nothing as to the reaction of Barbrey Dustin when she caught sight of Brandon Dustin. She flushed with some undefinable emotion, before wrenching her gaze away from him and back to Ned’s direction.
As Ned dismounted he pulled the Fist of Winter out of the leather case it had been resting on his saddle as he rode and back to its proper place at his waist. At the same time Frostfyre padded up next to him and then sat down and stared at the Lady of Barrowtown, something that Barbrey Dustin seemed to find very disturbing.
“Lady Dustin,” Ned said as he and Stannis strode up to the pair of them. “Lord Ryswell.”
“Lord Stark,” Barbrey Dustin said tightly, “My Lord Hand.” There was a pause and then, possibly prompted by a nudge from her father: “Bread and salt, my Lords.”
They partook from the plates handed over by a servant, before Ned looked back at Lady Dustin. “We must talk at once.”
Barbrey Dustin flinched a little, but then nodded choppily as she turned towards the doors to the main hall and he followed her, along with Ryswell, Stannis and, after a gesture from him, Brandon Dustin. And, of course, Frostfyre
After a moment Barbrey Dustin seemed to realise exactly who was following her, because she turned. “Not him!”
Ned looked at a faltering Brandon Dustin. “He comes,” he said in a voice that booked no argument. “You have no say in this matter.”
Barbrey looked at him in protest, but then Stannis added his own voice: “Lord Stark is right on this.”
She pulled a face and then led them on to a room to one side of the great hall of the castle that had a desk and some chairs. Ned closed the door firmly behind them all and then glared at Barbrey Dustin.
“Lady Dustin, I am not pleased to be here and am still less pleased that you expelled my personal envoy Lord Brandon Dustin. This matter of the fog is still unresolved and Lord Brandon was sent here as my advance guard.”
Barbrey Dustin came very close to wringing her hands in what was either worry or despair. “I have tried to resolve it, Lord Stark! But there is nothing in the books here about it, nothing in the local legends! And Lord Brandon… he is a Dustin of Essosi, of the Company of the Rose, he knows nothing about this matter.” She raised her jaw. “I… could not allow him to meddle in this matter.”
Ned’s own chin came up at this and he took a long stride towards her, whilst to one side Frostfyre visibly bristled. He had her measure at once. “Lady Dustin, I told you at Castle Black that Barrowtown was yours and that I would not supplant you with Lord Brandon. Lord Brandon knows this! He is trying to help. And yet you refused his counsel and bade him and his sons leave. You are placing me in a delicate position, Lady Dustin. The fog grows worse, not better, and your actions make no sense.”
She looked at almost everything in the room but him and her late husband’s cousin. “He knows nothing and-”
“Do not make me take back the words I said at Castle Black!” Ned half-roared the words and Barbrey Dustin and her father both flinched at the look of black fury on his face. He forced himself to be calm again. “We must work together on this.”
And then something happened that made him blink with surprise. Barbrey Dustin stared at the floor and then walked up to him. “Please send him away,” she all but whispered. “I will explain later, in private.”
“I cannot,” he said more gently. “This matter of the fog is too important. People are close to leaving Barrowtown because of this, did you know that? But yes, we will meet in private for you to explain.”
She looked at him, that look combining anger and worry and frustration and for some reason shame, and then she slowly nodded choppily.
Ned looked at her closely and then sighed. “So – the books here at Barrow Hall are of no use?”
“None.” She said the word with flat despair.
“What does the Maester say?” Stannis asked.
“There is none,” Brandon Dustin said with a sigh. “Lady Dustin… apparently distrusts them.”
“They are naught but grey rats,” Barbrey said with a flash of her old fire. And then she looked at him and the fire died. “I dismissed the last one. He was meddling in Willam’s solar.”
There was a short silence as various looks were traded and then, reluctantly, Brandon Dustin said: “Was there nothing even in the Grey Book?”
The words were met with a blank look from Barbrey. “Grey Book?”
Brandon Dustin stood straighter. “The Grey Book of the Dustins.” He looked uncomfortable. “It is a secret thing, something not normally talked of in front of strangers, but my father told me of it. It tells of the history of the Barrowlands and the ceremonies that Dustins must do.”
Ned wanted to close his eyes and then cover them with his hand. More bloody ancient family secrets. Would he never be rid of them?
But Barbrey Dustin still stared blankly. “What Grey Book?”
“It would be in Lord Willam Dustin’s Solar. From what my father told me of it, ‘tis a large book, bound in grey leather, about this size,” and Brandon Dustin held his hands out to illustrate. “It would have been amidst Lord Dustin’s most prized possessions. It’s written entirely in the language of the First Men.”
“There was no book like that in the Solar when I took it over.”
She did not look directly at Brandon Dustin, but the man looked horrified. “What? Are you sure?”
Once again she would not look at him, just nodding instead.
“Take us to your Solar. At once.” Stannis made it a command and not a request and despite a brief bout of blustering Barbrey Dustin obeyed that order.
The Solar was neat and tidy, with books placed neatly on shelves along one wall and various maps and other papers rolled up just as neatly on the large desk. But there was no grey book. Ned drummed his fingers on the table for a moment and then looked about. “Search the room.”
They searched. Ned hoped that there would be something similar to his Solar at Winterfell, a room hidden behind a tapestry or some hidden partition somewhere – but there was nothing. They tapped on the walls, they looked behind the books and even all through the books, but there was no grey book written in the language of the First Men.
Ned looked around the Solar as they completed their search, before looking at a white-faced Barbrey Dustin. He was angry, one hand on the Fist and Frostfyre’s hackles were up to one side. “Search Barrow Hall. Every part of it. Find that book.”
Barbrey Dustin took one look at his face and flinched violently, stepping back with a look of almost fright. After a long moment she nodded and then came close to running to the door to summon servants and bark out orders.
Over the next few hours Barrow Hall was all but turned upside and shaken. Servants and guardsmen searched everywhere, aided by those who had rode South with Ned. Based on a hunch from Ned they searched the room of the former Maester, which was now a storeroom – but there was nothing there, no grey book, nothing. As for Maester himself – he was long dead according to one of the servants.
As the chaos erupted around them Ned finally pulled Barbrey Dustin to one side in a room. “We have time now. Explain.”
She did not look at him, but at everywhere else in the room for a long moment. Finally she said: “Lord Brandon… I did not mean to dismiss him.” A look of deep distress crossed her face. “Lord Stark… I honour the memory of Willam. I do. I remember his face. Lord Brandon… he has Willam’s eyes. And his smile. And he looks…” And then she looked genuinely anguished as she seemed to search for words.
Ned’s eyes widened as realisation struck. He opened his mouth for a long moment, reconsidered what he was about to say and then closed it. Finally he said, very carefully: “You consider Brandon Dustin… comely?”
The word made Barbrey Dustin close her eyes as if in pain. “I… don’t… I mean, I can’t… Lord Stark… I have for so many years grieved over Willam. And resented you, hated you for not bringing his bones back.” There was a pause as she wrestled with a large number of emotions. “It’s all I have. Grief and hate. It’s hollowed me out. I have no room for anything else.” She said the last words in a defeated tone of voice.
Pity kindled in his heart. “Barbrey,” he said quietly, “We all know what’s coming. At the Wall. And we all know what drives it. The Others are coming and they bring death. We have to fight death with life. And to be alive is to be many things. I’ve long felt regret for not bringing Willam’s bones back. As I am bound for the Reach after here, I vow to you now that I will visit where Willam fell and retrieve his bones, so that he can be buried with his ancestors. And as for you – live. You can honour Willam’s memory and do your best to be happy at the same time. Don’t stay trapped in grief and hate. Willam wouldn’t have wanted that.”
Barbrey looked at him – and there were tears in her eyes. “You make it sound so… easy.”
“It’s really not. But you have to try at least.”
She wiped her eyes and then nodded a little.
As they left the room they heard raised voices ahead and after a moment one of Barrow Hall’s servants scurried into view. “My Lord, my Lady, we’ve found something! In the Library!”
They had indeed found something, a shrouded shape that apparently had been hidden in an alcove behind a shelf with a large number of books on it. Books left by the old Maester apparently.
Ned looked at it, once they all reconvened in the Solar. It was in the shape of a small chest, but it was covered in oilskin that had been stitched tight, so he pulled out his knife and cut it carefully open. Underneath was a similar tight layer of coarse linen and under that was a layer of finer linen, before they finally saw wood.
“Who was this Maester again?” Ned asked as Jon helped him to cut away all the layers and reveal the small chest that lay within.
“Aylwood,” Barbrey Dustin muttered to one side. “An annoying man who tried to lecture me on what Willam would do. I dismissed him for many reasons, the last being he was in here without my permission.” She sighed. “He must have taken the book.”
The chest was locked – but that was not a problem as the key to it was tied to one of the carrying handles on its side. Ned took the key, inserted it into the lock and then paused. “Wait, someone bring me some oil for this.”
Oil was brought and inserted into the lock, just barely enough because the bloody thing stuck a bit before it finally turned. Ned opened the top and then paused. There was a note within, resting on what looked like a number of book-shaped objects tightly wrapped in cloth. He picked it up. ‘For the new Lord Dustin, when he comes.’
So he stepped away from the chest. “Lady Dustin, this is yours I believe.”
Barbrey Dustin sent him a veiled look of… something he was not sure he could identify, and then stepped up to the desk. With hands that trembled more than a bit she pulled the topmost shape up and then peered at it, before placing it gently on the desk and then using Ned’s dagger to cut through the stitches that confined what was within.
And what was within was a large book that was bound in grey leather. The moment that Ned saw it he all but sighed with relief. He picked it up – and then passed it over to Barbrey Dustin. “This belongs to you I believe, Lady Dustin.”
Barbrey Dustin took it with an odd look on her face, as if she had expected him to do something else, before putting it on the desk and drawing up a chair. And then she did something that made Ned blink. She took a deep breath and said: “Lord Brandon, you can read the language of the First Men I believe?”
“I can,” came the reply. “My Father and Grandfather taught me.”
“Then please…” She seemed to gird herself. “Assist me in looking at this book. In a matter of this importance I think that two sets of eyes are better than one.”
Ned schooled his face as Brandon Dustin nodded carefully, drew up a chair and then joined her in starting to read. Ned watched them for a moment, thinking of a pair of cats that were circling each other, and then joined Jon and Lord Ryswell at the chest, where they were pulling out and unwrapping more books. All were bound in grey leather and seemed to be progressively older and older as they emerged from the chest. And there were six of them.
Ned took one and carefully opened it, before opening another one and looking at the same page. They were written in different hands but the language was identical. “They’re all copies of the same book, Father,” Jon said wonderingly. “Past Dustins must have seen this as so important that they ordered copies to be made at regular intervals.”
“The Maester knew that they were important,” Ned muttered. “He put them away for safety. But why tell no-one?”
Ryswell leant closer. “My daughter does not like Maesters,” he said softly. “If he had said that these were very important I am not sure if she would have listened.” He said it quietly, but a red spot had appeared on the cheeks of his daughter and she was obviously repressing a sharp word at her father. “He kept the books safe and for that I thank his memory.”
Ned nodded. He was of a mind to suggest that a book be sent to Surestone, as Dacey would find it fascinating, but he had a feeling that now was not the time to suggest anything like that.
And then they waited as the two Dustins sat at the table and pored over the book, turning pages only after both had read and then nodded over it. Brandon looked fascinated whilst Barbrey looked more than a little wistful at times, probably as she thought of Willam and the absence of little Dustins of her own. But then, as they made their way through the book, he noticed new emotions from the pair of them. Surprise, shock even, and then growing worry that seemed to almost become alarm. The two reached one particular page, leant back a little in shock, read on, looked at each other grimly and then turned the page, where the process was repeated. Brandon then inserted a page marker, turned back a few pages, placed a finger on a few lines and looked at Barbrey, who turned white but then nodded. They then looked up at Ned.
“Lord Stark,” they both said almost simultaneously, before looking at each other. Brandon leant back and gestured at his late cousin’s wife.
“Lord Stark,” Barbrey said in a shaking voice. “We know what the fog is.” She raised a shaking hand to her face and then stood abruptly and walked to one side. “The fog is… is the spirits of the dead.”
There was a startled silence that was broken by Rodrik Ryswell, who sighed and sank into a chair. “Aye, I feared that. The voices alone… what do they want though?”
But Barbrey Dustin seemed to be too shaken to answer and instead waved a hand at Brandon Dustin, who sighed and looked around the room at them all. “This tale dates back to the Long Night. When the Others started to roll South, attacking the First Men and turning them into wights… well news travelled slowly at first and was not always believed. Then when it became clear that it was true… again it varied. Some fought. Some fled. And some tried to court favour with these powerful creatures – they worshipped them in the hope that they would be killed last.
“When it became clear that the only course of action was to fight, your ancestor Lord Stark called for a great assemblage of the leaders of the First Men and their supporters, here at Barrow Hill. They met here and they swore a great oath to ally themselves with the Children of the Forest and to fight and beat the Others. They swore it at the Oathstone, by the barrow of the First King.”
Brandon Dustin paused and licked his lips. “There were those at the Oathstone who knew that they were not trusted. They were those who had fled, or who had tried to worship the Others. They knew that the men around them thought that they would break their word and flee or betray them. So… the oath that they swore was different. It was… binding in ways that the other oaths were not. They swore a great and terrible oath to fight the Others no matter what the cost, to fight them no matter how many of them died. The oath was binding for the rest of their lives – and beyond.”
There was a long silence, one that was broken by Stannis Baratheon. “And beyond? Meaning what?”
“Beyond death my Lord Hand,” Brandon Dustin said soberly. “There could be no more binding oath than that. So that when the Call was sent out it was heard by both the living and the dead.”
Ned felt the blood flee his face for a long moment. Then he thought it through. “So the sprits of the dead who swore that oath are converging here, at the Oathstone?”
“Aye, Lord Stark. Many of them died near here – there was a great battle against the Others not far from here.”
Ned sighed. “Very well, that is what the fog is. So – how do we disperse it?”
Brandon Dustin looked at Barbrey, who was still deeply affected by what she had read, and then gazed at Ned. “One of the tasks, no, duties of the Dustin of Barrowtown is bound up with the Call. When it is sent he must go to the Oathstone as soon as he can, place his hand on it and bid the dead to sleep again. Their assistance is not needed yet, the book says – it will only be needed in the final battle against the thing that created them, when the dead will be commanded by…” he looked down at the open book and then shook his head in clear puzzlement. “The word is old and odd and needs translation by a better reader of the language of the First Men than I am.”
The thought of the spirits of the dead marching with the living was one that made him shudder a little, but then he paused. “But the Dustin of Barrowtown is by blood a Ryswell, not a Dustin. Can it still work, can we take Lady Dustin to the Oathstone and have her command them to sleep?”
He was answered with a shake of the head. “No, Lord Stark, she is – as you pointed out – not a Dustin by blood. And I cannot do it either as I am not the Dustin in Barrowtown. But even if I married Lady Barbrey tonight and laid with her until morning, becoming Lord Dustin, I cannot disperse the fog and the dead. The book makes it clear that if too much time passes between the Call being sent and the Dustin of Barrowtown commanding that the dead sleep again, then the command of the Dustin will not be enough. There will be too many dead – as there are now. Too many will have woken, and other things besides according to the book. Only one man can command the dead to sleep now – the Stark who holds the Fist of Winter in one hand as he touches the Oathstone with the other.” He fell silent, not looking at Barbrey Dustin (who was a little flushed). “And it must just be you, Lord Stark. Only a Stark can do this.”
Everyone looked at him and he did his best not to wince too much as yet more weight was added to the burden he always carried. “Me then,” he said with a sigh. “Me. Very well. I will go to the Oathstone.”
“Tomorrow though,” Ryswell pointed out. “The sun is setting now. You cannot ride to the Oathstone – no horse will approach that fog – and you get lost too easily in the growing dark. You must do it tomorrow.”
Ned nodded. “Very well.”
The evening meal in the Great Hall was a… quiet affair. Not melancholy, not sad, no foreboding exactly, but most were lost in their thoughts. Ned found himself wondering what it would be like to walk through a fog that was made up of the spirits of the dead, whilst to one side Jon seemed to be thinking very hard. As for Barbrey Dustin, she was staring more at her plate than anywhere else.
And above all Ned found himself with a piece of song stuck in his head, something that after a while he found himself humming softly.
“Aye,” said Jon quietly next to him, “I’ve been thinking about the same song Father. Jenny of Oldstones is it not?”
“It seems fitting,” Ned said with a slight smile. “Tomorrow I hopefully won’t be dancing with ghosts.”
“What’s Jenny of Oldstones?” Ygritte said the words through a mouthful of bread. No-one quite knew how to deal with her, as a member of the party of Lord Stark and the Lord Hand, but also not of the nobility.
“A song,” said Ned, thinking of the different times that he had heard it. “About the wife of the Prince of Dragonflies.”
“Oh?” Ygritte said, her brow wrinkling. “A prince made of dragonflies?”
Ned almost laughed. “No, he was Duncan Targaryen, who died at Summerhall. The Green Man knew him.”
Ygritte opened her mouth again and he could tell that the next words she was going to say were on the lines of ‘How does it do?’, when something happened that he would never have thought possible. Barbrey Dustin raised her head and started to sing in a high, clear voice.
“High in the halls of the kings who are gone, Jenny would dance with her ghosts. The ones she had lost and the ones she had found, and the ones who had loved her the most. The ones who'd been gone for so very long, she couldn't remember their names.” There was total silence in the hall, as they all listened to the Lady of Barrowtown sing. Ygritte’s mouth had dropped open and all of a sudden Ned was reminded of Lyanna at Harrenhall.
“They spun her around on the damp old stones, spun away all her sorrow and pain. And she never wanted to leave, never wanted to leave, never wanted to leave, never wanted to leave.” There were tears in her eyes now, but still she sat upright and sang.
“They danced through the day, and into the night through the snow that swept through the hall. From winter to summer then winter again, 'til the walls did crumble and fall. And she never wanted to leave, never wanted to leave, never wanted to leave, never wanted to leave.
“And she never wanted to leave, never wanted to leave, never wanted to leave, never wanted to leave.” The tears were sliding down her cheeks now, but still she sat upright and kept on singing.
“High in the halls of the kings who are gone. Jenny would dance with her ghosts. The ones she had lost and the ones she had found, and the ones who had loved her the most.” She fell silent and just sat there and Ned had no idea if she had been singing for the living or the dead. After a long moment she reached out and picked up her goblet. “To your success at the Oathstone, Lord Stark.”
It was an apt toast and after a slight pause Ned and the others also raised their goblets and drank.
Oddly enough for a man who was going to take a walk through a fog filled with the spirits of the dead he slept very well that night, probably because he was utterly exhausted. He didn’t even dream much, although from what he could remember his dreams were of home and Cat.
In the morning he broke his fast in his room, a simple meal that involved bread and ham and small beer. As he ate he studied a small map of the area about the Great Barrow to memorise the path to the Oathstone and also watched at Frostfyre, who looked back at him levelly. If horses would not go near the fog, would a direwolf? He didn’t think so, but he did not know and he sighed a little as he finished his food and stood, pushing the Fist of Winter into the loop in his belt and then striding out of his room and down the corridor. It was early and the hall was still stirring, but there seemed to be quite a few servants about who watched him and nodded formally, in the manner of the North, in respect and acknowledgement of what he was doing.
He met Stannis at the main gates, where the Hand of the King nodded in respect himself and then shook hands with him and bade him luck gruffly. Barbrey Dustin was standing to one side and he acknowledged her nod and that of Brandon Dustin to one side as well. Theon and Asha acknowledged him on the other side, concern on the face of the first, respect on the other. Ygritte was there as well, looking both irritated and concerned, he knew not why. The courtyard was silent as he passed through the gates and down through the town.
Word had passed before him and the streets were filled with people, although a path was always open through them for him and his direwolf. Men and women nodded and muttered their support, as if afraid to speak too loudly, and he would nod back now and then from side to side, hoping that he did not let these good people down.
And then, at the main gates of Barrowtown he saw someone who made him stop. Jon was standing there, Ghost at his feet and Dark Sister at his hip. “Father.”
“Jon.”
“I am going with you.”
“No,” he said with a shake of his head. “You are not. We don’t know what’s out there in that fog, it’s too dangerous. I will not put you at risk.”
“Father, only we can do this. I am a Stark, am I not?”
“You are,” he said, feeling irritated. “But-”
“But if you trip over a stone on the barrows and break your leg who would know about it? Who could pick up the Fist and use it? You need someone to guard you out there Father, someone who can also use the Fist. You need me. Come on.” And with that Jon started to walk towards the fog.
He swore under his breath and strode after his blasted son, no, nephew, repressing the need to strangle him. “Jon-”
“We are not going to argue about this Father. Accept my help.” Jon stopped and looked at him. “Trust me on this. You need me.”
He looked into those all too familiar eyes for a long moment. And then he sighed and nodded reluctantly. “Very well. But if I say ‘run’, you bloody well run, do you hear me?”
“I understand, Father.”
On they went, towards the fog and as they approached it felt more than saw the hackles go up on the back of Frostfyre. He looked at both direwolves and could see at a glance that they were both becoming distressed, but wanted to continue. “Jon.” He gestured at the direwolves and then saw the boy realise what was going on. He turned to the two creatures. “Stay. Wait. We will return.” The direwolves stared at him, obviously conflicted, before sitting and then dipping their muzzles in compliance.
On they strode, to the very start of the fog and he felt his skin crawn as the tendrils of mist envelop him. He looked up at the Sun, found his bearings and then looked at Jon. “Keep your wits about you. And we need to walk in this direction.” He gestured with one hand, whilst keeping the other on the Fist almost instinctively.
As they kept walking he stretched out with all his senses. Brandon Dustin had mentioned that he and his sons had heard the sound of voices in the fog and after a long moment he felt his nostrils narrow as he also heard something. There were voices, faint at first but then growing a little louder, speaking the language of the First Men, or an archaic version of it.
“They come! They come!”
“Watch to the right!”
“Spears and shields! SPEARS AND SHIELDS!”
“Go for the tendons!”
“We are the living. We are LIFE! Beat back the dead! Send them back to the shadow that awaits them!”
He could tell that Jon could hear them as well and he placed a hand on his shoulder. “Ignore them. They are long dead.”
He hoped they were dead anyway, as the fog billowed about them, fading at times just enough for him to catch a sight of the Sun and guess at their bearings. As they strode on the fog would thicken every now and then and sometimes he could see shapes in it, the shapes of men and even women dressed in old armour, walking or running or even swinging pale swords or axes against something unseen.
And then abruptly the fog thickened and he paused. Suddenly something felt very wrong and as his senses screamed at him he pulled the Fist of Winter out of its loop at his waist and hefted it. Jon felt the same way, judging by the sound of Dark Sister being pulled from its scabbard and they stopped and stood back to back. “Something is coming,” he muttered. “I feel it.”
The fog broiled to one side and they both turned to face it – and then some thing out of his darkest nightmares seemed to form itself of the fog. Its feet were no more then vapour and mist, but its body looked like several ribcages of men joined together, with many arms and a head made from at least three skulls fused together. It screamed at them with a voice that spoke of madness and then hefted a blade spun from ebon night at them.
Ned swallowed and somehow got the Fist up into a guard position before the two weapons met with an unearthly noise. The impact rocked him back on his feet and he grunted with effort, but he could see that the Fist had notched a jagged rent in the blade of whatever the hell this thing wielded. The thing gaped – or seemed to gape – at him and then he used that moment of astonishment to his advantage, bringing the Fist down again onto the blade, shattering it to pieces before he reversed his impetus and brought the Fist back around and smashed its head to pieces. The thing didn’t even have a chance to scream and he stared as it disintegrated into mist as it fell to the ground.
“Father,” said Jon shakily, “What was that?”
“I don’t know,” he replied. “But some of the books said that the Others did not make just wights at the beginning. When they had time… they got inventive.” He shook his head. “Be wary.”
They strode on, more watchful than they had been previously. He hoped that they were on the right path towards the Oathstone, and as they walked up and over first one barrow and then another he realised that they were not too far away.
But then the fog thickened again – and again they stood back to back. For long singing moments they watched around them. And then it started to get cold, as their breath started to appear in the air about them. Jon stiffened in shock. “Father, it’s like it was beyond the Wall at the Nightfort. When the Others attacked.”
He looked about – and then something blue started to swirl into existence from the fog. Deeper and deeper the cold became and then all of a sudden something came into brutal focus. He recognised it at once from the descriptions. The shade of an Other. It looked about its surroundings almost wonderingly for a long moment – and then it drew a pale sword that flickered about its edges and looked at them. Ned drew himself up as the thing raised its weapon, but it was Jon who met the stroke that fell – and the pale sword shattered on impact, astonishing the shade but being met with a grin by Jon, despite the blood that the shards inflicted as they glanced past his forehead. Jon didn’t even flinch as he then brought Dark Sister around and sliced through the shade of the Other, which shattered into a thousand pieces.
They moved on again, deeper into the fog – and it was then that Ned realised that he could not even see the Sun above them and that he did not know exactly where they were. He stared at the ground carefully, still doing his best to keep an eye on approaching threats. “Where’s the nearest barrow?”
Jon paused and he looked about himself. “Over there. I think that-” But he was interrupted by a broiling in the fog again, before something once again emerged. Like the first thing to come from the fog it was from his deepest nightmares, a creature made from tendon and bone with many arms and legs, one of which opened up a cut just about his right eye as he darted back just in time.
Unpleasant as it was, it died quickly. It mewled with what might have been pain when they both struck at it with their weapons and then flailed at them again, leaving a long but shallow cut on his leg and cutting Jon’s arm as well. The Fist and Dark Sister rose and fell, shattering the white form into pieces as they hammered it to pieces.
Blowing hard as he looked about Ned winced a little as he looked at the blood on them both. He opened his mouth to tell Jon to look for the Oathstone again, when all of a sudden two things happened. The first was that he caught site of a pale light to one side through a rent in the fog. The second was that something deep in the fog uttered a roaring noise that made his blood run cold for an instant.
“What in the name of all the Old Gods was that?” Jon gasped
“Let’s not find out,” Ned replied. “I think I saw a light over there.” It was in the right direction and at least it didn’t hurt too much to walk.
They walked on through the suddenly thickening fog – and then Ned and Jon stopped dead. There were figures in the fog, men and women in all kinds of armour, clutching ancient weapons. They were motionless, all staring in the same direction – at the pale light ahead of them all. He squinted at it. Yes, it matched the description of the Oathstone. But that light…
He reached out and clutched at Jon’s shoulder. He could tell at a glance that Jon was afraid. But then the thing in the fog bellowed again, closer this time, and they both started walking again, towards the upright standing stone, threading their way through the motionless figures.
He looked over his shoulder and all of a sudden something vast and sinuous seemed to billow out of the fog, something that made the hairs on the back on his neck stand on end in sheer terror. Whatever it was, he knew at a glance that it could kill them both.
They hurried on, getting closer and closer. They were less than fifty yards away now, dodging through the still ghosts. The bellow came again and then Ned noticed something else, one, no, two blue figures converging on them, obviously the spirits of Others.
He ran that, Jon at his side, straight for the Oathstone. There was a pair of ghostly figures standing on each side of the Oathstone, with a hand on its surface. One was unfamiliar to him, a tall man dressed in archaic armour with a glowing weapon that he couldn’t quite see in his free hand. The other he knew. Lord Willam Dustin, his eyes glowing.
As he stepped up to the Oathstone the late Lord of Barrowtown turned his head to look at him. “Ned.”
He didn’t know what to say, but eventually he replied: “Willam. How are you here?”
His old friend laughed shortly. “How could I not be? Barrowtown is in peril.” The thing in the fog screamed again, far closer this time and his breath was white vapour again. “Ned! Step up, join us! Place your right hand on the Oathstone and tell them to sleep again! In the Old Tongue!”
He stepped up, holding the Fist in his left hand and placed his right hand on the Oathstone, which flared gold as he did so.
“Father!” Jon cried as he caught side of the Others approaching quickly now, not to mention the other thing. Ned snatched a hurried look over his shoulder and caught sight of something huge and with far too many teeth emerging from the fog.
He collected himself as the words clattered almost from nowhere into his head and then threw his head back and roared in the language of the First Men: “Hearken to me! HEARKEN TO ME! I am the Stark in Winterfell! I hold the Fist of Winter! Sleep until the day when your Oath will be fulfilled! SLEEP!”
There was a moment of crystalline singing silence as the fog seemed to freeze into place – and then a column of light seemed to erupt out of the Oathstone, up into the heavens above. The motionless figures shivered into life and then seemed to see Ned and the other figures by the Oathstone and all raised weapons to their lips and spoke words that Ned could not hear in an endless susurration, before bowing to them.
The figures of the Others seemed to be frozen in place, almost in mid-cower against the light, and the huge figure of the beast – and then a wind seemed to come from nowhere, a wind from the West. As it blew, the figures – all the ghostly figures, bar that of those who were touching the Oathstone, shimmered and then faded, taking with them the ghosts of the enemies of the people of Westeros. The fog faded, slowly at first, but them with growing speed and Ned could see that Willam and the other ghost were also fading.
“Willam… thank you. Are you really here?”
“An echo of me, Ned, just an echo. Tell Barbrey to live again will you? It saddens me to see her so bitter.”
Ned nodded and then looked at the other man. “Are you an ancestor of Willam Dustin?”
The other man laughed, an echoing sound that started to fade as fast as he was. “Nay, I am an ancestor of yours.” He smiled. “I built a lot of things.” And with that he was gone and Ned and Jon stood together, just them alone, by the Oathstone, with the Sun on their faces and the wind tugging at their hair and their bloodied faces.
Chapter Text
Sorry for the delay on this. My new company has had us all working from home and producing not just articles for the magazine but also webinars. Don't ask, it's all been very complicated and not a little stressful. However - we've proved that it can work. That said, the conference season is screwed, so we have to find ways to replace the revenue that we have lost.
Frankly we are insanely lucky, we have not lost anyone and we have jobs. So - stay safe, wear a mask, wash your hands, be kind to each other and above all else don't take this thing lightly.
Theon
He did not remember what he dreamt of that night, but whatever the dream was, it made him awake in a hurry, covered in sweat. Jagged memories of the dream clashed in his head for a moment, but then they faded. He looked down at the weirwood pendant around his neck that never left him these days. There were times when he wondered if the Drowned God was still looking for him, kept at bay by the Old Gods.
He'd discussed it quietly with Asha, who had told him everything about the room at High Harlaw that Nuncle Rodrik had found, along with his new wife, everything about the glowing runes and what they had said. He’d already heard the tale in the letters that he’d exchanged with his Nuncle, but it was the way that Asha told the tale that stuck in the mind. The look in her eyes as she talked about the runes and the tale that they told…
Sleep was impossible after that and he called for hot water, sponged the sweat off and then went for a walk on the battlements with Mist, looking down every now and then at the fog on the barrows as the Sun rose in the West. It still made him shiver to think that it literally the spirits of the long-dead.
“You couldn’t sleep either?” Asha was standing to one side, looking a bit bleary-eyed. She joined him at the battlements and stared out at the mist as well. “Takes me aback just seeing that stuff out there.”
He nodded sombrely. “The dead of the North. The ancient dead.” Mist looked up at him with what almost looked like worry on his face. And then Theon shivered a little. “Come on. Lord Stark will be leaving soon.”
Until his dying day he remembered the moment that the dark-haired, grey-eyed Lord of the North came into view, his cloak billowing a little as he walked and the Fist of Winter at his hip. There were others there at the gate, Lord Stannis Baratheon, the Dustins (who seemed to be doing an odd dance around each other, obviously uneasy but darting odd little looks at each other) and Ygritte. He nodded at Lord Stark, getting a small smile and a nod in response, and then the Lord of the North was gone, striding off through the gates and past the almost silent crowds of people who made a path for him as he went.
The little knot of people by the gate loitered for a while, muttering about what might happen next, and then headed up to the walls again, although Ygritte stayed at the bottom and seemed to be looking for someone. Ah. Where was Jon? Had he said goodbye to his father inside? He shrugged mentally and then headed up to the wall, following Asha.
And it was there that he caught sight of the two figures, plus direwolves, that strode out of the main gates of Barrowtown and headed towards the fog. Jon. It could only be Jon. He frowned for a moment as some of the others muttered their puzzlement and then he sighed. “It’s Jon with him. Jon Stark.”
“You what?” The words came from Ygritte, who had frozen in place on the stairs up to the wall. “Jon’s where?” She hared up the remaining stairs and peered out. When she saw the figures vanish into the fog, without the direwolves who stayed outside, she made an inarticulate noise of high emotion, part rage, part… well, something that Theon couldn’t identify. “I’ll kill him,” the Wildling finally said eventually. “I’ll go down there, drag him out of that mist and tell him he’s an idiot and then I’ll kill him.”
“You’ll not.” Theon said the words firmly. “He’s the only one of us that could help Lord Stark.”
Everyone stared at him and he flushed a little. “Only a Stark can wield the Fist. Jon’s the only one of us who could pick the Fist and use it at the Oathstone if something happens to Lord Stark in that mist. They’re blood. It’s as simple as that.”
Stannis Baratheon pulled a slight face and then nodded, whilst Ygritte almost vibrated with indecision. It was Asha who took pity on her and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Once he comes back out you two need to talk. Use a bedroom. You might need to use short words. But tell him how you feel.”
Ygritte went bright red as her lips thinned, before making a gallant effort at scoffing. She fooled no-one on the wall, as even Barbrey Dustin raised her eyebrows and then shook her head a little in amusement. But then the Wildling licked her lips, hung her head and rejoined them at the wall as they all returned to staring out at the mist.
It was Mist who seemed to feel… something… first. He wuffed in an almost puzzled manner, stretched up to place his paws on the lowest part of the wall and then let out a half-howl, half moan of distress. Then looked at him, puzzled – and then Stannis Baratheon let out an oath. “What in the name of all the Gods is that?”
Theon stared at where the Hand of the King was looking – and then he saw the mist ripple and tear as something huge seemed to rear up just beneath the surface. Theon thought he saw spikes of some sort on a very bony spine and he shivered.
He wasn’t the only one. Barbrey Dustin took a step back and then seemed to move a little slower to Brandon Dustin, who was as grim faced as Theon felt.
“What the fuck was that?” Ygritte almost whispered. “I’ve… I’ve never seen anything like that!”
Brandon Dustin had turned very pale. “Who know what has awakened out there? There were battles against the Others and the things that they created. If some of those spirits – those of the things that the First Men fought against – have awakened…” He stopped speaking, suddenly dumb with horror and his knuckles whitened as he clenched his fists.
A tense silence fell, as Ygritte looked from face to face. “Well? Why aren’t we helping them?”
“We can’t.” Theon said heavily. “They’re too deep into the fog. We’d never find them. And we don’t have anything that could harm whatever that was. And-” He was interrupted by a far-off but still horrible roaring sound that was utterly unearthly and which silenced Barrowtown utterly.
Afterwards he could never remember how long they all stood there, frozen with tension and worry. The fog billowed again and again with the passage of the… whatever the Hells it was. Something huge and horrible and…
It was Stannis Baratheon who said what he was fearing. “It’s hunting them.”
On and on the waiting stretched out, as they watched the fog. Asha’s nostrils were flared with tension and Ygritte had a wild look to her eyes. There was a faint noise of distress to one side and Theon looked over to see a red faced Barbrey Dustin remove a hand from the arm of her late husband’s cousin, as she had obviously been clutching it too hard. “Your pardon,” she said in a small and trembling voice. “If Ned Stark dies out there, then the North will remember me in a way that will be… most ill.”
The waiting stretched on – and then the head of something from his darkest nightmares once again reared out of the fog. It had a lot of teeth and it made a roaring noise that made him shiver again.
He winced at it, wondering what was going on in the midst of that damn fog – and then something happened. The fog seemed to shiver and freeze in place for a moment. And then a shaft of golden light punched its way out of the fog and speared up into the sky, almost too bright to look at. Everyone flinched away a little from it as they raised their hands against their eyes, but then the light faded. There was a long moment of silence, before they all felt the first caress of a wind from the West, not hard but persistent and with every puff the fog started to fade from sight. They watched almost uncomprehending, until finally Theon grinned and punched the air with his fist. “They did it!”
But some of those around him seemed more uncertain about that, until the fog faded completely and a pair of distant figures limped into sight, one helping the other and both swiftly joined by direwolves.
They did not lack for help after that. The people of Barrowtown surged out, with horses for the two to ride, and the cheers shook the skies above them. Theon joined the others as they pattered down the stairs and then waited by the gates, amused by the muttered comments from Ygritte about just how she was going to kill Jon bloody Stark. Her voice was wobbling about like a child’s top.
As the Starks rode in through the gates, flanked by guards in Dustin colours who had acted as an honour guard, Theon hissed a little as he looked at them. Both were battered and had cuts and dried blood on them and Stannis Baratheon at once roared for help for them. There might not have been a Maester at Barrowhall, but there were those who could tend to wounds and hot water, clean cloths and bandages were soon brought out as the two Starks were tended to.
And it was then that Ygritte literally loomed over Jon and prodded him in the shoulder. “What the hell were you thinking, Jon Stark??? Going out there without letting me know!”
“I had to help Father,” Jon said with an air of quiet authority. “If he fell I was the only one who could wield the Fist at the Oathstone.”
This was both true and something that seemed to absolutely enrage Ygritte, who spluttered incoherently and then jabbed at him again with the same finger. Jon just stared into her eyes levelly. “I had to help Father.”
Ygritte stopped poking at him. “You should have told me.”
“Why?”
“I could… I could have…”
“Done what? Waited with the Direwolves?”
This provoked more splutterings – and then Asha nudged at her with an elbow and gave her a look so pointed that it could have been used as an arrow. The wildling girl went white as a sheet and then red – and then she leant down, kissed Jon with an urgent fierceness, slapped him around the face and then stalked off, leaving a flabbergasted Jon looking extremely confused.
For some reason Asha looked smug. “They’ll do very well together,” she whispered to Theon. “Gods know what the children will be like though.”
Ned Stark obviously thought the same thing, but was talking quietly to the others and Theon drifted over.
“We had help at the Oathstone, help you need to hear about,” Lord Stark told Stannis Baratheon and the Dustins. “Willam was there, Lady Dustin.”
Barbrey Dustin went even whiter than Asha had, her hands going to her chest. “Will… Willam? He was there? I mean here?”
“An echo of him. Or so he called himself. He said that he was there because Barrowtown was in peril. He told me to place my hand on the Oathstone. I did, holding the Fist, and told the dead to sleep. They did.”
“That light…” Brandon Dustin said with a look of astonishment on his face. “It came from the Oathstone?”
“It did. And the dead faded from sight, Willam too. And… and the spirits of the Others that were in mist. We battled our way there. And there were… other things that I think that the Others made. Things of sinew and bone. Terrible things. But we made it.”
“Aye,” Lady Dustin muttered. Then she pulled a slight face. “Did… did Willam say anything?”
Lord Stark nodded. “He did. He told you to live. That it saddened him to see you so bitter. And then he was gone, along with the other spirit that was there.” He paused and scratched his head a little in bemusement, obviously trying not to look at Lady Dustin, who was visibly struggling with her emotions. “He said that he was my ancestor and he built a lot of things. I think he must have been Bran the Builder. I didn’t know that he was connected to here.”
“There might be something in the books,” Brandon Dustin muttered, also not looking at Lady Dustin. “I, I mean we, erm, can check.”
“The fog is gone,” Lord Stark said seriously. “The Old Gods willing it will never come back, not until the Call is sent out again – and we will all be long dead by then, with luck. And now we know what the Others might still have North of the Wall. So – we must be about this work of ours.”
There was a long moment of strained silence. And then they went about it.
Jon Arryn
It really did give him the willies, watching people stride on and off the ships moored at the heavily guarded area of the docks. Given what the holds of those ships now carried… He shivered a little and then watched as two people in particular walk off the closest vessel. Prince Oberyn Martel and Ser Davos Seaworth were talking in low, intent but as they drew closer he could hear that they were both content. They were also looking down at something in Seaworth’s hand.
“Is all well?”
The two looked up at him and then nodded simultaneously. “As well as it can be,” Oberyn Martell sighed. “We’ve solved the problem of keeping the barrels in place. Sand at the bottom, sheepskins around the barrels and then there’s the wooden panels on top of them. The thought of nails being used is terrifying, so instead we will use these.” And with that he held out a long nail-like object. He took it and stared at it. There was a spiral flange along its’ length.
“A screw-augur,” Ser Davos said quietly. “Something the Street of Steel is making in great numbers.”
“At his direction,” the Dornishman said with a smile. “It was his idea. And as King’s Landing wants these ships out of this harbour as fast as possible, the Street of Steel is making these things for almost nothing. Tricky to make, some of them go one way and some go the other, but they’re making them as fast as we need them. We’re ready, My Lord and ser. We’re ready. We can add the powders to the barrels tomorrow, screw the lids in place, do the same with the panels and then sail on the first tide.”
“It’ll be good to have the ships out of here. You both intend to sail with them?”
“We are,” Seaworth rumbled. “I’ve assembled a good set of crewmen for the ships. They’re being paid well enough for it and if they never return then their families will be paid a pension. They’re willing to risk being blown to smithereens. And aye, they’ve all been questioned after the incident with that mad Septon.”
Jon felt his scalp crawl a bit. “What incident?”
The other two men exchanged wry glances. “Oh,” said Oberyn Martell, “He was a most earnest and plausible and in no way, erm, stinky fellow who tried to get on board one of the ships, explaining to the guards that as King’s Landing was filled with heathens and corruption and as fire cleansed – and Wildfire really cleansed – it was his sacred duty to ignite the barrels and purge the city of all but the true believers.”
“He was told to bugger off,” Ser Davos said bluntly. “I was going to have him arrested, but apparently he announced that the Seven were with him and would allow him to walk across the Narrow Sea to Andalos where he would be granted great favour by the New Gods. He was last seen floating face-down in Blackwater Bay as the tide took him out.”
Jon pursed his lips a little as he absorbed this information. “Oh woe.”
The other two men laughed a little and then they all turned and walked off towards the horses that were waiting with attendants to one side. But just before they got to them a pair of men stepped towards them, one a Goldcloak and the other a man in rather weatherbeaten clothing. The Goldcloak raised a hand to Ser Davos and they had a quick and muttered conversation before the Onion Knight – he really needed a better name – cleared his throat and turned to Oberyn Martell.
“Prince Oberyn, this man has a message for you from the North.”
Oberyn Martell raised a languid eyebrow at the man, who bowed and then pulled a thick package bound in oilskin out from under his cloak. “My Prince,” he said in the accent of a Dornishman, “I was paid five dragons by an Acolyte Maester in Winterfell called Alleras to deliver this into your hands at all costs.” He coughed a little. “He said that you would match that payment and said that there was a note beneath the oilskin to confirm this.” There was an odd tone to his voice, as if he was trying to say something else that only Oberyn Martell might know.
And the Dornish prince did. After a moment’s pause he reached out, took the package, slit some of the stitching with his knife so that he could unwrap it enough to see the note and then read it carefully. And then he reached into a pocket to pull out a money pouch, extracted five gold dragons and handed them over. “As promised. You have done well. You have my thanks.”
As the man strode off with the Goldcloak Jon raised an eyebrow at Oberyn Martell. “You know this acolyte then?”
“Oh yes,” he grinned back at him with a toothy smile. “I know him very well. You know that I have a daughter called Sarella don’t you?”
Oddly enough it was Ser Davos who worked it out first. “Ah – Alleras is Sarella backwards!”
“Very good, Ser Davos,” the Dornish Prince said approvingly as he opened the rest of the package and then raise his eyebrows at the sheaf of papers inside. “My daughter has sent a veritable near-book of a report.” He looked at them. “I sent her to the North some time ago to investigate the Call. It seems that she has done exactly that. So – I have some reading ahead of me at the Red Keep.”
They hoisted themselves into their respective saddles and then rode off up the hill towards the heart of the city and as they did Jon pondered on how long he would remain here before going home. The Vale was pulling him homewards and there was so much to do in order to meet the challenge that awaited them all. Yes, he needed to see his son again, and Ned, and above all help Robert with this great war that was upon them – but he was also tired. He was no longer a young man, he had had a brush with the Stranger himself and he needed to listen to what his body was telling him. But first he had his duties to perform. And above all there was the issue about Lysa…
The first surprise that greated them at the red Keep was the sight of a familiar plump figure with a bald head, dressed in silks and with his hands up his sleeves. “Varys!”
“Lord Arryn.” The eunuch bowed politely. “Ah, and Prince Oberyn and Ser Davos. I hear that you have been attending to the dangerous cargo in the ships at the docks?”
“We have,” Jon said as he dismounted and handed the reins to a groom. “You have heard much of what has happened?”
“I arrived a few hours ago, but my little birds have tried to keep me updated. It was not easy at times.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “Hearing that we have all being walking about over such huge caches of wildfire was… distressing. And before you ask, no, I never even suspected at such a thing. I knew that Aerys Targaryen was plotting something with his last Hand, but the Mad King made it very clear to me that if I investigated where I wasn’t wanted, I’d be made to swallow a flagon of wildfire at once. As for my trip to Pentos, it was… eventful.”
“You were there when the Braavosi attacked?”
“I was. It was disagreeably… busy, that day. They masked their approach most cleverly and I barely had enough time to get away from the city on the landward side. The Braavosi Navy was very thorough in sweeping up and searching any who fled by sea. Which is why I had to spend far longer on Essos that I had planned.”
“Was there much fighting?” Oberyn Martell asked, his eyes glittering.
The Master of Whispers nodded sadly. “Some of the Magisters thought that they could fight. They were wrong. I left before things got too bad, but I saw much smoke from a distance.”
Jon nodded. War was war. Then he scowled a little. “So, the Braavosi have the Targaryen girl and her dragons.”
“Ah,” Varys said with a tone of voice that made him raise an eyebrow at the eunuch. “No, Lord Arryn. The situation in Pentos that day was most confused, but I have since ascertained that Daenerys Targaryen was not captured by the Braavosi. Instead she seems to have vanished. No-one in Pentos or indeed Braavos knows where she is. Or, for that matter, her dragons. It’s a mystery that I am deploying my little birds to solve.”
“Did one of the Magisters vanish off with her?” Oberyn Martell asked, looking up with a frown from the papers he was leafing through.
“Alas,” Varys said with very little sympathy in his voice, “All the Magisters are accounted for. Those that were not captured were killed in the fighting.”
Humph. A mystery then. He nodded and then they continued through the corridors of the Red Keep, with Varys regaling them with the tale of his escape from Pentos through a gate that was manned by an agent of his. And it was then that they heard Oberyn Martell stop dead behind them with an oath and an exclamation.
The three turned to look at him. The Red Viper of Dorne looked genuinely astonished as he stared down at the papers in his hands. After a moment he seemed to sense their collective gaze and looked up. “Your pardon, my Lords and Ser,” he said in a low, stunned voice. “It would seem that my daughter was North of the Nightfort with two of the sons of Ned Stark, along with Tyrion Lannister and his uncle Gerion. And they met and defeated a force of wights and Others.” He tilted his head to one side. “I do not know if I should chastise her for risking herself like this or shatter into a thousand pieces with pride.”
And then he held out a piece of parchment with a drawing on it. And the images in that drawing made his skin crawl. Sarella Sand could draw very well indeed, the image in front of them almost conveyed movement.
“I think that we need to retire to the Small Council Chamber and read my daughter’s report my Lords and Ser. There is a lot here to consider.”
Varys
Whenever he was away he had a system for the messages from his little birds – they placed the slips of paper into a locked box that had a slot at the top. As long as they numbered them correctly then sorting them out was easy but time-consuming when he returned to his rooms.
At the moment he welcomed the tedium of sorting the slips into the right order and then reading them, losing himself in the relative humdrum task. The Game of Thrones was a finely nuanced one at times, with tides and shifts that sometimes could only be discerned from changes to marriage pacts or fosterings. Right now however the Game was indeed in abeyance, although that would change as the news spread that the King was in possible need of a new bride, who had to be fertile and young and in no way resemble Cersei Lannister.
He really needed that tedium after the mental excitement of the day. Oberyn Martell’s bastard daughter was an excellent artist, whose pictures were detailed. Very detailed. Almost too detailed in their depiction of running wights. It was one thing to see a head in a cage. The images of running wights were disturbing.
And then there had been the other parts of the thick report. The news of Ned Stark’s lightning fast trip South from Castle Black to Winterfell was rather disturbing, although it had not seemed to surprise Jon Arryn. The tale of how Ned Stark had discovered the treason of Cersei and Jaime Lannister had been detailed enough to make Oberyn Martell smirk a lot and Pycelle mutter even more.
But it had been the postscript, hurriedly scribbled at the end, that had made everyone sit up and stare. There had been a drawing as well, one of an old man with forceful features and a hood with horns. Apparently The Green Man – not a Green Man, The Green Man – was in Winterfell. And he had a name, or had once had another name. Ser Duncan the Tall. Once of the Kingsguard of King Aegon the Unlikely. Supposedly dead since the Tragedy of Summerhall.
That had caused a lot of stunned silence and then a lot of scoffing (Pycelle excelling at that) – and then a raven message had arrived from the King that had confirmed it with an almost absent-minded ‘oh by the way, this happened as well, oops I should have mentioned it earlier’ statement. Whereupon the meeting had ended on a note of genuinely stunned silence.
He paused from his labours and stared at the map on the wall again, his eyes finding Summerhall on it almost without thinking. He had always wondered about just what had happened there that night. Princess Rhaella had said at the time that it had been Ser Duncan who had helped her to give birth to Rhaegar, before vanishing back into the burning building, but the body of Ser Duncan the Tall had never been found afterwards. The fires had been too intense to ascertain who had been who afterwards, but King Aegon’s body, along with Prince Duncan, had been identified by their rings.
Ser Duncan the Tall’s body had never been found, although when he had later looked into it he had heard the odd rumour of a tall man in fine clothes who had wandered westwards away from Summerhall in the days after, one arm badly burned. At the time he’d put it down to a servant fleeing, or some other reason, but now? He was no longer sure.
Knuckles rapped against the door and he looked up with a quickly suppressed sigh. He had been expecting this. He slipped out of his chair and went to the door to open it to reveal, as he had thought, Prince Oberyn Martell. The Dornishman smirked at him, gave him an ironic salute with the goblet he was carrying, swaggered in, located a chair at random and then sat on it, before pouring himself a drink from the bottle of wine he was carrying in his other hand. “Ah, Varys!”
“Prince Oberyn.” He returned to his chair, stuck both hands up his sleeves and awaited the inevitable volley of impertinences. “You know, I do have wine in here. You didn’t have to bring your own.”
“Psaw!” Oberyn muttered with a wry glance at him. “I don’t trust you and you don’t trust me. Nor should anyone trust the Red Viper of Dorne. Would you trust any drink that I personally poured?”
He bowed his head a little in acknowledgement, poured himself a goblet of his favourite wine and then saluted the other man with it, who returned the gesture before they both drank.
The Dornishman lowered the goblet from his lips and sighed. “Ah, what a day.”
“Indeed.” He paused. “I must say that your daughter is a very good draughtsman. Her drawings from the Wall are… impressive. And, I have to say, rather…”
“Frightening? Aye. Wights and Others.” His eyes lost their focus for a moment as he obviously thought about what it all meant. “Now we know what the true enemy is.” He sighed, before looking about with some amusement. “I take it that your little birds do not eavesdrop on you?”
“Hardly,” he replied with a certain amount of amusement. “I watch the watchers. And listeners. I take it that you wish to talk about a certain plan that we were discussing?”
Oberyn Martell nodded with a slight air of mournfulness. “It was a decent plan, with shades of a good plan. But it is now a very dead plan.”
He nodded. “Oh, I agree. It was not a perfect plan, but it was one that had a decent chance of working. And now we must plan for a war on the Wall against creatures born of magic.” He shuddered. Magic, how he hated the very idea of it.
Oberyn Martell eyed him carefully. “You do not look happy about that fact.”
He pulled the slightest of faces. “Magic is… well, to use the words of others, inconstant. Unpredictable. These… Others… who knows where they are really from or what they want?”
“Sarella said that they want us all dead.”
“Yes, but why? It seems so senseless.”
“Ancient hatreds,” Oberyn said with a shrug. “It’s a good thing that our plan is dead now. And it is also good that a certain Griffin-like person is dead.” He eyed him sardonically, but Varys merely raised an eyebrow. “I have my own sources in Essos. This morning I heard that there had been a tragic fire on a boat owned by that Griffin-like person, who oddly enough was seen unmoving on the deck of that boat even as it burned. You took your time getting back from Pentos, so I presume that you paid a visit to that boat?”
He smiled thinly in response. “Strange to think that ships that float on water can be so… flammable? As for Old Griff, as I believe that some called him, it’s likely that he ate something that disagreed with him and dropped his lantern. Tragic.”
The Dornishman smiled slightly and sipped from his goblet. “Oh yes, tragic indeed. He had a son didn’t he? Whatever became of him?”
“These kinds of deaths often run in the family. He died, or so I am told. Tragic, as I said.”
This got him a nod. “Very true. Probably for the best. Old Griff could be… somewhat obsessed in his beliefs. In his desire for revenge. That’s what made him so useful.”
“And now, alas, he is dead. A shame.” Varys sipped from his own goblet.
“You really didn’t know about the wildfire, did you?” Oberyn Martell said as he topped up his goblet.
He responded with a somewhat pointed glance. “Do you really think that I would have worked in the Red Keep for so many years with the knowledge that there was a cache of maturing wildfire under me?” He shuddered. “No, I had no idea. I knew that Aerys Targaryen was working on something with his pet pyromancer that he had appointed as Hand of the King, but I did not know about the caches. I was told once that if I pried into the affairs of the increasingly mad king I would end up being forced into a barrel of wildfire.”
The other man nodded slowly. “So,” Oberyn said after a long moment of what might have been mistaken for a companionable silence, “You have Daenerys Targaryen and her dragons somewhere safe and secure?” He grinned at the slight flicker of the eyes that Varys instantly regretted. “I thought as much. You said that neither Pentos or Braavos know where she was and that you were deploying your little birds to find her. However, you did not say that you did not know where she was.”
He raised an eyebrow and was about to reply when the Dornishman waved a hand dismissively. “Don’t tell me where she is, it’s enough to know that she and her dragons are safe.” He sipped from his goblet and then his eyes hardened. “We might need them. No – we will need them.” Then he looked back at him. “Is she sane?”
This was a good question and he paused and thought it over. “Yes,” he said eventually. “I think that she is. At the present moment, anyway.”
Oberyn Martell looked at him doubtfully. “You are sure? Her Father was mad and of her two brothers the elder destroyed his own dynasty over a girl and a prophecy and the younger tried to murder her.”
“I am aware, but so far she more resembles her Mother than any of her male relatives.” He sighed. “However, that is not to say that she will stay sane. We must watch and wait.”
There was another moment of silence and then Oberyn Martell nodded and finished off the wine in his goblet. “Agreed. Keep her safe and watch her. And I will go to the Wall with the wildfire. I will say this much – life isn’t boring at the moment!” And with that he was gone, striding off with his bottle and goblet.
Varys shook his head a little and returned to his messages. There was a lot to be done.
Jaime
The further they rode the more he realised that so far he had barely scratched the surface of seeing the North. And so much of it was just empty, or had once been inhabited. Crumbled towers and ruined castles could sometimes be seen on the horizon, surrounded by trees or choked with ivy.
But then there were also the signs of life. The castles that were being worked on, repaired, the inns that were being refurbished, the farms that were being cleared. Yes, he had seen so much of the same further South, but it was the way that the men around him were reacting that he was picking up.
More often than not they made camp in copses or places that had access to dry brush that could be placed on a fire. Sometimes they stayed at inns, the kind of places that he would have scorned before, but now… even a small bath was now something that he looked forwards to with a sigh of pleasure.
Something else he was looking forwards to was whenever the Seven Hells this bloody short beard he was growing would stop itching.
When they entered the New Gift – how they could tell he had no idea – the muttering increased from the veterans of the Night’s Watch. As far as he could tell the area looked the same as the land to the South, if possibly slightly busier – and then he realised that before the Call it had been the other way around and that in fact there had been areas of both the New and Old Gift that had been all but abandoned.
At one point as they rode one of the older men had stiffened at the sight of a farm being worked on to one side, ridden up to Will, asked something and then on getting a nod had ridden off at the gallop to the farm. An hour later he had rejoined them, snuffling and wiping at his eyes.
“That farm was me Da’s,” he muttered when someone asked him what was amiss. “Grew up there. Me brother inherited it and I joined the Watch. Volunteered, family tradition. Eldest inherits the farm, second to the Wall, others leave for elsewhere. Me brother – Darryl that was – well, he died in a wildling raid when he was trading with another farm, so his son took it over. And he closed up and took his family – wife and three bairns – South because of the raids two years ago. Now he’s back. He’s back. Farming hard. Sons growing. Daughter doing well.” And then he blew his nose on a rag and didn’t say another word for several hours.
Something that nagged at him a little as they rode North after that was that more than a few of the people working in the fields seemed to be wearing furs, or in some cases were stripped to the waist, below which they were wearing furs. Some were in the middle of what looked like intent conversations with men and women who were dressed in less warm clothes that looked better suited.
“Wildlings?” He muttered the word to his neighbour, who nodded and looked as if he wanted to hawk and spit to one side. He eyed the men in furs carefully and then wondered how the people that Father had one described as ‘animals’ were dealing with civilization.
Not too long after that he had his answer when they saw a head on a spike by the side of the road. Will looked about and then raised a hand to stop them, as he called out to a man working in a field to one side. The man strode over and then gestured at the head. “You wondering who he was? A wildling. Fool tried to rape my daughter. She’s got a good set o’lungs on her and we got the shit before he could do anything other than scare her and show what a small cock he had. Then they came.”
“They? They who?”
“The Thenn. Patrols of them go around where the Wildlings are. Knock heads together when they have to.” He looked around at them and then grinned a rather unsettling grin. “Lord Stark told that King beyond the Wall, Rayder, that his Wildlings had to obey the laws of the North when they came South of the Wall. And the Thenn are sworn to Lord Stark. They obey his orders, so when he told them to keep order – they bloody well do it. They listened to what we all had to say and then they had that would-be rapist of my girl on his knees before they took his head clean off with a sword. People respect the Thenn. Scary buggers.”
They rode on after that and he spent some time in thought. If he remembered correctly the Thenn were from a valley to the North of the Wall and wore bronze. And there had been that odd earless man in Winterfell who Tyrion had said was a Magar, or Magnar or something like that, of the Thenn. So Ned Stark had his own private army. Of men armed with bronze. He scoffed internally.
And then, several hours later and as the Sun started to drift down towards the horizon he saw something odd up ahead. Peculiar shapes on things that did not move as horses did. Will spotted them as well and had them pause for a moment. “Giants up ahead,” he said. “On mammoths too. Watch your horses, they might not like the sight or smell of them.” He looked about. “They’ll smell us coming, if this wind keeps true.”
Giants. Tyrion had spoken of them. But it was one thing to hear of them and another to see them. They were like huge shaggy men, covered with what at first he thought were cloths made from fur but which at second glance was actual fur. Their arms were longer than those of a man and their faces subtly different. Seeing them on their mammoths was… well, it drove home everything that Tyrion had told him. If they had not been real enough before, things were certainly real enough now.
He could tell at a glance that the giants – there were about twenty of them – were wary of the men, muttering amongst themselves in… the Language of the First Men? Or something close to that. He listened carefully as the leader of the giants talked to Will, but he did not have Tyrion’s ear for language. Even so he could tell that the Will was a bit surprised by what they said. And then there was the odd thing. At one point the giant doing all the talking seemed to sniff the air with great snuffling snorts – and then looked straight at Jaime for a moment. Will talked to them a bit more and then rejoined them.
“Giants are heading South out of the Gift,” he told the group as they rode on. “They were the last of their kind to come South of the Wall, so they’re joining their kind on the Eastern foothills of the Northern Mountains, away from men like the Mountain Clans and their fields of barley that their mammoths think is grass.” Then he shook his head in thought. “They were talking to Lord Umber about breeding a hairier kind of cattle. They’re good at husbandry. Good at growing things too.” He caught the baffled look that was on Jaime’s face. “They eat no meat, Lannister. Ignore the tales. They don’t eat men. They’re just wary of us.”
“Why?”
“You,” Will said grimly. “They smelled you.”
Baffled, he stared at the man. “Smelled me? Do I smell so bad?”
Will shook his head. “No, they smelt the magic on you, or at least I think that’s what they said. The giants said that the eyes of the Old Gods were on you, but could not say if that was good or bad.”
The other men looked at him, as unsettled as he now felt. He almost wanted to stare at the sky. Wasn’t that where the Old Gods were? Or were they in the white trees?
“Is the GreatJon on the road then?” Herrick, a slight dark-haired man who seemed almost ambivalent to Jaime compared to the others at times, asked as they resumed their ride.
“Aye,” said Will and true enough they soon encountered him as they reached a large inn on the road and secured rooms for the night. The inn looked as if it had recently been expanded, given the fresh look of some of the walls, but fortunately the party from the Last Hearth was a small one.
Not that Jaime was keen to meet the Lord of the Last Hearth. The last time he had seen the great oaf was at Pyke, but the time before that had been at the Red Keep. Both times he had regarded Jaime as a piece of dung on his boot. He was loud, boisterous, ate a lot, drank a lot and sang a lot when drunk. And he hadn’t changed very much. He reminded him of the Fat King before the Call. So Jaime kept his head down, unsaddled his horse, scrubbed the stink of the road off with a pitcher of hot water and some rags and then chose the darkest corner of the main room of the inn to get some supper.
It sort of worked. He heard Will walking to the Loud Lord of the Last Hearth, who was incapable of talking softly and who confirmed that yes he had been talking to giants to get some ideas about a different kind of cattle. He avoided people’s eyes and waited until at last a serving girl brought him some mutton in gravy with bread and a mug of ale.
As he ate and drank he brooded. The eyes of the Old Gods were on him, were they? He didn’t know what to make of that. Should he be fearful? What were they watching him for? What was happening to him? All of a sudden, over these past months, everything that he thought he knew had been upended, ripped up, destroyed. His sins had been discovered, he had been condemned despite the good deeds that he had done – good deeds that had placed King’s Landing at risk.
It took an effort to swallow; the food and drink were as ashes in his mouth. He looked up as the men and women in the room laughed at something that the large-boned Lord of the Last Hearth had said – and all of a sudden he had to get out. The room was too hot all of a sudden, the laughter too loud, the smells of the food and the people too much. He stood quietly and slipped out, seeking the door to the outside.
As he closed the door behind him and inhaled the cool air he looked up. The stars were shining down on him and he realised that the hour was later than he had realised. Somewhere those same stars were shining down on Tyrion and his Dacey, on Tommen and Myrcella and… Cersei.
Cersei. She was the reason why he was here, she was the reason why all of his decisions in the past decade and a half had been wrong, foolish, stupid. He both loved and hated her now. He’d warned her that they could be found out, but she’d always laughed and told him now to be silly. Well, now here he was. A ruined former Kingsguard, shamed beyond measure, an embarrassment to his family, now headed to a life of service in exile at the arse end of the world. Fighting the snarks and grumkins that he once doubted even existed.
He looked out at the darkened landscape bleakly and then he reached up and his fingers closed around the pouch that hung around his neck and which held the ashes of his white cloak. For a moment he wanted to pull that pouch off, hurl it at the Moon and then walk off into the darkness, to walk until he couldn’t walk any more and then crawl away to die on some naked hillside of hunger or thirst or exposure. Would that be desertion though? Would the Old Gods kill him quickly or slowly for walking away? He’d sworn an oath on the Fist of Winter. Would he die like Bootle had, according to Tyrion? Or… what?
All of a sudden he realised that he was not alone. He turned his head and saw that for such a large man GreatJon Umber could move surprisingly quietly. “Umber.”
“Lannister.” The big man tilted his head a little and looked at him. “Saw you slip out. I’ve seen that look on the face of a few men before.”
“What look?”
“The look of a man who wants to stop living.” He shook his head. “It seems that there are a lot of men of the North who owe you their lives, including me.” He laughed harshly. “Gods, I always thought you an oathbreaking little cunt who liked to lick your father’s arse. And now all kinds of truths have been unearthed. You killed Aerys to save King’s Landing. Not your father’s army, not the rebel army, the ordinary people of King’s Landing. You’ve got balls on you, lad.”
He looked away. “I should have told someone,” he said thickly after a moment. “About the wildfire.”
“It’s been secured,” the GreatJon grunted as he stepped forwards. “Got a raven the other day. King’s Landing is safe.”
He felt his shoulders relax a little. “Good.”
The GreatJon looked him up and down again. “So, you’re bound for the Wall now.”
“I am.”
“I was told you swore your oath on the Fist, in front of the Old Gods, with red fire in the eyes of Ned Stark. I’ve been there when that happened. Almost scared me shitless.”
Now that was a terrifying thought. And then Jaime jumped a little as the large man next to him laid a huge hand on his shoulder. “The Wall and the Night’s Watch is honourable service, Lannister. Don’t be stupid and try and end yourself – aye, like I said, I’ve seen it before. Winters are hard up here and there are times when a man’s gone for a ‘walk’ in the snow and never returned because his portion of food can be given to his children or grandchildren.
“No, there’s a fight ahead for you. I’m told you’re a good swordsman. There’s going to be a war on the wall. You’re needed. You know what’s out there now. Wights. Others. Creatures from nightmares. They’re fighting…” The big man visibly struggled for words. And then, after a great shout of laughter came from the inn, he hooked a thumb back at it. “They’re fighting against that. Life. Laughter. Song. They want to pinch us out like you snuff out a candle. No more songs. No more life. No babes being born. No life. Just death. You, me, your brother, everyone – dead. If you’re going to fight for anything, fight for that.” He remembered that nightmare he had had about the fall of the Rock and shuddered a little.
Another slap on the shoulder almost sent him reeling as the GreatJon turned and then winked at a giggling barmaid who had truly impressive cleavage and who was waiting at the door. “Fight for a pretty face and tits to bury your face in!” It was an odd battlecry, but then he was gone.
Jaime stood in the dark and clutched at the pouch again. And then he sighed and went back inside. He needed ale and sleep.
Jon Stark
There wasn’t a Maester in Barrowtown, but there were various people who could patch people up and he had to admit that they had done a fairly good job on Father and himself. The stitches itched a bit, days later, but he was pleased with himself afterwards. Barrowtown had rejoiced, free of the mysterious fog, free of the fear of the voices in the fog.
Before they’d left on the way South Father had taken Lord and Lady Dustin – who had been tip-toeing around each other like two cats around a patch of sunlight – into Lady Dustin’s solar and then talked to them for just short of an hour. Whatever had been said in that room he did not know, but he did note that the two were standing closer together at the gate to see them off than they had ever been before, by his estimation at least.
Father had only grunted “Gods, I wish Cat was here to knock their heads further together,” and then acknowledged the cheers of the crowd before saying just one word more: “Ride!”
And now here they were, sailing South down the Barrow River. Apparently Asha Greyjoy’s ship would join them when the river joined the sea and then they would separate into their respective parties and sail off.
If there was one thing that he was already grateful for on this trip, it was that it had driven home how little he ever wanted to be King of anything. Stannis Baratheon would occasionally have messages delivered via message pouches by riders from nearby holdfasts in the few places where they could dock. And by all the Gods many of those messages were, in the words of the Hand of the King, “Nothing but dross” – messages from all kinds of Lords for favours or about minor matters. And some of them were so minor that he wanted to laugh in astonishment.
But, as Father put it, great matters were made from a thousand small things. And he never wanted to deal with that many small things. He was going to be very happy with a castle of his own here in the North. If, that is, he survived the war on the Wall.
And if he survived this bloody voyage, because he was increasingly sure that Ygritte Redhair was trying to drive him raving mad. She seemed to be as inconstant as the wind, blowing at him from one direction and then another. She went from laughing at him with Asha Greyjoy, to making comments about his arse that made his cheeks flame, to just giving him challenging looks. He had no idea at times what to do.
So now, after a particularly annoying bout of giggling by Ygritte and Asha about him, he stomped away from them both, up along the deck and then stood by the mainmast and fumed quietly, with Ghost watching him. Far ahead of him Father was talking quietly with Lord Stannis.
“You shouldn’t let them get to you that much.”
He turned to one side and saw that Theon Greymist was sitting to one side, Mist next to him, both staring at the shore as it passed by. “I thought you were in your cabin.”
“I’m here. Staring and thinking.”
“What about?”
The former Ironborn pulled a face. “Within a week I’ll be face to face with my father again. The father whose legacy and heritage I’ve renounced. I’ve been rehearsing what to say to him. He’ll be angry, he’ll shout about me becoming a Greenlander, he’ll tell me I’m a disgrace to the name of House Greyjoy, before giving me orders about going back to the King and demanding I take it all back…” He shrugged. “I’ll just tell him that what’s done is done. I am of the North now. A Greenlander.” He ran his hand affectionately over the top of Mist’s head, smiling a little as the direwolf tried to lick his hand. Yes, he had changed.
“We’ll be with you,” Jon muttered. “And the Hand of the King. Your father will try in vain to order you about.”
A complex look flashed across Theon’s face, a combination of dread, fear, resolve and determination. “If he orders that Mist be harmed I’ll kill him myself.” There was a long moment of silence – and then Theon looked at him wryly. “Father won’t be happy with my choice of a wife. But damn what he says.”
Jon looked back at him. “You are sure about this? I mean… Theon, she’s…” He could not finished the sentence.
“She’s a whore,” Theon said with a grim smile, before shrugging. “I love her. She loves me. I don’t care what people will say. I have a chance to be happy and I mean to take it. You know what’s coming at the Wall. I might not survive the War. But I’ll do my best to found a House Greymist on the Stony Shore and build the North a fleet for its Western approaches. And maybe in a hundred years my descendants will just be known as a bit less Ironborn and a bit more Northern.” He shrugged. “It’s my decision. And you need to be happy too. Marry that Ginger of yours.”
“She’s a Wildling! Or rather Free Folk, you know… It’s not that easy Theon. I’m a Stark now. And I don’t know what she wants. She drives me mad sometimes.” He looked at the prow of the boat, where Stannis Baratheon had finished his talk with Father and was now walking back along the other side of the ship.
“She wants you,” Theon grinned. “So don’t be so daft. Stop brooding, you daft bugger. Take a chance and be happy.” He sighed and then looked at the shore again.
Jon left him there, obviously thinking again about the talk with Balon Greyjoy that was to come, and then strode up to Father, who was standing near the bowsprit as the wind ruffled his hair. “Father.”
“Jon.” Father looked at him and then looked back along the length of the ship at the others. “How goes things?”
“Theon is set on marrying Ros, no matter what anyone else says, Asha Greyjoy has been telling the Captain that if he reset his sails a bit this ‘lubbersome scow’, whatever that means, might move faster and Ygritte is… being herself.”
Father actually laughed at this and then shook his head. “You’ll come to understand women, in time.” He tilted his head. “I did. Eventually. As for Theon… I understand what he’s doing. He’s changed a lot. He had to. We accept him, and that’s the important bit. As for Ygritte… well, she’s a challenge.”
He looked at Father, confused. “I thought that you’d be against me pursuing her. I mean… I’m a Stark now and she’s… she’s a Wildling.”
Father’s face stilled for a moment and then he turned to look downriver. “What do you see?”
Confused he also looked in the same direction. “I don’t understand. The river?”
“Alright… what don’t you see?”
Now he was really confused. “I’m sorry Father, but… what?”
And now Father sigh a little. “How many towns have we sailed past? Villages? Docks? How many boats have we seen? Not big ships like this, rowing boats or coracles?”
Jon looked at the river. “Not many,” he conceded. “Why?”
“The North is huge, Jon. But its population is not. The people are brave and hardy and now how to farm here – but aren’t numerous, not compared to the South. Life here is hard. We’ve had pestilence and hard Winters. And the hardest Winter of all since ancient times is coming.” Father turned to him and Jon swallowed at the intent look on his face. “And we have been given a chance to increase the population of the North by many thousands. Not through the Call. But by letting the Wildlings past the gates on the Wall.”
Understanding blossomed. “You want to add the Wildlings to the North?”
“I do.” Father placed a hand on his shoulder. “I talked to Mance Rayder a lot before we left Winterfell. He thinks the same way that I do on this. We do not know how long this war on the Wall, this Second Long Night, will last. Rayder led more than a hundred thousand South of the Wall, and the exact number is still climbing. Those who live beyond the Wall find life South of it easier than where they lived before. They grew crops North of the Wall in some places – think of what they can do in the Gift, the New Gift and South of there!”
He thought about this for a long moment and then nodded reluctantly – before a thought occurred to him. “But… won’t they want to return to their homes afterwards?”
“Will they?” Father tilted his head. “If they have good lives South of the Wall, why should they? Yes, there are some who will refuse to bend the knee, and they will be able to return to North of the Wall after this war is over. But there are others who have agreed already to obey our laws, the laws of the North, whilst they live amongst us. And they will get used to that. They’ll settle in areas and grow crops and build houses to live in during the coming Winter… and they’ll get used to that. Being safe. Warmer climes then they’ve been used to. Now that we know what went wrong, between the Wildlings and the Night’s Watch – aye, and the North as a whole – we can mend things. Make things better. We and they share the same blood – the blood of the First Men. We should be allies, not enemies. That’s my goal. I’ve talked this over with Robb and Rayder. And now you know my intentions. So – we need to make the Wildlings think that we no longer regard them as scum. It’ll take time. Effort. Marriage alliances. All kinds of things.”
He stood there for a long moment, feeling stunned. “You… you would not look amiss at a marriage between a Stark and a Wildling?”
Father smiled at him. “No, and I would be a hypocrite if I did. At least one Lord Stark in the past has been half-Wildling. The Pack does what it can do to survive. And I will do everything that I can to let the North survive the Winter that comes – and then thrive after that.”
“You’re planning for after the war – before the war has been fought?”
And now Father looked at him in a truly intent manner. “Always have a plan. A lord who does not plan is no lord, not here in the North or anywhere! You must always have a vision for your people – and then let them know that you have such a plan. They will know then that you are thinking of them, of their well-being. And they know that you know that you are planning for victory.”
Jon nodded slowly. “I understand Father.”
“Good. Because Winter is coming.” And with that they both looked downstream.
Chapter 46: Chapter 46
Chapter Text
Robb
Temptation was a terrible thing. Grey Wolf’s reaction to having a piece of bacon or a lamb chop dangled before his eyes was to try and lunge for it as fast as possible. He had to exercise more patience than that himself. He knew how badly he had handled things in that world that was now no more. Marrying Jayne Westerling had been the path of honour but not the path of political sense. Had he loved her, truly? With all his heart? He could not say. He had told himself he had, but how real had that been? And the cost… Seeing Lord Westerling again, even if the man had been perfectly respectful, dutiful even, had been a wrench back to those last moments in the dark hall at The Twins.
And now here he was, free to marry anyone he wanted – up to a point. He knew that he had to take this matter more carefully than before, that he had to make a match that would strengthen the North as it faced this moment of peril. A second Long Night. The danger from north of the Wall that he had never known existed in that other time. A danger every bit as deadly as the long arm of Tywin Lannister – more so in fact.
He couldn’t marry Val. It would be a terrible mistake, he was sure of it – too many Lords in the North would look askance at it. She was a Wildling and even if the Wildlings were now allied to the North, even if Father’s great plan to bind them to the North worked in the long term, there were still too many memories of Wildling raids, of theft, of murders, kidnappings and rapes. No, many lords in the North expected him to marry someone safe and Northern, like Dacey Mormont or one of the Karstark girls. Others even hoped that he might marry someone like Margaery Tyrell, allying the North firmly to the huge harvests of The Reach. He’d never met the girl, but a lot of people talked of bounteous harvests a great deal when they spoke of her, so it might have also been a reference to her chest. He wasn’t sure.
Val instead was merely the goodsister to Mance Rayder, the sort-of former King Beyond the Wall and the man who was probably going to head up House Rayder when the King reached the Wall and made sure that the Wildlings were behaving themselves. She was beautiful, brave, extremely capable, clever – she knew that was all but a hostage in Winterfell – and above all she was lethal with that knife of hers. Some men had been a bit free with their language around her. She’d smilingly promised to geld the first man who tried his luck too far. From the way that she’d handled that dagger Robb and everyone else had believed her.
She was also easy to talk to, careful in her judgements, respectful of the North and… something else, something that he could not put his finger on. Conversations with her were something to be remembered afterwards, treasured even, because she always got to the heart of the matter.
And now here he was, after saying goodbye to her just moments before, walking down a corridor and resisting, no, fighting the urge to go back and talk to her again. He sighed. Grey Wind was hunting again with the other Direwolves and that was something else that he needed to think about – with every day that passed his connection with his Direwolf grew stronger and deeper, as if a key had been turned in his mind. He needed to-
Someone let out a noise that he knew at once was the sound of someone dying very quickly and violently not too far away and he turned on the spot, his hand going to the long knife that he always made sure he had on him at all times. Then there was a horrible cracking noise, a choking gurgle, the sound of a body hitting first stonework and then the floor – and then as he stared down the corridor in the direction of all of this something was flung into view from a side corridor. It hit the floor with a dreadful wet noise. It was a severed lower jaw of a human being. And then Robb heard the beginning of what sounded like a shout of alarm. A female voice. Cut short with an ‘Urk’ of shock.
He darted down the corridor quickly to the junction and then looked at a scene of horror. The Mountain was standing there, looking as if he had dressed in a hurry. At his feet lay the dreadful remains of the two Lannister guardsmen that he knew had been detached to watch the unstable brute of a man at all times. Both of their heads were horribly mangled and one had lost his lower jaw. But that was not what drew his horrified attention. The Mountain was holding Val by the throat in what looked like a grip of iron – her face was going red and she was scrabbling for her dagger.
“CLEGANE!” Robb roared the word with fury and not a little fear – the man looked as if he was deranged. Not that the roar disturbed him – the Mountain reached out with his free hand, grabbed the front of Val’s bodice and ripped downwards, tearing the cloth off her. Her dagger was in her hand now and she stabbed desperately at the Mountain’s arm. Blood flew as she sliced a truly wicked cut – but Gregor Clegane did not utter a word. Val’s eyes met Robb’s and he could tell that she was terrified.
“CLEGANE!” He bellowed the word again and then darted down the corridor, his eyes searching for a better weapon. The guards had had knives as well, not that they had done them much good and he wished, desperately, for a sword. Perhaps if he leapt on Clegane’s back and held his knife to his neck? He prepared to throw himself at the huge man – and then with a jerk and a speed that he hadn’t thought the man had, the Mountain released Val and her torn bodice and whirled to face him.
He realised then what had terrified Val, who had slumped to the ground, taking in air with great whooping gulps. The Mountain’s eyes were jet black, every part of them, and his face was blank of all emotion. The huge man looked at him impassively – and then he lunged at him. Robb slashed at one upraised hand and then ducked under the other, but it was horribly close and he knew that if the Mountain got a hold of him he was as good as dead. He dodged, slashed and then hurled himself back as one huge fist passed through the spot where his head had been a heartbeat before.
This was a desperate fight for time and life and he wished that he had the breath to spend on a scream for help, but he needed every gasp of terrified air that he could snatch. He slashed again at a lunging hand, drawing a lot of blood, and then danced back again.
And then, suddenly, the Mountain shuddered and looked down and he could see that the half-naked Val had plunged her knife into the back of the man’s knee, before scrabbling back as fast as she could, searching for another knife from one of the dead guards. The Mountain looked at her and then turned to confront Robb again – who used the opportunity to drive his knife into the right eyeball of the Mountain, driving it home with the heel of his other hand.
The Mountain stood there and quivered for a long moment – too long. Robb’s spirits had soared for a moment, before plummeting as the Mountain jerked forwards yet again to try and punch him. He was clumsier then before, but how in the name of the Old Gods could a man with a dagger in his head and another embedded in his knee still be walking and fighting? He fell back, until he heard a weak call of “Robb!” and then looked down as one of the dead guards’ knives clattered at his feet, thrown by Val. He dived down to get it and then staggered as a great fist grazed his forehead. It was just a near miss but it still came close to dazing him and he reeled back, the knife barely in his hand.
There was a wall now behind him and he gripped the knife more firmly and prepared to sell his life dearly. At least he was leading the man – or whatever he was – away from Val. His head was ringing and he shook it to try and clear it as the Mountain brought up another massive fist. But then, before it could be swung at him there was a crunching noise and then the bloodied tip of a sword emerged from the chest of Gregor Clegane. The huge man froze, looked down slowly and only then did he slump down to his knees, revealing the form of a panting Sandor Clegane, who looked as if he had run quickly. Far behind him, holding her hands to her face, was the maid that he had seen flirting with the Hound.
The Mountain looked at him – and then his remaining eye flashed between black and blue. “You fucking great idiot,” the Mountain suddenly said in words of almost amused despair that sounded nothing like his normal voice, “That’s the wrong bloody Stark.”
Robb stared at him – and then he rammed his borrowed knife straight into that eye and twisted it as hard as he could. The Mountain jerked again, drool dribbling from his mouth – and then Robb nodded at the Hound, who pulled his sword free and then, with one mighty swing, hacked the head of his brother off his shoulders.
As the head bounced wetly on the floor Robb nodded in gratitude at the Hound. “My thanks, Clegane.” And then he pulled off his jerkin and staggered over to Val, giving it to her so that she could cover her exposed breasts. “Are you alright?”
“You saved my life,” she said hoarsely. “I owe you a great debt.” She stared at the body of the Mountain. “He was possessed.”
Robb nodded, his attention torn between Val and the Hound, who was on his knees now as he stared at the body of his monstrous brother. And then Val reached at his face, pulling it around. “Burn his body,” she hissed vehemently. “Burn it. Something dark had him.” She paused, her eyes searching his face, searching for words. So he did what he had wanted to do for some time. He kissed her passionately. Yes, he was being a fool again.
Jaime
By the time that they caught sight of Castle Black he had finally – more or less – started to cope with the impact that the Wall had taken on him. The moment that he had seen it for the first time, that line of white on the horizon, he’d pulled a slight face. And then, when he heard that they were still a day or more from it, he’d uneasily remembered what Tyrion had said about it. Yes, it was something that had to be seen to be believed.
Men would not have built such a thing if they had not had a truly pressing reason. An enemy. Something to the North that truly terrified them. They had built it and then they had maintained the bloody thing. And that was the thing that scared him. If the wights were real then what else lay beyond the Wall? He remembered Tyrion’s tale of the Others that he had fought – his little brother, fighting for his life! And he remembered the look on Tyrion’s face. There had been fear on it. Resolution as well, but fear as he described things that were so… inhuman.
So as they rode towards the gates, the gates that had a trickle of people travelling in both directions, he had to admit to a certain trepidation that he was trying to supress. The Wall loomed over them all, massive, oppressive even.
This was his future. He’d live and die here. There was no doubt about that in his mind, not now. War was marching on the Wall, he could almost smell it. He’d been wondering what the various ghosts who were flitting about his shoulders would have thought of that. What would Aerys have thought? Simple – it was all a plot and the North would have to burn for it. Rhaegar? Had Rhaegar foreseen it, in those strange moments that the man had, with his obsession with the Song of Ice and Fire? If he had, then why had he helped his father set the Realm on fire? What had he seen on the Isle of Faces?
As they approached the gates one of the men around him pulled out a horn and sent up a short blast with it, which was met with an upraised spear by one of the men at the entrance. Some of the people coming through the gate heading South were covered in furs and looked thin and tired, but looking as if they were only just starting to realise that they were now safe.
Inside the gates he could see that the place was abuzz with activity. Waggons were being loaded and unloaded, all kinds of tools and weapons visible. A forge was being used to one side, the sound of several men pounding on iron ringing in the air. And someone in the distance was singing a song about someone or something called Lionfang, a song that he’d never heard of before.
As he dismounted he could see that Will was already striding up to a thin-faced man in black who was talking to a pair of men in bronze armour. He seemed to be searching for words at times, using gestures that the other seemed to think about and then nod at. They talked for a few moments longer and then the two men in bronze nodded formally, brought sheathed knives to their chests in an odd gesture and then walked away. The thin faced man watched them go with an odd look to his face, before turning to greet Will with a nod. As they talked Jaime frowned slightly. Ah. He remembered him now. Thorne. Alliser Thorne. A Targaryen loyalist that Father had exiled to the Night’s Watch.
Thorne’s gaze turned to him and he concealed a sigh. He knew what was coming. And true enough Thorne stalked over to him and then looked him over from head to toe before smiling a very thin and utterly humourless smile. “Ah. The Kingslayer. Here, at last, years late.”
He pulled a slight face, as if trying to remember the name of the man. “I think I remember you from King’s Landing. Rose, isn’t it? Or something like that.”
The thin smile didn’t waver at all. “Oh, I remember you. The arrogant little whelp of Tywin Lannister, with your pretty, shiny, armour.” The smile vanished and he sniffed contemptuously. “Well, so much for your armour. You’re at the Wall now. And for all your japes about forgetting my name – well, you know it, I see it in your eyes. If anyone up here forgets yours we’ll just call you Kingslayer. Or Sisterfucker. We know all about what you did and why you did it. All of it.” Something flickered in his gaze.
“You know why I killed Aerys Targaryen then,” Jaime said softly. “Why I did what I did.”
“I know,” Thorne said through gritted teeth. And then, after a visible struggle: “You saved the city. Aeyrs was mad. But you never told anyone why you did what you did.” The man pulled a face again. “Well. Now you’re here. With us. On the Wall. Fighting against things from your darkest nightmares. At least you’ve sworn your oath. And I don’t need to tell you that if you break it – you’ll die.”
“I know.” The words felt as tired as he felt. “I swore it on the Fist of Winter.”
Some of the watching men muttered at that, with a few walking off and then talking with many a backwards look at him. He had no doubt that some were laying bets on if he’d ever try to break his oath and if so – the manner of his death.
Thorne swept him with another gaze that combined contempt with scorn. “There’s quarters prepared for you. You’ll need equipment. But get up to the Maester first to get that scar of yours looked at.” And then he walked away from him, dismissing him.
He gazed about the place for a long moment, before walking off and asking for directions. A woman with a piercing gaze and the garb of a Wildling led him to a door in the largest building, where she knocked carefully and then after a muffled ‘Come!” ushered him in.
The Maester of Castle Black was impossibly old – but then, as the man looked up from the letter that he seemed to be writing, Jaime felt a shudder roll through him as the sight of those violet eyes reminded him that the Maester of Castle Black was a Targaryen. For a moment he stood there, almost rooted to the spot, before the woman jabbed him in the back and he stumbled forwards.
“My thanks, Jenn,” the old man said with a wry smile. “Ah. Ser Jaime Lannister is it not? Your description was passed on. And you have the look of a Lannister.”
He nodded abruptly, gestured at his cheek and then sat heavily on the nearest seat, his mind on the past. “You…” his throat was dry. “You are Aemon Targaryen.”
The old man looked at him with those impossibly young eyes, before quirking his lips for a moment almost in amusement. “I am,” he acknowledged. I am also the Maester of Castle Black, pledged to the Night’s Watch for almost twice the age that you have been alive. Let me take a look at that scar and those stitches that I feel should be removed.”
What followed was a little painful as the stitches were carefully observed and then pulled out, before the scar was stared at most intently. “Well now,” the old man said as he washed his hands in the bowl of hot water that Jenn had brought in. “You have been lucky my boy. Luwin did a fine job on that scar of yours, with excellent stitches. It should not leave as much of a scar as you might have thought – a fine white line perhaps. Given the circumstances it might have been worse. That said, don’t scratch it, no matter how it itches.”
“Thank you,” Jaime said, staring at his boots. “I… thank you.”
“I sense unspoken words in the air,” the Maester sighed. “Ser Jaime, I do not blame you or hate you for killing my mad great-nephew. Aerys was quite insane at the end and word has reached us about why you killed him. I know it could not have been easy, but you killed him for the right reasons, something that few else could have done at the time. My boy – you were right. About that at least anyway.”
The tightness in his chest loosened a little. “I still… I still should have saved the others.”
The old man smiled wryly at him. “You could not have known what your father was planning. Tywin Lannister always did prefer the darker gambits of the Game of Thrones. A brutally direct man, at times, your father. That said… here we are now. On the Wall. Facing the war that truly matters. We must place the past behind us.” He hefted the wet cloth and wiped it carefully over the scar. “May I ask what is in that pouch?”
Jaime pulled a face. He thought for a moment about lying or just leaving, but he was tired and wearied in his own mind. “The ashes of my white cloak. Ser Barristan Selmy said that I should keep it with me to remind me of what I should be. And… and Uncle Gerion said that he’d had a Greendream about that pouch, that I need to keep it with me, as without it I’ll lose myself.”
The Maester of Castle Black stiffened when he heard the words ‘Greendream’. “Ah,” he said carefully. “Greendreams. Strange, nebulous things. Not things to be ignored. Never that.” He fixed Jaime with an intent look. “Your uncle and his son have them. I think that your brother might be touched by them. And you?”
Confused, he shook his head. “I… don’t know. Are they of the future?”
“Sometimes. A future amongst many perhaps. Your brother once told me of a dream he had had about leading the remains of the men of the Westerlands from Casterley Rock after the Others and their wights had taken it.”
He remembered the dream he had had and he blanched a little. But then he shook his head. “Madness.”
Aemon Targaryen looked at him for a long moment, his head tilted slightly to one side. “Tell me about it when you are ready,” he said shrewdly. “In the meantime – be welcome to Castle Black.”
He nodded, acknowledged the presence of the silent witness to all this, the woman Jenn, and then walked to the door. Then he paused. “There was someone singing a song in the courtyard when I arrived. Something about ‘Lionfang’. I was curious. What’s that about?”
“Oh, just a song about your brother Tyrion,” the Maester said with a cheerful smile. “You should listen to it.” And with that he returned to his desk, as Jenn fussed around him.
Tyrion
He stood there, watching the funeral pyre, watching the Mountain burn. The pyre had been built outside the walls of Winterfell, built to the exact specifications that he and Maester Luwin had drawn up – designed to burn hard and fast and as thoroughly as possible.
He was the only person there, at the pyre. No-one was there to mourn Ser Gregor Clegane. No-one probably would ever mourn the man. He had been fundamentally unlovable. Had anyone ever loved him? Perhaps his parents, when he was a child. Before he’d done such terrible things. Well, not now. Sandor Clegane was conspicuous in his absence at the pyre. He was doubtless with the maid he had been escorting back to his room when she had heard the noises that turned out to be Gregor fucking Clegane indulging in his favourite pastime of gratuitous, pointless, violence, before trying to kill Rob Stark and Val.
He sighed as he watched the body burn. Wretched, wretched, man. All that Clegane had ever done had been to ruin people’s lives. At least he’d been put out of whatever misery he had been in. Tyrion had long suspected that there had been something very, very, wrong with him. Had he hit his head as a child? Had there been some injury to his brain? It would explain so much.
Something shifted in the pyre and he tensed a little and then looked back at the walls of Winterfell off behind him. That was something that everyone had agreed on – that the body should be burned away from Winterfell, downwind of any habitation. He looked back. No, it was just the pyre collapsing a little as the body burned. He shook his head a little. It had been bad enough when the head had twisted a little as the muscles and tendons within it had tightened in the fire, making it grin in a deaths-head rictus for a long moment that had made his heart pound in fear for a long moment.
He looked down at the Warnings. They had long since stopped glowing that ugly red colour and vibrating in his hands as if they were trying to get away from the body. That had shaken him. It had been Dacey’s idea to test the body as if it had been a wight. The red glow and the vibrations had shocked everyone to stillness – and then to immediate action. The pyre had been designed. The body (and severed head) had been dragged off with hooks and ropes, the blood had been soaked up with sawdust that had been brushed into buckets and later used on the pyre and above all no-one had wanted to even lay a finger on the corpse of Ser Gregor fucking Clegane. Val’s words of “He was possessed by dark magic!” had resonated throughout Winterfell.
A lot of oil and cooking fat had been poured over the body, at the express desire of Lady Stark, and it had been worth it. The pyre roared once again as the body slipped down into the heart of the flames as more wood gave way and he sighed, stared at the Warnings carefully once again – and only then did he walk off back to Winterfell, careful to walk around the pyre and avoid the greasy flames.
There was a pair of rather worried guards on the main gates of Winterfell and as he approached them he held up one of the Warnings and pulled it partly out of its sheath. “They’ve stopped glowing,” he reassured them. “It’s gone, whatever it was.”
“That’s good to hear, my Lord,” one of them sighed, looking relieved. “Lord Robb sent word asking that you go to Lord Stark’s Solar, where your wife is.”
He nodded and then trudged off. What a day. He was so tired. The aftermath of The Mountain’s attack on Robb and Val had been total chaos – a lot of shouting, a lot of staring and above all a lot of absolute fury on his part. Gregor fucking Clegane. The man had been a walking disaster, killing on a whim and spreading his own brand of horror on the world. And he had been from the Westerlands.
He narrowed his eyes as he stumped determinedly down the corridor. When had all this started? Why had The Mountain not accompanied Father to Castle Black? What had been going through what passed for the man’s brain? He had too many questions and not enough answers.
As he approached the Solar he tilted his head a little in surprise. There was no sound coming from the room. However the guard nodded at him, knocked on the door and then allowed him in. There were five people in the room, all sitting around a table and all staring at a large and old book as if it was in fact a bag of snakes. Robb Stark had a bruise on his forehead and looked strained. He was next to Val, who had what looked like the beginning of a truly spectacular bruise on her neck and who was wearing a dress that was very Northern. Lady Stark was on the other side of Robb, pale-faced and worried. Then there was Maester Luwin, who had an indecipherable look on his face, his hands tucked up his sleeves and last but, actually first in his thoughts, Dacey, who turned to look at him and then smiled, hurried over and kissed him.
“You need to see this,” she said softly.
He nodded at her, walked over to the nearest chair at the table and sat on it, before pulling out one of the Warnings. “He’s as dead as dead can be,” he muttered. “The Warnings have stopped glowing and shuddering in my hands.” He shook his head. “When the fire dies down I suggest that the ashes of the wretched man be collected and then thrown into the nearest river. That or a small hole in the ground.”
There was a collective nod of various heads and then Tyrion looked at the current Stark in Winterfell. “Robb, on behalf of… I mean, as the most senior Lannister here, I would like to apologise for the attack of one of our bannermen on you.”
“Rubbish, cousin – or good-cousin, or whatever it is,” Robb snorted. “There’s nothing to apologise for. The man was possessed.” He pointed at the book. “And we think we know how.”
Tyrion peered at the book. It was old – at least a century or more at least – and it had a name on the spine that was faint in places and… He felt his eyes widen to a ridiculous extent. The title was ‘Fel Practices of Valyria.’ By Arch Maester Challion.
“Where-” He paused and then pitched his voice a bit lower to remove the squeak. “Where did you get that from? I was under the impression that there was only one copy of that in all of Westeros – and that copy is in the Restricted Section of the Citadel.”
“It was in the hidden room in this Solar,” Robb Stark said in a rather odd tone of voice. “You should read the name written inside the front cover.”
Frowning a little he pulled the huge old book towards him and opened it to the suggested page. Ah. ‘Torrhen Stark’ it said in a somewhat spidery scrawl.
“Torrhen Stark,” he mused. “Ah. The King who Knelt?”
“Aye,” Robb said flatly. “And now we know why.”
He frowned harder – and then he blinked. “Ah,” he said wonderingly as he leafed carefully through the first pages of the book, wincing a little at some of the words that leapt off the pages, words like ‘death’, ‘flesh-smith’, ‘suborned’ and ‘fire’. “He was afraid that the Targaryens had access to these practices and the dragons. Yes, I do see – and understand – why he knelt.” He looked up sharply. “You think that there is a connection between this book and The Mountain?”
Dacey gently took the book from him, leafed carefully through it to a certain page and then placed the book in front of him. He read quickly but carefully, dread polling in his stomach, as well as bile as he comprehended what he was reading. “Good gods,” he said eventually in a rather faint voice and then took the proffered goblet of wine that his wife had very thoughtfully poured for him. “Yes, by the description that was what you saw. The black eyes fit the ritual. This is all we have though – a description of the magic that the Valyrians could do, not how to do it?”
“Challion restricted himself just to describing what they could do and not how to do it,” Luwin said softly, his hands up his sleeves and his eyes on the fire. “Good. I don’t want to know more.”
“Neither do I,” said Tyrion with a shiver. “So – the Valyrians had a version of warging into men and women.”
“Which is evil,” Val said hoarsely, her windpipe obviously bruised as well as her neck. “No Warg North of the Wall will ever warg into a fellow man. It’s said to be an evil act that never ends well.”
“An animal is one thing,” Robb muttered. “Although I think that the Direwolves… it’s complicated there. Warging into a Direwolf is allowed by the animal. Protection for protection. A man or woman though… I can see why it’s seen as evil.”
“As the Valyrians themselves thought at first, Challion writes,” Tyrion said as he re-read what was written. “Yes, they viewed it as evil. ‘Mind-rape’ they called it, saying that the blackness of the eyes of the possessed reflected the evil in the heart of the possessor, in having no concern for their victim.”
“It was also said to be detrimental to the mind of the possessor,” Dacey added, pointing to a line of text. “The spell destabilised the mind.”
Tyrion read and winced a little. “Ah yes. So, an evil spell that sends the person who casts it a little mad. Of course. And as the years went by and the Valyrians conquered more and more land and imposed their rule on people, they also changed their minds with regard to the spell. It was only evil if used by a Valyrian on a fellow Valyrian. If used on a non-Valyrian that was perfectly alright because the Valyrians were automatically better than everyone else.” He closed the book carefully and then stared at his hands as if they were now dirty. Fortunately Dacey pulled out a damp cloth. She knew him rather well by now.
“Did anyone ever mourn the Valyrians?” Catelyn Stark asked with a scowl. “How could anyone mourn such a people?”
Tyrion thought of Gogossos and the rumours of the things that had been made there and shivered a little. “They worshipped power,” he said almost absently as he thought things through. “They did things not because they should do those things but because they could. Given what the Green Man said about them, it’s no wonder that Valyria was destroyed eventually. They bent magic until it broke.”
There was a short and worried silence, until Tyrion finally sighed and leant back in his chair. “So, Ser Gregor Clegane was possessed with the aid of a Valyrian spell. The question we now need to ask ourselves is – how? And who? Where did this unknown person get the information needed to perform this twisted piece of magic and why did they do it? And what did they mean, by saying that Robb was ‘the wrong Stark’?”
“The Targaryens never seemed to have had access to this magic,” Dacey said thoughtfully. “Otherwise they could have conquered without the Field of Fire or the Last Storm. Or the burning of Harrenhall, come to that. There would have been no need for the Dance of Dragons or the Blackfyre Revolts.”
“I have been thinking about this most carefully,” Luwin said quietly. “And one thing does come to mind – the voyage of your uncle, Lord Tyrion, into the Smoking Sea. Ser Gerion spoke of that crag, with the ruins and the mad ancient Valyrian and his twisted magics. That crag was destroyed utterly. But – what if there were, no, are, more? Ruins with roofs, protected by the elements, with knowledge of Valyrian magic buried within them? Valyria itself is inaccessible. But if your Uncle got close enough to see its ruined towers – could others have done the same? And accessed knowledge of…” He gestured in disgust at the book. “Such things?”
“Someone who wanted to kill a Stark,” Robb said flatly and Tyrion noted that Val reached for his hand. Ah. Interesting. “But not me. So who then? Father? Jon?”
“We cannot easily warn them,” Luwin scowled. “A raven to Oldtown will have to be despatched at once but both Lord Stark and Jon will be at sea by now and there can be no warning.”
“And what if it’s not them this unknown enemy is after,” Lady Stark said with a quaver in her voice. “What if it’s Bran, or Rickon, or the girls? Or even-“ Her hands went to her swollen stomach. “The babe?”
“Sandor Clegane said that his brother had been complaining about nightmares and a feeling of oppression,” Tyrion mused thoughtfully. “What were his words again? ‘Something dark is coming’. I suggest that everyone in Winterfell be alerted to this. Yes, there will be a lot of chaff in the wind from people complaining about their dreams, but some might stand out as being singular. In the meantime I will wear the Warnings every day. You all saw their reaction to the body of the Mountain. They should do the same to anyone else who is possessed. If we are vigilant then we will be able to spot this early enough to take action.”
He paused. “And we need send word to Benjen Stark. The Mountain was supposed to ride with my Father to the Wall. He might be in danger as well.”
Jon Arryn
He stood there on the road that led to the Dragonpit and sighed for a moment as he caught his breath. He was mostly recovered but he could feel the Eyrie calling him. Home. He wanted to go home, to the halls of his ancestors, and organise the Vale to meet the coming storm. But he had too much to do first. That said, at least the ships were gone. One less thing to worry about.
Every time he saw Blackwater Bay he wondered where that little fleet of ships were now. Every time a raven message from the Vale or the North-Eastern parts of the Crownlands came he girded himself a little for bad news. But so far none had arrived. No word of smoke on the horizon, no word of a great flash and a noise like a thousand thunders.
Before he had left with the ships Ser Davos Seaworth had told him wryly that word had gone out about the fleet and that every pirate and SellSail out there would give the ships a very wide berth indeed. Apparently even Salladhor Saan had announced that anyone who tried to seize those ships for the wildfire was a lunatic. Strictly speaking the wildfire was priceless. Practically speaking anyone who tried to seize it was, indeed, a lunatic.
He would long remember the day that the little fleet had set sail. What seemed like half of King’s Landing had been there at the docks to watch them leave, a huge crowd that had been strangely silent. Everyone wanted that wretched stuff gone. Oh and according to Quill the other half of the population of the city had been at the other end of the city, hiding in cellars. He still wasn’t sure which group had been the wiser.
What he was sure about however, was that any residual loyalty to the Targaryens was now at a very low ebb – not even a warm ember. He’d had a very quiet and unofficial word with Lord Velaryon about this, who had told him that he’d heard – no names of course – that a few Houses with ties of affection and loyalty to the old royal family had recently pulled out certain banners and burnt them. He suspected who had done so and why. Well. Water under the bridge – and a few names to take a note of. Not that there was any chance of Daenerys Targaryen returning to King’s Landing.
Her disappearance… concerned him. It was far better when she was in one place, where someone could keep an eye on her, especially after she had somehow hatched three bloody dragons. The moment that he had heard of that stupendous piece of news a chill had run through him and that chill was still there whenever he thought of those dragons. They were important, he knew that somehow.
Which was why, as he turned towards the Dragonpit and started walking again, he’d ordered that it be cleared of the rubble that had choked it since the Dance of the Dragons and the storming of the Dragonpit itself, not to mention the damage from the wildfire that had been used in it to incinerate the bodies of those who had died in the Great Spring Sickness. The dome was beyond repair but it had always irritated him that the place was disused. At the very least the stones that had fallen could be extracted and used to repair and rebuild other homes in the city.
He found Quill and, oddly enough, Pycelle at the main gates. There were also a number of guards who were watching over the workmen that were coming and going from the Dragonpit bearing stones, some blackened and others mis-shaped.
“Your message was highly enigmatic, Quill. Grand Maester, I did not know that you were here too?”
The old man harrumphed a little and then gestured at the dome. “My Lord, I was here to observe the work and look at the dome. A magnificent piece of architecture, although one that is somewhat desolate at the moment. Not to mention fragile in places. I felt that certain spots should be out of bounds, in case the arches were weakened by the removal of the rubble.”
He nodded, conceding the point, before turning back to Quill, who had a peculiar look to his face.
“My Lord, we… we found a group of bodies on one of the upper areas. Not one of the areas covered in the ash from the bodies of the Great Spring Sickness, a higher area than that. Rubble from the roof had killed them all, and they were nothing but bones… but some were in armour. And one of them… well, you need to see this my Lord.” And with that he led them into the building.
As they passed through the great, no, vast doors that had been sealed for so long Jon found himself shivering a little as they passed from the sunlight into the darkened interior. Yes, the shattered dome let in light but he had a feeling that it was more than the absence of direct sunlight that had made him shiver. Terrible things had happened in here. Creatures almost out of legend had lived in here – and had died, along with untold numbers of men and women.
And then Aerys Targaryen had come so close to killing the entire city, with a huge cache of wildfire buried in here. It was all gone now, he was sure of it, but he still shuddered a little at the thought of it. To think that he owed his life – and the lives of so many others including Ned and thousands of their men – to Jaime Lannister.
Aerys… he remembered the first time he had met the then young king, back when he was merely excitable and full of promise. So many ideas… that should have been the clue that all was not well with the man. Projects had come tumbling from his lips as he went from idea to idea, like a frog jumping from lilypad to lilypad, never returning to the same place. And then had come Duskendale. When the mirror had been shattered and Aerys had descended into madness, from which he had never returned. Had Robert’s Rebellion been inevitable? What if Rhaegar had been able to go through with his plan to replace his father, as had been hinted at in the run-up to the Great Tourney at Harrenhall? No, more than hinted at. But instead Rhaegar had veered off into his own form of madness.
As they passed by a section of one ruined wall he glanced around again. The Targaryens had once held the Realm in the palm of their hands, creating marvels such as this, as it had been when first built centuries ago. And now they were reduced to one old man on the Wall and a vanished girl. It was a lesson that Kings needed to be taught. That Robert seemed to be finally learning.
There were guards around the section that Quill had guided them to. They nodded to him as they arrived and he looked at Quill, who gestured at a patch of rubble that seemed to be different. There were indeed bodies there, albeit skeletons, some in rags. But there was one in armour. Runed armour. He knew it at a glance, even though it was covered in dust and pieces of debris. That was the armour of a Royce of Runestone – which meant that this could only be one man. Ser Willam Royce.
“I thought,” he said thickly, before coughing. “I thought that Ser Willam Royce died out there, in the city, when the Seven That Rode tried to retrieve Prince Joffrey Velaryon’s body. How could he be in here?”
“There is a door over there that leads to the street, my Lord,” Quill muttered, pointing to a rubble-choked passageway. “I think that he fought his way down here against the mob and then died here, along with as many of them as he could kill. And then afterwards, when the dome was cracked and fell in, the body was covered in rubble. My Lord… this was next to the body.” And with that he pulled out a sword that had been hidden by a piece of rough tarpaulin.
He felt his scalp crawl as he looked at it. It was, he could tell at a glance, Valyrian steel. And there was a scabbard next to it that had a bronze sheath, green with age and covered in runes as well. “Lamentation,” he whispered. “The sword of House Royce.”
“So it would seem,” Pycelle said in a thoughtful voice. “Most providential, given the current need for such swords. Well, my Lord, it would seem that Lord Royce will be most happy with this news.”
Bronze bloody Yohn would probably turn the air blue around him as he greeted the sword of his ancestors with excitement – well, that was what he wanted to say but did not. But there was something else, as Quill seemed to be nervous about something. “Quill? What’s wrong?”
The Valeman coughed slightly. “This, my Lord.” And with that he took a small rag, dipped it into the bucket that Jon hadn’t noticed to one side and then drew it across the armour of Ser Willam Royce. Jon frowned – and then blinked as he saw that the runes on the armour, or at least some of them, were glowing.
He stared. So did Pycelle. “Grand Maester,” he said eventually, “I am well versed in my history and none of what I have ever read about the Seven Who Rode say anything about Ser Willam Royce’s armour ever glowing.”
Pycelle harrumphed for a moment, before starting to mutter something about certain types of phosphorescence in seawater… and then bumbling to a perplexed halt. “I do not know, my Lord,” he confessed after a long moment. “It is… peculiar.”
Quill raised an eyebrow at Jon and then scattered some more dirt over the armour. “A question for another time perhaps my Lord, Grand Maester.” He looked down at the body in the armour, or rather the bones of the body. “We will take up his bones and his armour with all due respect for one of the Seven Who Rode.”
They observed quietly as a litter was brought up and remains transferred onto it and then they walked back to the great gates, with Jon carrying Lamentation himself. There was no chance of him letting it out of his sight until it was sent on to Bronze Yohn, he owed the man at least that. And while he had no doubt whatsoever of the loyalty of the Lord of Runestone, it would never hurt to tie the Houses of Arryn and Royce further together with more debts of honour and obligation.
And it was there that they encountered a small party of horsemen, with a small carriage that was almost one of those newish gigs next to them. “My Lord,” said one of the horsemen – and then as the man dismounted and formally bowed to him, he realised that it was Bronn Cassley and his breath caught for a moment in his chest as he realised why the man was here.
“Lord Cassley,” he replied easily. “Welcome to Kings Landing again.”
Bronn smiled easily. “Thank you my Lord. I-” He paused and seemed to notice the litter with the armour and the bones. “Ah. Interesting.” He turned his attention back to Jon. “My apologies my Lord. If you are returning to the Red Keep perhaps we might accompany you? You too Grand Maester?”
Pycelle harrumphed quite a bit at that, but after Jon turned and looked at him the older man seemed – and how much of that was real? – to put two and two together before nodding. As they mounted their respective horses Jon raised an eyebrow at Bronn. There was a shorter guard to one side who had a shield strapped to his back and who seemed to be hovering near the Lord of the Foxhold. Jon squinted a bit. The guard had the look of old Jordy Cawlish and the shield was of an ancient design. There was something odd going on here.
He wanted to gallop to the Red Keep, but that would have told anyone around him that something was truly concerning him, so instead they trotted as he discussed the matters of the day with the former sellsword who was now a Lord in the Vale. Bronn chatted easily back to him, talking about the state of the road, the varied people who were heading North in answer to the Call and other matters. At no point did the words ‘Do you have my murderous, treacherous, wife in that carriage?’ leave Jon’s lips.
The moment that the gates of the Red Keep clanged shut behind them and he could see the Tower of the Hand, he let out a sigh of relieved tension and dismounted. “Bronn, I take it that you have my wife with you?”
“Aye my Lord,” Bronn said, walking over to the carriage. Oddly enough it was empty – but then Jon noticed that the underside of it was quite deep. Bronn pulled out a tool and levered a section open and then some of his men pulled out a very large wooden box – one big enough to contain a person. They laid it on the ground and then opened it. Inside the very deeply padded interior was the sleeping figure of Lysa.
His breath caught in his throat as he laid eyes on her. The last time he had seen her she had been trying to kill him. The months that had passed since then had not been kind to her. She was thinner than before, with lines on her face that he had never seen previously. And of course she was missing an arm. He stared at her for a long moment, warring emotions rippling through him. She was the mother to his only son. A son that she had poisoned for reasons that eluded him. To make him dependent on her? To bind him closer to her? She’d been breastfeeding him for far too long. How long had she been unsound in her mind and how had he missed it? How had he missed her connection with Baelish come to that? And she had tried to murder him in vengeance of the thief of the smallest of the Fingers.
“I take it that she is dosed with the milk of the poppy?” The words were harsh in his own ear, the strain all too evident. Bronn nodded.
“If I may, my Lord?” Pycelle said the words with a surprising gentleness. After receiving his nod the Maester inspected her, peeling back an eyelid briefly before examining the stump where her arm used to be. After a long moment he straightened up and nodded appraisingly. “Lord Cassley, your Maester is most skilled and please pass on my compliments to him. Her arm was removed very skilfully and her life saved.” He looked at Jon. “She is well, my Lord.”
“Well enough to stand trial?”
Pycelle pursed his lips for a moment as he considered the matter. “I would need to examine her when she was awake to provide you with a full, erm, evaluation my Lord. Given her… erm, earlier instabilities I cannot say at this time.”
Jon stared down at his wife for a long moment before nodding wearily. “Quill?”
“My Lord?”
“She is to be taken to a secure room in the Red Keep. An internal room – no window or balcony. And she is to be guarded at all times. She will live to stand trial Quill.”
The Valeman bowed. “It will be as you say my Lord.”
Jon looked back at Bronn, who was standing with that guard with the archaic shield again. He tilted his head as he made the connection. “Ursula Cawlish I presume? Your father was a good man.”
The woman, who had obviously bound her breasts in order to stay hidden in the party for some reason, nodded at him. “Lord Arryn, I thank you. We must speak privately though.”
There was obviously an untold story here and he led them into the Tower of the Hand and then to the Solar there, where he sat down after placing Lamentation carefully to one side.
“Is that Lamentation my Lord?” Bronn asked quietly as Ursula Cawlish removed her cloak and helmet and then held the shield in her hands. “I saw the runed armour and the body.”
“It is,” Jon sighed as he thought about how he was going to send it to the North. “We recovered it earlier. And the armour… well, you should know that the runes glowed under all that dirt. Some of them anyway. It must be some magic of the First Men.”
Bronn and his Steward exchanged a long, long look. There was definitely something going on between them, because they were still close to each other and there was a look in her eyes as she looked at the Lord of the Foxhold that spoke of strong emotions that were barely hidden, like a furnace that had been banked.
“You found it,” Bronn said to her. “You tell him.”
The women’s cheeks went a little pink – and then she held the shield out. “Lord Arryn, the Cawlish’s are descended partly from the Mudds. And this was in the crypt of the Foxhold. It’s the Shield of the Riverlands.”
Jon stared at the shield and then at them both in turn, before looking back at the shield. “The shield that Hoster Tully is tearing Oldstones apart to find? The shield of the First Men? Owned by the Mudd Kings? Truly?”
“My Lord,” said Bronn hoarsely, “When Ursula picked it up – the bloody thing glowed like the Sun was in it.”
He stared at the shield and then passed a slightly trembling hand over his face. He had the oddest feeling that he was witnessing history here, something important. Well now. He wondered what old Hoster would make of this. This and the fact that Lysa was back in the Red Keep, although he imagined that Hoster would send him a message that would sound more like something that the Blackfish would send, along the lines of “Kill her and be done with it.”
He noted that Bronn and Ursula were looking at each other again, her with a challenging, almost sultry, look and he with a look of equal challenge. He would give good odds that there would be a marriage between them both in a matter of weeks if not days.
“Well, Bronn,” he said at last as he leant back in his chair. “For you the word ‘boring’ is just something that happens to other people is it not?”
Jon Stark
He stood there on the side of the ship – the only place he could find where he was out of the way of the Ironborn sailors – and watched until the sails of the ship carrying Father dwindled on the Southern horizon and then finally vanished. It was only then that he realised that he was gripping one of the ropes so tightly that his hand was hurting and as he released his grip he pulled a face as he flexed his fingers.
It was also only then that he realised that Theon was standing next to him. “We’ll see him again,” the former Ironborn said almost gently. “He’ll come back.”
Jon grimaced a little. “Starks do not prosper South of the Neck,” he pointed out. “We’re better off in the North. And this Gate that the Tyrells and the Hightowers want Father’s help with… I have a bad feeling about this, Theon. Forebodings even.”
“I know. I feel them too.”
They both stood there for a long moment, looking at the spot on the horizon where the sails had vanished beyond the horizon – and then Ghost pushed at his lowered hand at the same time that Mist yipped. Theon looked down at the Direwolves, amused. “Well, they’re very worried, aren’t they?”
Jon smiled and then they both turned as Asha Greyjoy bellowed a series of what seemed to Jon to be incomprehensible instructions at the men who were in the dizzying heights of the upper masts. Various bits of sails were furled whilst other larger bits were unfurled, as the crew ran around at what he knew now was not random activity.
He eyed Theon’s sister critically. Ever since they had met and then transferred over to Asha Greyjoy’s ship, which had been summoned up from the Neck by a raven to Moat Cailin, she had been different. More alive, more vital, more in command. And more Ironborn.
“She knows her business,” Theon muttered at him before pulling a face. “She’s better at this than I am. But of course she is – I’ve been at Winterfell for years whilst she’s been out here sailing.” The expression changed a little. “And then again, turnabout. I’m better at killing wights than she is, because I’ve seen them in the flesh and she hasn’t.”
“And Others.”
“Aye. And Others.”
Silence fell between them, which was just as well, as the ship went through another burst of activity as the crew obeyed more bellowed orders from Asha. When as close to a lull as was possible fell, Jon looked at Theon again, who was scowling at the horizon. “Thinking about your Father again?”
“Aye.” He pulled a slight face. “How do you talk sense into someone who acts like a vengeful fool? Father…” He shook his head and then sighed. “Asha will be a better leader of the Ironborn than Father ever could be. She sets her sails according to how the wind blows, not the way she wants the wind to blow.”
“And she heard the Call – and did not deny it.”
Theon’s hand went to the pendant at his chest and held it for a long moment. “No,” he said softly. “She does not deny it. Father does. But he can’t. No-one who heard it should deny it. My Father is a fool.”
For a moment, very quietly, Jon thought of his true father, the man whose legacy was one of death, destruction and rape. Who had been the bigger fool, Rhaegar Targaryen or Balon Greyjoy? Given the latter’s adherence to the Iron Price and the cost that entailed, were they equally guilty of being fools? And then he thrust the thought away. Best not think of that. The man that he truly called Father was a thousand times better than the man who had raped his mother. He just wished that he could have met her, or had some memory of her.
“Well,” Jon said after a long moment. “You’ll see him soon enough.”
Theon nodded sombrely. “Aye.” Then he looked over at the stern, where a figure was hunched over the side, retching weakly. “I wonder how long it’ll be before your Ygritte finds her sea legs?”
Jon considered this. He’d gotten used to the sensation of being at sea surprisingly well so far, and the Direwolves had both taken it in their stride. Ygritte… had not. It was understandable, the Wildling had been stunned at the sight of the sea and then, as the ship had started to pitch and yaw, had gone pale and then almost green. She’d been at the stern for a while now, watched over by an amused Asha Greyjoy who would occasionally pass her a waterskin. She’d also told him, very firmly, to fuck off and leave her to die.
“She’s not ‘my Ygritte’,” he protested. “She’s no-ones but her own.”
“She’s yours,” Theon laughed. “Anyone else touches her, they’ll get a knife in the eye.”
“If I offer to go and help her now, I’ll get a knife in the bloody eye,” Jon japed weakly. “She’s seasick. She’ll get used to it. We’ll be at Harlaw in a few days anyway.”
Theon looked at where the Sun was and then at the pennant at the mainmast, before nodding. “Wind’s coming from the Northwest. Rounding Cape Kraken was the hard bit. We’ll be there in few days indeed, and meet my Nuncle. Well – two of them. Rodrik and Victarion.”
“What’s the Reader like?” Jon asked curiously. “Obviously he reads.”
Theon paused. “I remember him when I left Pyke, after Father’s gamble failed. “He’s kind. Thoughtful. Thinks a lot.”
If only someone who thought a lot had been in charge of the Iron Islands years ago, Jon thought – and from the flicker of Theon’s eyes, he could tell that he thought the same thing.
After a long moment he looked back at Ygritte. He needed to do something about her. But what? Wed her and bed her was probably the advice that Theon would give him. Asha’s view would probably be to just take her to bed, have his way with her – or would that be really her having her way with him? – and then wed her. He had to admit that he had no idea what course to chart. She was a Wildling, yes, but clever and beautiful and deadly and… and he didn’t know what to do with her, other than be confused.
So he took his life in his hands, nodded at Theon and then walked over to help her with her seasickness. He could always dodge the knife, as she was wobblier than a new-born fawn right now.
Tyrion
The little raven scroll lay there on the table in front of him and he had no idea what he should be feeling about it. Relief? Vague mourning? A certain measure of satisfaction? It represented failure – the complete and utter failure of a Lannister, albeit a Lannister who had damned many future generations of the family to doubt, ridicule and vague suspicion; if, that is, they were lucky.
Sensing movement to one side he looked over and saw Robb Stark watching him worriedly.
“I suppose,” he said as wryly as he could manage, “That I should be thankful that this has come.”
Robb sighed. The bruise on his forehead had not yet ripened to full maturity but it still looked quite painful. Also at the table were Dacey and Lady Stark, both also staring at the small piece of paper. “Tyrion,” the heir to Winterfell said quietly, “Do you want me to handle this?”
For a moment he wanted to cravenly mutter ‘yes’, but after a moment he shook his head. “No. I appreciate the offer, Robb. But my sister should hear the news of the location of her place of exile from me. I am the senior Lannister here.” He looked at Lady Stark. “How has her behaviour been of late?”
Cat Stark pulled a slight face. “She still tries to give orders. There are times when she claims to be Queen, even now. At least she’s stopped throwing the food at the servants when they won’t obey her.”
He rolled his eyes a little at that. Ah, Cersei. “Robb, the guards who escort her there, or at least to White Harbour, must be strong minded and preferably married. She will… try to suborn them.” The words ‘like she suborned her own twin brother hung unsaid in the air.
Robb Stark nodded. “I’ll talk to Ser Rodrik about that. He’ll pick out the best men for the task.”
And then there was a knock at the door, which opened to reveal Luwin, who was clutching a large map in one hand. “I have it!” The old Maester said with a certain measure of grave satisfaction, before rolling the map out. It was a map of the Vale and was in remarkable detail. Luwin peered at it carefully and then jabbed at a point on it with a long and bony finger. “There, my Lords, my Ladies.”
They all squinted at it. Ah. Yes, that was indeed remote. And with a very apt name. ‘Lost Sister’. It was not one of the Three Sisters, it was further East than that – quite a bit further East. It was also somewhat small.
“I’ve never heard of it,” he muttered. “Not an island to feature in much history?”
“It does not feature in much history at all, Lord Tyrion,” the old Maester said quietly. “It was claimed by the Vale back in the time of the First Men, has a small holdfast on it, one that has been held by a number of small lords, none of whom really wanted it after realising how small it is. It is, from what I have read, rather rocky, has a very small amount of arable land, sees a large amount of rain, so it does not lack for water, and does not have a decent anchorage. It is largely dependent on outside supplies.”
“Perfect,” Tyrion quipped with a humour that he did not entirely feel. On the one hand this was to be the miserable place of exile for a Lannister. On the other hand that Lannister was Cersei – who deserved far less. “I must tell my sister then.”
Dacey stood as well, but he waved her back. “My love, I do not think that she would react well to this. I would have you safe and sound. She is… not of sound mind.”
“Then I will at least walk with you to the room and wait outside.” His wife said the words firmly and in such a way that he knew that there was no arguing with her. So he smiled slightly and nodded, before bowing slightly to the others and walking off with his wife.
It was a quiet walk and he rejoiced at her silent support next to him. Father should have been the one doing this, but Father was on his way to the Wall with the King. Father would not have enjoyed this moment either, but Father would also have had the stony and utterly unemotional face that he lacked.
When they finally reached the room where his sister was held he looked at his wife, who bent down and kissed him before sitting down on a bench to one side and looked at him. “Good luck.”
He took a deep breath and then nodded at her – and then nodded at the guard who was at the door, who opened it. He girded his loins and walked in.
Cersei was slumped on the bed as he entered. As the door closed behind him he looked at her. She was clad in a dress that was more suited for the North than the South and therefore – oh the horror – unfashionable. Her hair was less than perfectly arranged, she had black lines under her eyes and she was visibly thinner than she had been before. And then she noticed him. Suddenly she was on her feet and had flattened herself against the opposite wall from him. She looked visibly terrified of him and he frowned.
He opened his mouth to speak, but she beat him too it. “No! You’re here to kill me!”
Genuinely surprised by this, he closed his mouth, before eying his sister carefully. She looked… well, she looked more than a bit afraid and possibly even deranged. “I’m not here to kill you,” he said as soothingly as he could before walking to the nearest chair and sitting on it. “I’m here to tell you when Father was not able to. A place has been chosen for your exile. It’s an island off the coast of The Vale – Lord Arryn has sent his permission for you to live out the rest of your days there.”
There was a pause as Cersei just… stared at him. She seemed to be having trouble with several things. “I’m being sent away from this place?”
“Yes.”
“Into exile.”
“Yes.”
“Father arranged this?”
He resisted the need to roll his eyes. “Yes.”
She pulled a face of utter disbelief. Then she looked up. “Where’s Father?”
Gods not this again. “Heading for the Wall with King Robert.”
Her face changed in an instant to one of almost maniacal glee. “He’s going to get Jaime and Joffrey! He’s going to get them and burn the North from the Wall to the Neck! Burn them all! Burn Winterfell! He’s going to unleash the Mountain on them all. And on that bitch, Catelyn Stark! Oh, he’ll take his time over her…”
The hairs on the back of his neck rose at her tone of crooning maliciousness and the look in her eyes. He glanced down quickly at the Warnings, but they were normal. This was not possession – this was the real Cersei, the thing that hid behind the polite if strained smile and the hooded eyes. Right. Time to shut her up.”
“No,” he snapped. “Father’s going to see the Wall and scout out where this war that’s coming against the Others and their Wights is to be fought. And the Mountain will never do anything to anyone ever again. He’s dead.”
She stared at him as if he was the mad one of the two. “The Mountain is not dead,” she hissed. “The Mountain cannot be dead. Don’t be a fool!”
“He’s dead,” he replied in a flat hard voice. “I watched his body burn myself, his severed head on the pyre as well. He tried – and failed – to kill Robb Stark, who fought him off in time for the Hound to come to his aid and kill him. The Mountain is dead. And, whilst I know that you will not believe this, he was possessed. His eyes were jet black. Some Valyrian spell was used on him.” He slapped a hand at the Warnings. “That’s why I have these on me. They glowed and shook when next to the Mountain’s body.”
His oldest sibling said nothing at this news, but just stared at him as he was truly raving mad. “Black eyes,” she said eventually. “People do not have black eyes. You’re lying.”
“No,” he said tiredly. “I’m not. Father is not going to kill your perceived enemies. We’re fighting a war that you would never understand. Any way – you’ll be leaving here within a few days. Down to White Harbour and then by sea to the island in question. It’s called Lost Sister. Appropriate name is it not?”
Cersei flinched violently as if he had struck her, her hands coming up to her face. “No,” she muttered eventually. “No, no, nonononono.”
He watched her sadly and then got down off the chair and walked quietly to the door. Just before he got to it he heard her go from muttering ‘No’ to a sobbing laugh. “I don’t understand.”
“Understand what?” He asked the question tiredly. He needed to get out of this horrible room and away from his mad sister, but he still turned back to look at her. She had a peculiar look on her face, as if she was struggling to make sense of something.
“If… if I’m going to be in exile, then how will you kill me?”
He threw his hands in the air at that. “What in the name of all the Gods, the Old and the New, are you talking about? Why do you have this delusion that I’m going to kill you?”
She looked at him. “The prophecy said so,” she said in words of utter finality. “Maggy the Frog said so.”
Once again the hairs on the back of his neck rose at the tone of her words. “Maggy the Frog?”
“She was a witch! In Lannisport! She tasted our blood! I was ten and I wanted her to read my future!”
He eyed her carefully and then made sure that the door was at his back. She sounded deranged again. Then he paused. “Our? Who were you with?”
“Jeyne Farman, but she ran away… and… Melara! Melara Hetherspoon!” The name rang a faint bell in his mind, but then Cersei was off again. “We went to see her – she could predict the future! I wanted to know when I would marry Rhaegar, but she said that would marry the King instead! And then… I asked will the king and I have children? And she said: ‘Oh, aye. Six-and-ten for him, and three for you. Gold shall be their crowns and gold their shrouds, she said. And when your tears have drowned you, the valonqar shall wrap his hands about your pale white throat and choke the life from you.’” She stared at him again, her tear-stained face with wide mad eyes. “I know Valyrian! You are the valonqar! You’re going to kill me!”
He stared at her, his eyes almost as wide as hers. Godsdamnit. “Valonqar.”
“Yes! You’re him! You’re going to kill me!”
He steeled himself to be as still as possible. “So you heard and believed the words of a so-called witch, read a vast amount into a few words, failed to realise that she likely saw your very golden hair and deduced that any children you had would also be golden-haired and then decided that I was a threat to your life.” He ran his hands over his face for a long moment and then when he looked back at her he could see that she was confused.
Eventually he mustered every scrap of self-control that he possessed – Gods, he needed a cup of wine after this and then some time in a locked bedroom with his lovely wife – and forced himself to say, in a low and measured tone: “Sister, I know that you blame me for the death of Mother, even though I had nothing to do with it. She had a difficult birth, like so many others. As for this ‘valonqar’ nonsense… I doubt it means what you think. For one thing you are the firstborn. Jaime might have been this ‘valonqar’, not I. The word is also a name for an ailment of the chest in Myr and is, I believe, also the name of a street pastry in Braavos. This is, if you even remember the name correctly, because ‘valongar’ is the name of a type of fish snack in Volantis.”
Once again she was gaping at him. He tried again: “What did this so-called witch tell Melara Hetherspoon?”
“That she would die soon. And… and she hinted that I would be the one to kill her.” She said that last sentence as her eyes almost flitted about the room.
He went still. He remembered now. There had been talk of the Hetherspoon’s search for their missing daughter. “I see,” he said in as calm and level a voice as he could muster. “So I am presuming that you killed her and somehow hid the body in such a way that she would not be found. Because, presumably, she heard the prophecy that you thought should be a secret.”
Cersei gazed at him with what looked like utter terror. “You sound just like Father. That’s Father’s voice. Give it back to him. You can’t use it, you’re just a disgusting little murdering dwarf.”
Right. Enough. “This dwarf is now the heir to Casterley Rock and fervently prays to every God that I never see you again in my life. You will be leaving for Lost Sister in a few days. You will be allowed to see Myrcella and Tommen before she leaves for Casterley Rock and he leaves for the Citadel. Part of me hopes that the Others and their wights get you, but to do so would mean that the North would have to fall, so perhaps not. Goodbye Cersei. You have poisoned everything you have touched and nothing you have attempted has ever worked. You are a failure as a Lannister – the lowliest Lannister.”
And with that he left the room, leaving her frozen with what seemed to be a combination of terror, fury and disbelief. As he closed the door he heard her start screaming insults at him, which the door muffled.
Dacey had stood up and was waiting for him as he passed the guards, who were rolling their eyes and muttering at his sister’s ‘piss-poor use of insults’ as one called it.
“I was going to ask how it went, but your face says it all,” his wife sighed. “It was bad wasn’t it?”
“Very bad. I’ll tell you later. Let’s go back to our rooms. I need some wine and then we are going to practice making little Surestone/Lannisters who won’t be raving mad.” She blushed a little as she took his proffered hand but then grinned at him and raised her eyebrows in such a way as to signal her enthusiastic agreement.
Something good would come from this.
Chapter 47: Chapter 46
Chapter Text
Sorry about the delay on this. New job has been eating my brain plus the Six Nations has restarted and as a Wales fan things have been rather surprisingly amazing.
My wife had her Covid-jab on Wednesday and I am due to get mine next week. Stay safe people. This will pass in time and we will emerge on the other side of what has been the storm of our lifetimes.
Jaime
No-one knew what to do with him. The irony was a bitter one, he mused as he stood on top of the Wall and stared North with almost unseeing eyes. Oh, they knew what probably should be done with him, but no firm decision had yet been made about him.
The Night’s Watch was divided into three orders: Builders, Stewards and Rangers. The thought of him as a Builder, maintaining the Wall with a hammer in his hand, bashing in nails (or whatever they did), was ludicrous. Then there were the Stewards. They were the ones who maintained the Wall and the Night’s Watch. They cooked what they grew or hunted, sewed things to other things, mucked out the horses and generally just took care of things. He was no cook and he could not sew.
That just left being a Ranger, a fighting man on the Wall and beyond it. He had been born to wield a sword and he was far better than anyone else on the Wall, even with the men who were flocking to the Wall to answer the Call.
The Call…
He blinked and looked North again. It was cold here on the top of the Wall and he had to admit that he was beginning to understand that the First Men would not have built it, nor the men who followed them maintained it, without fearing something to the North very much.
And based on the attitude of the men and women around him on the Wall, they feared that something still. It reminded him of the last days before the Sack of King’s Landing during the Rebellion. Everyone had known that the Rebels were coming and that a fight would happen, they just didn’t know exactly when. He had the same feeling.
A shiver rippled through him as he looked at the forest beyond the Wall. There was a still a trickle of Wildlings filtering through it towards the gate below and from all accounts they were from the furthest North of the lands beyond the Wall. They had had the most… experience of fighting the Others.
The Others. He had scorned such tales. Legends. Stories. Mutterings of snarks and grumpkins. But based on what Tyrion had said, and others, they were… real. The arriving Wildlings had certainly shown so much relief on getting through the Wall.
There had been one incident that he remembered that morning. A tall man had limped through the gate, supporting himself on a crutch as one leg had obviously been broken and then reset. He had caught Jaime’s eye because he had been thin and looked about the yard of Castle Black with such desperation.
And then there had been a shocked cry from a tall woman that he had seen working with others, a woman who had a baby in a sling around her neck and a small boy in constant attendance. She had run at once to the man with the crutch, sobbing hysterically, the boy following her and based on their embrace he knew that she had thought that he was dead.
It had made him think of Cersei for a long moment. And then he dismissed that thought with a shake of the head. Enough. Enough. She was lost to him.
A horn blew, the sound high and wailing, ahead of him and he peered carefully over the Wall. A small knot of horsemen had appeared from the trees to the North and one of his new ‘Brothers’ with one of the growing number of Myrish spyglasses looked down. “It’s the First Ranger,” he grunted, before looking at Jaime. “Go on, lad, get down and tell them.”
It smarted more than a bit to be called ‘lad’, but he obeyed orders. He had to. The mechanism for getting down, the lift or whatever the name for it was, took him down at a steady rate and as he descended he bellowed out that the First Ranger was approaching, something that got the attention of even that sour-faced human persimmon Ser Alliser bloody Thorne.
The man who rode through the gate at the head of the group of horsemen was undoubtedly a Stark, based on his appearance. The nose was a dead giveaway, as was that look of thundering rectitude. He looked tired and strained, as did the others in his party, at least one of whom looked like a Thenn. Stark dismounted, clasped hands with Thorne and then the old Maester, who had hurried up as fast as he could. Stark was talking and gesturing at the gate, but he had little idea what they were talking about. Thorne and the Maester eventually nodded thoughtfully – and then Thorne looked straight at him and jerked his thumb at him whilst muttering something to Stark. A grey-eyed look was sent his way and then Stark walked back to his dismounted party, shook hands, or in some cases forearms, all around and then walked his horse to the stables before vanishing off somewhere.
It wasn’t until later, after Jaime had returned to his solitary room and stared at the opposite wall for a bit, that he was summoned to the chamber of the First Ranger. Benjen Stark’s hair was damp and he looked freshly scrubbed, but his eyes were far too like those of Ned Stark as he assessed him and then waved him into the chair in front of his desk.
“Ser Jaime.”
The words were reasonably courteous and he wondered how to respond. ‘Stark’ might be a bit too blunt, so he went with: “First Ranger.”
Stark looked at him shrewdly. “Given who you are, the final determination of what to do with you is up to the Lord Commander, not me, but I will be one of those who make recommendations. And I have to say that that there is every chance that you will be assigned to the Rangers. Unless you wish otherwise that will be the best use of your skills.”
He nodded, dully. Good.
Stark looked at him with those same damn eyes as his brother – no, both his brothers – and then sniffed slightly. “Ser Alliser says that you have some skill with the sword.”
The words came out without him even hesitating: “Well, I was a member of the Kingsguard.”
Stark narrowed his eyes at this and then leant back in his chair a little. “And that means nothing here,” he said cuttingly. “For three reasons. First, we all know why you were appointed to that post the first time: the Mad King appointed you there to spite your father. Second, after your sister became Queen she insisted on you staying close to her. And third you are skilled at killing live men. Not at fighting the Others and their undead minions. Your brother knows much about that. You? You do not.”
He could feel the blood flushing into his face as those words struck home. But as he opened his mouth to angrily refute much of that… he could not actually say it. There were too many truths in those words.
After a moment Stark seemed to take pity on him. “You are not the only fighting man who has joined and then realised that he needs retraining. You and they are used to fighting the living, not the dead and most certainly not the Others. If you fought a wight then you would soon realise that wounds that would kill a man would not even slow down a wight. You need to hamstring them, decapitate, dismember, cut through bones. Even the finest of swords wielded by the most skilful of men can have a problem with that. And as for fighting Others… well, your brother has Rocktooth and the Warnings and you do not, nor do you have a sword made from Valyrian steel. If you fight an Other with a sword made from ordinary steel then your sword will shatter into a thousand fragments when it meets their iceswords.”
For a moment he was back in that courtyard in Winterfell, watching as Stormbreaker turned his swords into nothing but fragments as it found him wanting. And then he was back in the room with Stark. “So how do you kill these ‘Others’ then?”
Stark just looked at him, seeming to be amused by the way that Jaime had pronounced the word, before looking to one side and sliding a dagger over. The pommel was metal wrapped in leather but the blade was… stone? “Dragonglass,” the First Ranger said in a voice like iron. “Not much use when it comes to fighting men, but that will save your life if you meet an Other – and if you can drive it into their flesh. Can you use a bow?”
Faintly bewildered he shook his head.
“A shame,” Stark sighed. “You might look into it. A dragonglass-tipped arrow can kill a wight, so it should also be able to kill an Other.” He frowned a little for a moment. “Anyway, a final determination as to your status in the Night’s Watch will rest with the Lord Commander. That said, I have little doubt that you will be a Ranger. I must also say that there is no chance that you will ever be a Wandering Crow, going South to recruit for us.”
Of course not. Not that he expected it. Too many might think that he would use such a role to break his oath and run away. “So what must I do now? Wait?”
“Wait and train.” A faint smile crossed Stark’s face. “The Lord Commander travels fast and will be with us in a day or so.”
And with that he was dismissed, walking back out into the chilly courtyard outside where so many of his new brothers were training. As he looked about he realised that many of them, including Thorne, had daggers at their hips at all times, daggers with blades made from stone. They believed in those blades, even though they looked crude and unbalanced. He had always had a dagger in his boot, or at his waist, but the thought of using something so… primitive was strange to him. He almost wanted to laugh – but he could not.
He slept badly that night. Too many unsettled thoughts, too much uneasiness and then, when he did fall asleep, too many bad dreams. The day that the Starks had died so horribly in the Throne Room of the Red Keep had featured in his dreams. So had the day that Robert Baratheon had beaten him in that courtyard. No. Not beaten him – humiliated him. Stormbreaker had judged him and found him utterly wanting.
So, when it came time to break his fast, he found himself nudging the porridge around his wooden bowl with his spoon listlessly. As porridge went it wasn’t bad. There was even a bit of jam in with it. But he had no appetite, unlike the others around him.
One of them, a man with a long nose and a dolorous aspect, peered at him from one side. “You should eat that,” he said. “Never turn down good food. Time might come when you don’t have any.”
What a cheerful fellow he was. He sighed and spooned some into his mouth. He almost commented that he it wasn’t the food that he was used to – but then he hadn’t had any of that since the day that he and Cersei had been discovered. “You have a point,” he said instead as he looked at the man and searched his mind for a name. “Tollett isn’t it?”
“Aye, Eddison Tollett.” The man finished his own porridge with every sign of satisfaction. Catching sight of Jaime’s look of askance he sighed. “When you’ve been stuck ranging North of the Wall, with little food and nothing to hunt, you realise the value of a bit of porridge. Could have done with some at the Overlook.”
He frowned a little. “The Overlook? Where’s that?”
“By the Fist of the First Men,” Tollet said, before his face stilled a little. “First time I ever saw them.”
This was confusing. “Saw who?”
Tollett seemed to come back from wherever he had briefly gone to. “Others. I saw the Others for the first time there.”
Jaime eyed him for a moment. “The first time?”
Tollet nodded. “Second time was by Craster’s Keep.” He fell silent, obviously wrestling with something.
It was a man to one side who elbowed Tollett gently in the ribs. “Give over. Hoy, Lannister – yes, we all know who you are – this is Otherbane Ed, formerly Dolorous Ed, the first Black Brother in a thousand years or more to kill an Other.”
He stared at the man. “You killed an Other?”
“I did,” Tollett replied faintly. “I’ll never forget that moment. It shattered like glass.”
Unable to really grasp any of that he nodded, finished his porridge and then returned to his room to fully dress before exiting into the courtyard. Someone had set up straw dummies there that had arms and legs and heads that could be detached with a strong swipe at the head and he spent some time there, practicing his swings. It took precision and after a while he had built up such a sweat that he removed his cloak and jerkin.
Hearing a horn blown to the South he looked away from the target he had been hitting. The Sun was high in the sky and a group of Builders and Stewards were leaving in wagons for the Nightfort, to work on the place. As they left a group of horsemen entered – and he groaned quietly. The man leading them was the Old Bear himself, the Lord Commander, Jeor Mormont. And trailing at the rear was a golden-haired young man – who was drooping in the saddle and who looked extremely uncomfortable. Ah. Joffrey.
As the horsemen dismounted Jaime frowned a little. Everyone walking downwind of his nephew – no, it was time to admit certain things, his son – was pulling a face.
Thorne strode up to the Lord Commander, followed by Stark and then more slowly by Maester Aemon. They all clasped forearms, and then Mormont jerked a thumb at the miserable form of Joffrey. “This is Joffrey Hill. Someone get him to the bloody bathhouse please? He needs to be scrubbed down and his clothes washed. He shat himself at the sight of his first giant in the Gift a few hours ago.”
He sighed. Life at the Wall was not going to be easy, was it?
Kevan
They had paused for the night. The evening was still gathering come as the sun slipped down to the horizon and the men scurried around them as they made camp near an old ruined holdfast. It was like being on campaign again.
But he was troubled. He could not help it. Tywin was not quite himself. He was accustomed to his brother being taciturn, but Tywin was curt, troubled in his language and also his demeanour for those like him who knew what to look for.
He sighed. And then looked around. After a moment he realised that Gerion was walking towards him. His brother smiled slightly and then looked around cautiously before sitting down with a sigh. “Are you as…” Gerion seemed to search for the right word before continuing in that same low voice, “Troubled as I am about Tywin?”
He paused, looked about at the men as they finished erecting the larger tents and then started pulling on the ropes that allowed the smaller ones to start to rise, before raising both eyebrows and nodding shortly. “I am. He’s as quiet as I’ve ever known him to be. There is much on his mind. And I cannot say that I blame him. Our House… is not where it was just months ago. There is a lot to do to recover our reputation.”
Gerion rubbed his chin for a moment and then pulled a slight face. “I think that Tywin is mulling over all the things that he has misjudged over the years. Even… gotten wrong.”
He looked about again, as careful as he was able to and still make look natural. This was dangerous ground. “Wrong in what way?”
“Castamere was the first.” Gerion caught the look on his face and snorted. “Oh come now brother – you know as well as I do that he was right to confront the Reynes and the Tarbecks, but wrong to wipe them all out! He should have left a few of them alive as an example. And Castamere itself is lost to us. The gold and silver mines are flooded and you and I, as Lannisters who know everything about mining, both know that once a tunnel is flooded then it is all but lost. The pit props of Castamere have long since rotted in that water and the tunnels have collapsed. From that point alone it was a mistake, ignoring the fact that they were our cousins and were wiped out.”
He winced, sighed, ran a hand over his face – and then slowly nodded. Gerion had the right of it. “And the second?”
Gerion took a deep breath. “His children. He was wrong to see so little in Tyrion and so much in Cersei and Jaime. From an early age I knew that Tyrion had a brilliant mind, that he was a true Lannister. But as for the other two… I always felt that there was something wrong with Cersei, something twisted, whilst as for Jaime – he was almost Father come again. Too much smile and not enough substance. Granted, he killed Aerys for the right reasons – but why did he not tell anyone those reasons?” He shook his head. “Tyrion will be the true heir to Tywin that Jaime could never be. I think that Tywin knows that now. The problem is that if he knows all of that – what else could he have been wrong about? And that, I think, is what gnaws at the mind of our brother.”
He sat there for a long moment as he thought about everything that the man he had thought to be the most frivolous of his brothers had said… and then he nodded sombrely. “Gerion – how did you become so wise?”
His brother ran a finger over his eyepatch. “This gave me a new perspective on life. This and being a father to a group of very rambunctious children. I hope that you meet them all one day. You have nephews and nieces that you’ve never met, as well as a Goodsister.”
A smile stole over his face. Gerion as a harassed father was an amusing thought. He thought of his own children and looked over to where Lancel was talking to Allarion. By the look on the latter’s face, his oldest son was being his usual self. That boy needed fostering somewhere that would teach him some of the harder truths in life.
Gerion had followed his gaze. “Your son needs a little seasoning. He’s a good lad, but he’s a touch full of himself.”
He nodded slowly. Gerion was right. Lancel could be too set in his ways, too sure of himself, too… arrogant. True, recent events had knocked some of that arrogance more than a bit, but he still worried about the boy. That said, they were all going to the Wall to view where they would fight in the War that lay ahead of them. If that didn’t knock some sense into him, nothing would. Perhaps he should foster him in the North as well? He’d heard that Maege Mormont was a truly unique woman.
“Your Allarion is a credit to you, Gerion.”
His brother smiled almost wistfully. “There’s a lot of his mother in him. She’s taught him a lot of sense. He has my brains though. Not sure if that’s a good thing.”
Amused, he chuckled for a moment. And then a man dressed in Baratheon colours ran up to him and bowed hurriedly. “Good Sers, His Grace the King requests your presence, and the presence of Lord Lannister, at once.”
He eyed the panting man and frowned a little. “What’s amiss?”
“All I know, Ser Kevan, is that there was a message from Winterfell. His Grace says to please come at once. Ser Gerion most especially.”
Gerion and he exchanged troubled gazes and then nodded and stood, Gerion calling to Lancel to summon Tywin to the King at once. His son looked confused but obeyed the command at once and once a stony faced Tywin had emerged from his large tent the three Lannister brothers strode over to the even larger tent that the King slept in.
Inside they found the King and Ser Barristan Selmy staring at a number of raven messages on the table in front of them, with Lords Tarly and Westerling sitting on camp chairs to one side with odd looks on their faces.
“Your Grace,” Tywin said as the trio bowed, “You summoned us.”
“Aye,” said the King with a frown, before handing the messages over to Tywin. “Word from Winterfell – The Mountain is dead.”
There was a pause as they absorbed that information. And then Kevan said what surely they were all thinking: “What? How?”
“He attacked Robb Stark and that Wilding girl,” the King replied as he sank into a camp chair. “And he was not himself.”
“He went mad? I thought he had guards watching him?” Gerion asked – before a pale Tywin handed over the messages.
“He killed the guards with his bare hands,” Tywin muttered. “Young Stark was lucky that Clegane was not armed. He barely fought him off before the Hound arrived. From what Tyrion writes, it was a close thing.”
He peered over Gerion’s shoulder as they both read the tale of madness that lay in the messages. They were indeed in Tyrion’s handwriting, close-set and tiny as he had obviously tried to get as much information as possible on the small scroll. Three had been needed for the full tale. And then there were the parts that made his eyes bulge.
When he looked up he could see that the Green Man had arrived, along with the Blackfish and Brienne of Tarth, both of whom still confused him due to their oddly close relationship. He looked at the King. “Clegane had… black eyes? Eyes that were totally black? And Tyrion writes of a Valyrian spell of possession? How can this be?”
The King raised his own eyebrows – and then shook his head. “I don’t know, Ser Kevan. It’s baffling to me. However, whilst my first thought was to associate ‘Valyrian’ with ‘Targaryen’, my second thought was to realise that it can’t be the girl. If the Targaryens had access to such magics then I, or Jon Arryn or Ned Stark would have seen a black-eyed assassin in the Rebellion. We did not.”
This was a good point, shrewd enough that he looked at the King for a moment and then nodded. Yes, the man had truly changed. He would never be a great thinker, but when his mind was unclouded by wine and food and whores he could see clearly enough. Damn Cersei yet again.
“Lord Lannister,” the King said. “You were close to the Mad King before he went truly mad. Would I be right in my thinking that he never had access to such magic?”
There was a pause as the Lord of the Westerlands narrowed his eyes in thought before nodding. “I think that you are right Your Grace. Aerys Targaryen often complained about how much his family had lost in the long years since the fall of Valyria. And it must also be remembered that the Targaryens were not numbered amongst the most powerful of the Dragonlords. I cannot recall of any similar incident in all my years at Court or elsewhere. And if Aerys had been able to cast such magic he would have. He would have used it to escape from Duskendale at the very least – and he would have used it against you, Your Grace. The fact that no-one did is significant.”
“Such magic was unknown to King Aegon, Your Grace,” the Green Man said in a voice laden suddenly with the years. “He would never have used it. And, like the Mad King, he complained about what his family had lost. But he never had access to it.”
The King nodded sombrely, before looking at Gerion. “Ser Gerion, you, out of all of us, have had the most experience of Valyrian dark magics. What say you?”
There was a pause as his brother seemed to collect himself. “Your Grace, I have often thought of the mad Dragonlord who held my men and I prisoners – and who did such horrible things to some of us. Given what he did – to meld human and animal together – he must have been a Fleshsmith at the very least and a powerful sorcerer to keep death at bay for both himself and the man who I believe to have been King Tommen. And… the spell he cast on that last day, it was a spell to suborn a bloody dragon. Aye, that sounds like this. I don’t know if that dragon that was being driven by the spell to the crag had black eyes, but I would not bet money against it.”
Another, longer, pause followed, a silence made by pale people contemplating horrors that that they had heard about but did not want to imagine. It was broken by the King. “You almost made it to Valyria. Could others have done so? Did you see other crags with ruins that might have been intact, which might have contained the knowledge of Old Valyria?”
Gerion stilled for a long moment. “Perhaps, Your Grace. When I glimpsed the broken towers of Valyria, with the fires beyond, there might been a few closer ruins. But I do not know for sure. What I do know though is that Valyria is a giant tomb that contains great riches. And that there are always those who want to loot such tombs. I went there for Brightroar. Others go there for other things. Graverobbers. Most die – and I regret that retrieving Brightroar cost me so many of my crew. But if I could get so far into the Smoking Sea by being cautious and careful, what is to say that someone else could do so as well? And discover other things? Other knowledge?” He shook his head. “I just hope that they do not pay the same eventual price as Aerea Targaryen. Valyria is… a place that none should ever approach. I was a fool to go there.”
He eyed his brother and then nodded.
The King did too. “So,” he rumbled eventually, “We must be mindful of this. My Lords, care to your men. Have your lieutenants go about them, where you can. According to the messages from Winterfell The Mountain complained of dark thoughts and dark dreams before he was possessed. Ask if any of your men feel the same.”
The assembled men nodded and muttered agreement, before Ser Barristan Selmy cleared his throat. “Your Grace, Lord Tyrion writes that the Warnings glowed red near the body of Gregor Clegane before it was burnt. The Warning are the work of the First Men. So is Stormbreaker. It might be that it, too, glows in the presence of such foul magics.”
“A very good point, Ser Barristan,” the King agreed. “Very well – I shall ride up and down the column tomorrow as we ride North. If any man is showing signs of possession then hopefully the sword will show it. My Lords – we have a foe that is using fell magics against us. Word has been sent out to warn every Stark. Be mindful.”
They stood at this dismissal, bowed and left. And by the look of intent thought on the face of Tywin Lannister he knew that he was thinking hard about just who that unknown foe might be.
Robb
The most peaceful place that he knew of in Winterfell was the Godswood. He sat there, looking at the carved face on the white-trunked tree and wondered, yet again, who might have carved it. Had it been a First Man, perhaps one of his ancestors? Or one of the Children of the Forest? That last possibility was one that made him shiver a little. There was a folktale that one of his ancestors had married one of the little folk, or been closely involved with one.
If only his ancestors had left better records! Perhaps they had, but they just hadn’t found them yet and he stirred uneasily at that. The Green Man had told him to search for hidden things here in Winterfell and so far he had not. There had been too much to do, too much to organise… to many distractions, like The Mountain trying to kill him and above all Val.
He clenched his fists – and then released them and rubbed his hands over his face. There were times when his memories of that other time, of that horrible world when Father had been murdered and Bran was crippled and when his victories on the field of battle had turned to nothing because he had been a fool, made him almost cringe.
“You seem to be anguished, Robb.”
He looked up at that and then sighed a little as he saw Mother standing there to one side. She looked sympathetic, as if she could guess what was on his mind. “I’ve been thinking a lot,” he said eventually. “About… matters.”
His mother nodded and then she glided into the glade and sat down next to him. “Oddly enough, so have I.”
“About what?”
Mother looked about carefully, obviously to make sure that no-one was near them. “That… other time. In your memories. So many mistakes, not just by you but by me as well. That has caused me much pause for reflection. There were so many things that I did that must have seemed to be sensible at the time – but which were not.” She paused, her face working as she tried to articulate something that she was having a hard time admitting.
Robb waited for a long moment, until Mother finally seemed to come to a decision: “I was wrong about many things. So many things. I was wrong to dislike Jon for so long. I did not know the truth about his mother, but I should not have thought what I did about him and I regret that now. I was prejudiced. I did not know your father as well at first as I do now, but as I grew to love him… well, that’s water under the bridge. So – I have decided that I will think more and react less in the future.”
There was a pause as he thought about this – and then he nodded. “Thank you Mother. You said I looked anguished?”
“You do.” She looked at him shrewdly. “You are thinking about Val and how the heart wants what the head denies?”
He laughed softly for a moment before admitting: “Yes.”
Mother eyed him carefully. “I have a possible solution, but ‘tis only a theory.”
Confused, he looked at her. “A theory?”
“Have you ever asked Val about her parentage?”
He blinked. “I can’t say that I have. Why?”
“I have and you should. She said that her mother’s name was Rowan and that she came from a ‘great hearth’ just South of the Wall. She and her sister are well-spoken, they are well-educated and they are unlike any other Wildling that anyone has met. They sound almost like Northern nobility. Now, what ‘great hearth’ exists just South of the Wall, Robb?”
He looked at his mother, genuinely stunned. “The Last Hearth?” And then something dawned on him. “Wait – Rowan? Rowan Umber? The daughter of Mors ‘Crowfood’ Umber, the GreatJon’s uncle?”
“Perhaps,” Mother said intently. “Perhaps. This Rowan is on her way to Winterfell – I have had a word with a few people. And Ned Umber is coming as well, escorted by his Great-Uncle, because I think that the Umbers think that young Ned is a match for Arya.”
The thought of anyone being a match for the force of nature that was Arya made him pause for thought and then pull a slight face. ‘The poor lad’ seemed too weak a thing to say. He made do with: “Well, that should be interesting.” Then he paused. “When will the Umbers arrive? And Rowan?”
“This Rowan should be here in a few days. The same with the Umbers.” And then Mother just looked at him. “Don’t get your hopes up too much. It’s just a theory. And if it’s wrong then there are times when even the heart must listen to the head.”
“Aye,” he muttered. “But if it’s right, then Val is half-Umber. And that might be the advantage that the heart needs.”
Mother tilted her head at that – and then she kissed him on the cheek and departed, leaving him alone in the Godswood, staring at the Heart Tree again. He never knew afterwards how long he sat there, staring at the face carved on the tree, but all of a sudden the moment was broken by an abrupt feeling that someone was watching him, some undefinable feeling of… not unease, but certainty that someone was out there. Something creaked in one of the branches above him and as he looked up just for a moment he thought he could see something with green eyes watching him through a branch or three before that thing vanished upwards.
When he left the Godswood he had the oddest feeling of… rightness. As if something was suddenly very right with the world. And that he needed to start to search Winterfell. Starting with the crypts.
Jon Arryn
He sat at his desk and then ran a hand over his face before looking at the Grand Maester with a certain amount of weary confusion. “So, my wife has recovered from the fever that she had after her trip from the Foxhold, but you are still not sure if I should confront her?”
Pycelle sat there for a long moment, his shoulders slumped in what looked like genuine concern.
“Lord Arryn, your wife – or former wife after all she has done – was grievously wounded and has barely recovered from that wound. There was also a certain amount of… mental disarrangement, if I might be permitted to describe it as that. Her actions surrounding your son and getting him addicted to his ‘medicine’ speaks of… well, it says that she was not well, mentally speaking, at the very least. Sending your son to Winterfell and then executing the traitor Baelish seems to have accelerated that decline, which lead to her vicious attack on you. Your wife veers between being stable and being unstable. I cannot predict how she will therefore react when she lays eyes on you. My Lord… she might attack you again.”
He sat there for a long moment. “Grand Maester, that is a risk that I must be willing to take.” He paused again, thinking of the times that he and Lysa had gone through. And then: “She tried to kill me after I killed the man that she had betrayed me with. Baelish was a traitor, he committed crimes that I still cannot understand. And yet she was obsessed with him. And tried to kill me as a result. But, as she is the mother of my son and heir, I must question her.”
Pycelle absorbed this with a worried frown – and then closed his eyes and nodded slowly. “I understand, my Lord. In which case I suggest that you go in with a trusted man, just in case.” And with that he stood, bowed, and shuffled out.
He sat there for a while, thinking about his past wives. Was he cursed? Jeyne had died birthing a stillborn daughter. Rowena had died of a chill without giving him any children. Lysa had had many miscarriages before delivering him a son – whom she had cossetted, kept close to her and poisoned to make sure that he depended on her.
Enough. Enough. He stood up. “Quill?”
His faithful servant stepped forwards. “My Lord?”
“It’s time to see my wife.” He gripped the dagger at his hip and then smiled a mirthless smile. “Be mindful of her… instability.”
“Aye, My Lord.”
They pattered down the steps of the Tower of the Hand and then made their way across the courtyard to the Red Keep. The palace was quieter than it was normally due to the absence of the King and the actual Hand, making it rather more pleasant to be around. That said, as he climbed several flights of stairs and approached the room in which Lysa was being kept a ball of vague dread formed in his stomach. He was not looking forward to this.
As the door opened he could see that Lysa was sitting in a chair by the fire, looking at it with a hopeless, dead-eyed stare. He stepped into the room, Quill behind him, and as the door closed Lysa finally turned to see who had entered the room. The moment she laid eyes on him she froze with shock, her eyes widening almost comically.
He eyed her wearily, before walking over to the nearest chair and sitting down, conscious that Quill was glaring at Lysa the entire time. Only then did he look at her. “Lysa.”
She looked at him with eyes that were filled with horror, before her mouth opened and then shut several times as if she had no idea what to say to him.
The best response was a sardonic look and then a slight smile. “Yes, you failed to kill me.” He leant back, feeling weary of this already. “I want to know why.”
Confusion filled her face. “Why?”
“Why you betrayed me. Why Baelish? I knew that you knew him as a child, but given his crimes… why listen to that snake? And why poison our son Robert?”
She shook her head. “SweetRobin! That’s his name! He… he needs me!”
He sighed and then looked back at Quill, who was a stone-faced and hard-eyed presence at the door. “This might take some time.”
It did. Lysa was afraid of him, shaking with fear, but whenever he mentioned the hated name of Petyr Baelish the words bubbled – perhaps that should have been babbled – out of her. Dear Petyr this and dear Petyr that. She’d pressed Jon to give him position after position because she knew how good he was – whilst not knowing how he was achieving that success, the corruption that spread around him, the secret loans, the theft, the bribery, the lies and of course the murders. Oh and the poisonings.
Baelish had had quite the collection of poisons in those places that he doubtless fondly thought were secret. The one that still gave him chills was the one marked Tears of Lys, along with a note that “Lysa can be prevailed upon to use this if Arryn starts asking awkward questions”.
But it was the poison that she had been giving their son that he wanted to know more about. Again – why?
She didn’t make a lot of sense at first – he was her precious child, the miracle child, the child that she loved and who had to stay close to her, had to stay safe, had be safe, had to stay small and on her lap and drink her milk and be mothered and if he was given the right medicine then he’d need her forever and ever and ever. And then she said the words that lightened his heart just a fraction, despite the hateful way that she hissed them: “He shouldn’t have been your son! He should have been Petyr’s son! It wasn’t right! Petyr should have been his father!”
He’d been sure that Robert was his son – he looked like an Arryn. But it was good to have that final piece of proof. He looked over at Quill after she spat the words and the other man nodded as if to say that he’d heard the words and could swear witness that he’d heard them.
And then Lysa let out a torrent of hatred against him for killing ‘Dear Petyr’, who should have been her husband. All she had to do was kill him (why was he not dead after she had stabbed him?) and Petyr would come back and save her and love her and be her husband and give her more children because she deserved them and Catelyn did not, not with her Northern savage of a husband. She became quite animated in her madness, until he finally tired of it all and stood up abruptly, making her flinch and fall silent.
“We have ‘Dear Petyr’s books and his writings,” he said heavily. “He seems to have seen you as a useful idiot. A clingy useful idiot. If he was in love with anyone – if such a man could love anything – then it was your sister, Catelyn Stark. Never mind. You are here and you have confessed to trying to kill me, to betraying me with Baelish, who was a traitor, and to poisoning my son and heir – the heir to the Lord Paramountcy of the Vale. If we were at the Eyrie then I’d now have ordered you dragged to the Moon Door by now and flung through. Instead I will execute you myself at dawn tomorrow. I should use the same means that Baelish died by, but you are or were my wife and as the mother of our child you deserve a quick death. So I’ll take your head myself. Your father by the way has denounced you as being no Tully, just a disgrace. We will meet again tomorrow, one last time. Prepare yourself.”
And with that he turned and walked out of the door, passing Quill who was glaring at Lysa before following him out of the door. It was only after the door slammed closed and was locked firmly by Quill that they both heard the screams and the wails from Lysa.
“I will sharpen my sword myself, Quill,” he said quietly as they walked down the corridor. “And have my armour polished and a clean surcoat made ready. She has shamed House Arryn and by all the Gods House Arryn, so the head of House Arryn will execute her. Don’t give me that look Quill, I have enough strength for this.”
Quill bowed his head reluctantly and then strode off, leaving Jon with the dark thought that at some point he would have to tell his son that he had personally executed his mother.
But it had to be done. “As High as Honour.” He could do no less.
Daenerys
Her dragons were trying to learn how to fly. It was instinctive, or so the books said. She wondered about the books at times. Dry words on dry pages, with many theories across them. There were times when she looked at the range of books and wanted to droop, to lower her head against the table and cry.
She was so alone.
Oh, the servants were friendly and the food they produced was excellent. She walked twice a day in the hills around Bolthole, knowing that there would always be an Unsullied guard somewhere in sight watching for threats, but she knew that despite the others she was as alone as she had been in Pentos after the fire.
There were times when she almost wished that Viserys was still alive. Yes, in his last days he must have been as mad as she now knew that Father had been, but he had still been family and above all he had been a Valyrian.
Valyria. It haunted her dreams at times. A great empire reduced to ashes by… what? What had the Doom been? There were a lot more theories in the books about the Doom. Some said that it had been a fireball from the sky. Others that it had been a fireball from the sea. Some said that it had been from the ground itself, that the Valyrians had twisted the land, misused its magic until eventually something had broken and warped in a terrible way.
Whatever the cause – Valyria was now gone. Anyone who went there never came back.
The Valyrians had known everything about dragons though and she wished that even just one of them could be there with her, to teach her dragons. She had finally named them. The little black one was Balerion, because why not? It was an illustrious name. The green one was Rhaegal, after her brother. She was a bit confused about that one, but in the books it seemed to make sense. And the white one she had named after her great-great and then something Aemon – Aemaerion.
She really hoped that she had gotten the Valyrian names right.
And now she was watching as her dragons tried to fly. They were fumbling. They were falling and she had to rush in several times to pick them up and stroke them and reassure them and then place them back on the bench on which they were perched.
But they were starting to fly. To glide at least, with a few flaps of the wing. She was willing them to fly. She wanted them to fly.
They would fly. It would happen in the next few days. And it both encouraged her and terrified her. They had to fly. The last dragon that her family had possessed had been a stunted thing that had never really flown. Why had it not? Had it been a plot against her family? So her dragons had to fly, had to keep growing, had to become big and strong. But what if they flew away somewhere and never came back?
They were her children. And she didn’t want to be alone.
She’d written another letter to her great-grand uncle on the Wall, begging him for any wisdom he could give her. She didn’t know when or even if he would respond to her, but… she hoped he would. She hoped.
Varys had at least sent her a letter. It had made her feel ill, because it had confirmed the news that her father had been truly mad, that there had indeed been wildfire under the Red Keep and so many other places. And he had added a postscript, telling of what Prince Oberyn’s daughter had seen at the Wall. Of wights and actual Others out of legend.
The thought of those things – dead people walking and creatures that looked as if they were carved from ice – made her shiver, even though she was perfectly warm here in deserted Andalos.
So – what to do? Varys had made it very clear that the Targaryen cause in Westeros was at a low ebb, lower than it had ever been, at the moment. But there were creatures from her blackest nightmares marching on the Wall and she felt… an odd pull West. She had not heard the Call, but perhaps she sensed it thanks to the trickle of Blackwood blood in her?
If there was no support in Westeros then why go there? But if she felt that pull then surely she had to?
It was all enough to give her a headache at times. Varys had it right – she had been pushed out of the nest and now she had to learn to fly, just as much as her dragons. Because the ground was rushing up before her.
She heard the sound of boots and then looked over to see one of the Unsullied standing before her. He nodded sharply and then removed his helmet. Ah. It was Grey Slime and once again she cursed the men who had named the individual Unsullied.
“Lady Targaryen.”
She didn’t correct him. She didn’t know if she was a Princess still or not. “May I help you?” She would not call him by that name.
“Word from Pentos has come. The Braavosi are looking for you. Hunting you perhaps. We should be safe here, but we will still set guards.”
She froze for a moment and then sighed and nodded. “Very well. I will write to Lord Varys.” The Unsullied replaced his helmet, nodded formally and then walked off, but then she raised her voice again: “Unsullied?”
He turned and looked back at her.
“You and your brothers need new names. Free names. I will write as such to Lord Varys.”
For the first time she saw genuine shock in the eyes of one of the Unsullied. He nodded again, more briskly and then left quickly, leaving her to watch the antics of her dragons, with little Balerion finally taking to the skies with a great flapping of wings.
She hoped that she’d get a response from the Wall.
Asha
She loved the sea. Being back on a ship had made her sigh with relief, but they’d been on a river at first and rivers were not the sea. Rivers limited your course, rivers had too many shallows, rivers hemmed you in.
The sea was different. The smell of the spray, the sound of the gulls, the sight of the dolphins gambolling alongside the ship as they cut through the waves… it felt like she could, wind willing, steer her ship anywhere in the world on a whim.
She looked ahead from her current perch at the crow’s nest on the mainmast. She felt as if she had been away from Harlaw for a year instead of the months that it had been. No further news of battles or skirmishes had come from the Iron Islands and she’d been both encouraged and made nervous by that. She knew that the peace would only last for a short time, until Nuncle Rodrik met Father – and she had no idea what Father was planning.
It still made her uneasy, that she could not trust Father anymore, but there was no other way to view the matter. Father had thrown his lot in with Damphair, who was just insane, and after all her time in the North – what she had not just heard of but actually seen in front of her eyes – she knew that that was madness.
Barrowtown had left a mark on her. Seeing those… those things in the mist had chilled her very blood.
She shivered a little and then looked down. Ygritte was at the prow, looking out at the waves with a look of awe on her face. The Wildling girl had stopped throwing up all over the place, which was a mercy, and was watching the sea with a look of wonder.
Jon bloody Stark had better treat that girl well.
Something tickled in her nose for a moment and she looked ahead again, narrowing her eyes a little, before taking a look at where the sun was in the sky. Given the wind, how long they’d been sailing… could it be Harlaw already on the far horizon?
It was. The island loomed before them after a while and she descended down to the deck and took the helm herself, peering ahead at the landmarks and then setting a course for Ten Towers.
She could tell that they were being watched from the shore and the moment that she clapped eyes on the island she had the banner of House Harlaw and her own personal standard hoisted. Nuncle Rodrik needed to know that she was back as soon as possible.
That said, she was glad to see a pair of ships ahead of them as they sailed down the coast to Ten Towers. Guardships. She used her Myrish spyglass to view them and saw a man with one looking back at her. They passed with waves of acknowledgement and something of a weight came off her shoulders.
Harlaw still stood.
By the time that they finally beat in to the harbour at Ten Towers she could see that a crowd had assembled at the wharf. And at the head of the crowd was a familiar figure. Lord Rodrik Harlaw was there. She took a deep breath. She was not looking forwards to this.
As the ship was steered towards the wharf and the sails were furled, the passengers started to assemble on the deck and as Stannis Baratheon emerged, surcoat of yellow and black on his chest and flanked by his guards, the crowd saw him and started to mutter.
This was what she had been afraid of. Iron Islanders still remembered – and resented – the battle of Fair Isle. Greenlanders weren’t supposed to win sea battles against Ironborn and yet, led by Stannis Baratheon, they had smashed the Iron Fleet at Fair Isle.
But then, as she snapped the orders that brought the ship to moor at the wharf and the crowd really started to mutter, something else happened. Jon Stark and Theon both made an appearance on deck with their direwolves. Jon was wearing a Stark surcoat and Theon his Greymist one, but her brother also held a Stark banner in his hands. And the moment that the direwolves padded into view the crowd fell silent.
The moment that the mooring was complete and the railed gangplank went down Stannis Baratheon strode down it, not even touching the handrails. His guards followed him, along with Jon and Theon and their direwolves, with Asha trailing.
At first Nuncle Rodrik’s white and strained face was focussed on the Baratheon on the dock and she knew that he had to be thinking of his dead sons. But then she could see his eyes take in the fist pin on the chest of the other man. “My Lord Hand.” He said the words flatly but then bowed formally and she let out a sigh of almost relief as she heard him say those three words.
“Lord Harlaw.” Stannis Baratheon nodded in recognition before looking about. “The Iron Throne recognises your voice here. And supports you. The Iron Throne heard the Call as well.”
There was another bout of muttering that ended as Nuncle Rodrik bowed again, even more deeply. “My thanks my Lord Hand.” And then he looked at Jon Stark. “You would be a Stark then? A son of Lord Stark?”
The young man who looked so much like his father nodded at that and then took a step forwards, one hand on the head of his very alert direwolf. “I am Jon Stark, the son of Eddard Stark. You can all see my direwolf, Ghost, here. And I was there, with Lord Greymist here, when the Call was sent! The Others come! The Stark calls for aid!” He took a deep breath. “YOU ARE NEEDED!”
There was a moment of stunned silence and then the crowd erupted into wild cheering. She closed her eyes and sighed deeply as she released the strain that had been on her. When she opened her eyes Nuncle Rodrik was standing in front of her.
“I hoped that you’d bring a letter of support from the King, not the Hand of the King!” He sighed and gave her a strained smile. “Stannis Baratheon is an awkward man. That said… he’ll be the marlinspike to the head that your father won’t expect.”
“There’ll be more than one marlinspike to the head,” she muttered, as she jerked a thumb in the direction of Theon, who was still standing there with his bloody direwolf. “Lord Greymist? He’s my brother Theon.”
Nuncle Rodrik eyed Theon and his direwolf and then looked back at her. “You what?”
“He’s renounced the Greyjoy name and heritage. Says that the moment that Father started to rebuild the Iron Fleet he also all but gave up on him.” She paused for a long and reluctant moment. “He speaks the truth to be honest.”
There was a moment of silence and then her uncle started to laugh. “So,” he said eventually, “Your brother has inflicted his own form of vengeance on your father? You are now his only heir?”
“I am.” She almost spat the words.
Nuncle Rodrik nodded again. “Good – you deserve to be.” He looked at Stannis Baratheon and Jon and Theon. “We need to get them all up to the Towers.”
“Nuncle, there’s lot I need to tell you about.”
“And I you. I need to ask you about what the Stonebrows said about me passing on what I know to my sons.”
She cringed a little. “Nuncle, that must have been because-”
“My wife is pregnant.” He said the words with a certain astonishment and wonder in his voice.
She blinked at that. “Nuncle,” she said eventually. “You old dog!”
To her amusement he blushed. “Asha, I’m only human.”
Sandor
Life was good right now. The sun was shining, there was a mug of very good ale to one side, he had a belly full of excellent food and above all there was a giggling maid on his lap who had the kind of tits that a man could bury his face in.
Which is what he’d done the previous night. And from the giggling things she was whispering in his ear he’d be doing the same thing that night and a lot more.
He needed the distraction because he still had not the faintest fucking idea what he was going to do. Somewhere a raven was flapping its way South to Casterley Rock, to tell whoever was in charge there that a message had to be sent to Clegane’s Keep saying that he was now the head of House Clegane, or what there was of it. It currently consisted of: him. Just him.
He wondered for a moment what his father would have thought about things. And then he stopped himself from thinking about that. He didn’t want to get angry, not now. Not with Beth whispering the kind of things in his ear that made him want to pick her up and take her back to his room.
And then they both froze as a door opened to one side and the sound of screamed insults and general madness started to reach them. They looked over to one side as the Imp stumped into view, looking angry and strained, followed by his wife, who was flexing a hand but looked grimly satisfied.
“Oh shit, that’s the queen of bitches,” Beth muttered and sure enough after a moment two guards emerged with a struggling figure. Cersei fucking Lannister. She looked haggard and thinner than before, her hair was disarrayed, there were black circles under her eyes, she was not dressed in anything fashionable and all in all she looked like shit.
Oh and there was the red mark on her cheek that looked like a slap mark. He looked at the Imp’s wife and her right hand, which she was flexing a lot, put two and two together and came to the correct conclusion. The Imp’s Northern wife had a fire in her belly. Good for her.
And then the former Queen laid eyes on him. “Hound!” She screeched the word. “Dog! Come here and rescue me! Kill these Northern swine! I command it! I COMMAND IT! I AM YOUR QUEEN!”
Fuck it, but she sounded demented. Did she really still think that she was Queen, after everything that had she had done? After everything that happened as a result? She’d been caught fucking her own brother, had had his bastard children, had committed treason. If he’d had the horrific luck to be married to her then she would have lost her head months or even years ago.
So he looked Cersei Lannister right in her mad eyes and then just grinned. It was a big grin and he saw her start as she realised that his burns were gone. And then he laughed. This seemed to flabbergast her. “All hail the Queen of Nothing!” he shouted, making Beth jump a little on his lap in a very nice way.
“CLEGANE!” She shouted back. “HOW DARE YOU!”
“You’re not the Queen anymore,” he replied with a shrug. “Command away. I’m not listening.”
She went into some kind of frenzy after that, struggling against her guards, until the Imp’s wife strode up to her again. “Goodsister,” she said in a voice like silk-shrouded steel, “You will be silent or you will get the taste of my hand again.”
Cersei Lannister fell suddenly silent at that, one hand going to the slapmark on her face. “You dared…”
“I did – and I’ll do it again if I have to. Stop making a spectacle of yourself. Be silent. Try and be a Lannister, with dignity.”
Her eyes widened almost comically at this, as she almost reeled backwards at the words that Dacey Surestone-Lannister, or whatever the fuck her name now was, had flung in her face. He had to admire her. She had balls for a woman and was a match for the Imp.
And now the Imp strode forwards, with a face that oddly enough looked very much like his old bastard of a father. “Enough Cersei. You have embarrassed House Lannister enough. No more. You are to go into exile and accept that.”
Pale and shaking the Bitch looked around the courtyard, at the Imp and his wife, at the still forms of Robb Stark and that odd Wildling girl with the big tits to one side and at the distant redheaded figure of Catelyn Stark. She seemed to almost prepare to hawk and spit on the ground in front of her, but then the Imp shook his head with a dreadful finality. “No.” He said the word in such a way that he sounded just like his father.
And that seemed to break something in her. She wilted and was led to the waiting carriage to one side. The Imp sighed and walked over to the men and women who were waiting by it as the former Queen was ushered into the carriage. “My sister will be… a challenge to deal with. However-” And here he held up a jingling bag of what must have been coins. “Deliver her safely to White Harbour and this will the first of two bags of silver for your pains. The other awaits you in White Harbour. Please do not listen to her many and insane lies about what she might promise you.”
The grizzled older man who accepted the bag nodded formally. “We’ll get her there safely Lord Tyrion. And put her on the boat to that island she’s bound for.”
And that was it, really. They were all prepared to depart it seemed and after they mounted and passed out of the gate in front of them a sigh seemed to go up and a tension seemed to lift.
“Well then,” Beth said. “She’s gone. And good riddance to her.”
He stood then, with her in his arms – which made her squeak again. “Aye, she’s gone. My room?”
She looked at him, mischief and more than that in her eyes. “Your room.”
And so he strode off with her. Whatever his duty was, it could wait.
For a while.
He had a growing feeling he was needed somewhere.
Theon
Mother had sung songs about Ten Towers to Asha and himself when they were very young, songs that he vaguely remembered even now. Songs about how big and tall the towers were, how much wisdom the Lords of Harlaw had, how beautiful Harlaw was.
And now he was on the island and could see what at least one of the Iron islands was like and… he wasn’t impressed. He hated to say it, but it was true. Harlaw was nothing like the North. Where were the trees, where were the mountains, where were the resources?
If he had learned anything from Lord Stark over the past years that he had been in the North, it was that you always had a running total in your head of what the lands around you could yield up. Crops. Livestock. Ores. Lumber. People. Hunting grounds. Fishing grounds.
Harlaw barely ticked off a few of those. He could see why the Iron Islands needed lumber. There were some trees, but nowhere near as many as even the rockier part of the North. He thought of the Wolfswood and wanted to shake his head.
Mist padded up to him and wuffled at his hand until he grinned at his direwolf and scratched behind his ears until Mist closed his eyes in ecstasy and leaned into his hand, as a rear paw started to beat a lazy tattoo on the floorboards.
Knuckles rapped on the door an instant after Mist suddenly turned to look at the door, giving him the slightest of warnings. Nuncle Rodrik was standing the doorway, watching them both carefully. “Theon.”
“Nuncle.”
The older man strode in, stopped and looked him up and down. “You have the look of your mother about you. But speaking as a Harlaw I would say that wouldn’t I?” He smiled slightly. “You have the open mind of a Harlaw, anyway.”arlaw
He thought about the Theon that Robb knew from that future that never would be and smiled wryly. “I’ll always try to have a more open mind than my father.”
The Reader pulled a face. “You know what I think about your father from our letters. He’s not the Greyjoy his father was. Ironically perhaps you could have been. Your sister will have to be it instead, as you have tied yourself to the North so completely.”
“I had to,” he replied, stroking Mist between the ears absently. “Nuncle, I was there in Winterfell when the Call was sent out. I was in Lord Stark’s solar when it was sent. It ran through me like nothing else I have ever felt.” And then he took a deep breath. “Nuncle, I have seen the Wall. I have seen wights. I have killed them. And I have seen Others. I know what’s coming for all of us.”
His uncle looked at him and then nodded slowly, before squinting at him. “Asha says that you have a weirwood pendant and a tale that I must hear.”
He pulled the pendant out and then sighed slightly and told his uncle the full tale of both dreams. By the time he finished The Reader staring at him with an odd, set look to his face. After a long moment his uncle finally nodded slowly as he visibly thought things through. “That,” he said hoarsely – and then he coughed and seemed to shake himself – “That explains a great deal about your actions, Theon. I understand better than most. Did Asha tell you about the room of runes that was found at High Harlaw?”
“She did. And what the runes meant.”
“Aye, our ancestors knew something. Something that frightened them.”
He nodded in turn and then he sighed. “Did Asha tell you about what we saw at Barrowtown?”
The Reader frowned a little. “She did not. What happened?”
So one again he told the tale of what they – and all who had been on the wall at Barrowtown, looking at that eerie mist – had seen. When he stopped speaking he could see that his uncle was deeply shaken. “The timing… the timing fits.”
“Fits what?”
His uncle strode over to a chair and sat down. “Odd fog was seen on the north-easternmost part of Harlaw, more than ten days ago. It wouldn’t move with the wind. And then, after an odd light was in the sky on the far horizon, it vanished. Based on your take and the times… they fit.”
Theon found himself shivering for a moment. “The shades of the dead. Those who wanted to go to the Oathstone to join the others there.” He paused for a moment and then frowned. “Was fog reported on any of the other islands?”
“Great Wyk.” The Reader sighed a little. “We have some scattered reports from some of the other islands of something similar. Fog that gathered in places for days before vanishing on the same day.”
He nodded slowly. “No word from my father on the fog?”
This got him a bitter smile from his uncle. “No. No word.” Then he paused and ran a hand over his forehead. “Your mother is here at Ten Towers. She… has not been well for some years now. She mourned your brothers deeply and your father never understood the depth of her grief. But she heard the Call. Heard it loudly. She’s… more focussed now. Better. You should see her.”
Mother. His heart seemed to stop for a moment. “I have not seen her in years.”
“She will welcome the sight of you.” His uncle looked at Mist and then quirked a smile. “I am not sure what she will make of your direwolf though.”
He laughed softly and then ruffled Mist’s fur between his ears. “She’ll understand that Mist and I are as one. I might not be a warg, like some of the Starks, but there are times when I wonder what it might take to be one.”
The Reader nodded slowly, before looking out of the window. “I will be taking the Lord Hand to High Harlaw, so that he can see the runes. You should come, to see them.” He paused and winced a little. “Your other uncle, Victarion, has seen them. You should see him too. The runes have… changed him.”
“Changed him how?”
“He wants to go to the Wall. He wants to see things for himself. He’ll have a limp for the rest of his life, he was wounded in the battle here, but he has a more open mind than he used to.”
“And I take it that a message has gone to my father, to meet? To parlay?”
“Aye,” Nuncle Rodrik sighed. “It has. And I have no doubt that your father will do something stupid during it. But having Stannis Baratheon there as the Hand of the King, and you as Lord Greymist will be a reef that he won’t be expecting.” And with that he stood, nodded at him and then left.
Theon watched him go and then went back to the window. He really wanted to be back in the North. He wanted to be building his holdfast, picking his people and he wanted Ros. He put a hand to his weirwood pendant and sent up a brief prayer to the Old Gods. He wanted to finish this business and go home.
Chapter Text
Robert
Gods, but he’d missed this. Riding on campaign again – the greatest campaign in the history of Westeros, certainly since the Conquest – was something that made him feel alive again. He’d missed this – riding at the head of what was almost a vanguard of an army, heading towards a battlefield.
And what a battlefield. The further North they rode the more he saw why it was that Ned had never returned to King’s Landing after the war. He was too busy running the North and trying to grow it. The North was huge – and harsh. It was cold and the further North they rode the colder it got. Ned had given him a lot of advice about what to wear and their party had benefitted from those words of wisdom.
Even his former Goodfather had listened, to his quiet amusement. Hidden and quiet, obviously. He was being careful in how he treated the man. The resources of the Westerlands – their gold and silver especially – would be vital in the war that lay ahead.
And he had to be careful about that as well. He’d cursed himself for the way that he’d stupidly scorned Jon’s worries about ‘counting coppers’. That had led to Baelish and his contemptuous pilfering of the Treasury.
He didn’t like to think of that smirking little piece of shit. He’d never liked him, there had always been something that made his hackles go up whenever they talked. Like an idiot he’d never wondered why.
That made him wonder just what Baelish would have thought of the wight heads and all the other evidence of the Others. Probably would have sneered at them and called them Northern lies or something like that and then tried to persuade him not to support the North.
Well, the North had to be fucking well supported. The Wall was their best defence. It was enormous and would probably eat resources like nothing he could imagine, but he’d work out the tactics once he got there and could see the lay of the land.
He had no intention of being the King who lost this war. The Targaryens had been fighting for power and the right to stay on that damn chair that he should have melted down years ago. He was fighting to keep Westeros safe and well and filled with living people. These Others… they wanted to kill everyone and everything and then raise the dead as wights to dance to whatever tune they liked, if they even had music.
That was the thing that bothered him – the strangeness, the wrongness of the enemy. With men you knew what they were fighting for – love, or coin, or power, or hate, or loyalty – or a combination of all of those. But these Others… what did they fight for? Death? He’d known men who fought because they wanted to die, but this was different.
It made him uneasy in a different way. He had a part to play in this, a role that the Gods had chosen for him. Storm King. But what did that mean? What could he do? He couldn’t control the clouds, he couldn’t make lightening strike or thunder boom. What did they want of him? He had to work it out.
He would also have to ride up and down the column again soon, Stormbreaker in his arms. The word about the Mountain had spread quickly and it was expected of him now that he’d use the sword of his ancestors to try and detect any foul magics being used on the men. He had no idea if he could even tell, but from what The Imp had wrote the Warnings had glowed near the body of Gregor Clegane. So far Stormbreaker hadn’t so much as flickered, and Ser Barristan had been keeping a close eye on it as they rode. That said, just seeing him had gotten the men’s spirits up and that was important. A king who forgot that was no king. Aerys had shown that.
Well, that and being an insane dribbling lunatic who was willing to sacrifice King’s Landing in his delusion that doing so would make him a dragon.
He understood all too well why young Jon was so terrified of his Targaryen blood. There were times when the thought of going mad worried him as well. He was only on the throne because of his family link to the Targaryens. He was finally coming to terms with that now. Yes, he hated Rhaegar for kidnapping and raping Lyanna. Yes, he hated Aerys for being a cruel lunatic who had condemned him and Ned to death for just existing. But his grandmother had been a Targaryen and he had loved her fiercely – he could never hate her. That realisation had been like a key turning in a lock in his head.
As the Sun started to draw down to the horizon in the West they found themselves at a large inn, where the innkeeper had been expecting them thanks to the advance riders and where there were quarters for all, even if some of the men had to sleep in a barn to one side with carefully tended braziers inside. He made sure that everyone was settled – a lesson that Jon Arryn had drummed into him – and then made for his own room, where there was a hip-bath ready with hot water in it and a giant scrubbing brush, the application of which on his back made his eyes cross with pleasure.
After that he made for the common room and joined the others in eating and drinking. He was tired – gods, they all were – and he realised that he needed to keep a clear head, so he swallowed the ale and didn’t ask for wine. And even though there was a comely wench or three about with magnificent tits, he didn’t indulge in too much flirting. The ghost of Lyanna seemed to be at his shoulder at times and he had not yet thought on how to release that wraith of memory. He needed to – Gods, she had told him too! – but he couldn’t yet work how to do it.
He did watch, amused, at how Gendry’s eyes tended to widen at some of the women in the room. His son was… well, shy. He was young, coltish, and a good lad. And, above all, no-one was trying to kill him. He’d thought long and dark thoughts about that after Stannis had told him about the attempts on the way to Winterfell. Cersei of course. Gendry also seemed to be always staring at a piece of runed metal. He needed to ask the lad about that. And with that he shrugged and went to bed, where he slept the sleep of the knackered.
When morning came he indulged in his usual ritual of hoisting a log over his shoulders and striding about the courtyard as the inn came alive and the men started to make ready for the day’s ride. He added an extra circuit before shrugging the log off and then standing there panting, leaning over with his hands on his thighs, before pouring a bucket of warm water over his head and then going back to his room to dress and then join the others in breaking their fast. And then to horse again.
They made good progress that morning. And then just before noon, as they were stopping to have a spot of lunch, he heard shouts off to the distance. Looking over he could see a party of horsemen approaching from the North, with upraised hands of welcome and a banner that he recognised. And there was a huge man leading them on a large horse.
“UMBER!”
The large man looked in his direction as he dismounted and Robert could see a flash of grinning teeth and hear a boom of laughter.
“Get your skinny arse over here, Umber!”
“Is that our loud King?”
He could feel Selmy stiffen next to him and he raised a calming hand. “It’s alright Ser Barristan. That’s Lord Umber – the GreatJon. He’s short on tact and long on boisterousness.”
“What’s tact?” The GreatJon boomed as he approached – and then knelt formally. “Your Grace. Welcome to the North.” He looked up. “I am bloody glad to see you but my knee’s getting damp and as you said I have no tact.”
The laughter bubbled out of him and he reached out, grabbed the GreatJon’s arm and jerked him effortlessly to his feet, before clapping him on the shoulder. “GreatJon! Haven’t seen you since Pyke!”
“Aye, your Grace. Good times for squid squashing!” The huge man sobered for a moment. “It’s good to see you your Grace, The Call was sent and the South has answered. I heard that you were on the road to the Wall. Where’s Lord Stark?”
He jerked his head to one side and led the huge man off to one side. “Oldtown,” he said eventually. “Ned’s headed for Oldtown.” Catching the GreatJon’s frown he quietly explained the message from the new Lord Tyrell. By the time he had finished explaining the Lord of the Last Hearth was pale.
“Bloody hell,” Umber said eventually. “Well, I hope that Ned sorts that out. In the meantime I came to see you for a reason your Grace. To warn that that there’s giants in the hills to the North-west of here. They trade with men a bit, so there’s every chance you’ll see them on the road. And they’re a bloody great shock to the system if you’re not ready for them. I know that your horses won’t be. I thought a warning might help.”
He frowned. “They’re not a threat are they?”
“Not unless you’re a threat to them. They don’t even eat meat. Make great cheese though.”
Robert eyed the man for a moment. “Any cousins of yours there?”
The GreatJon boomed with laughter. “If Umber family legends are true, then yes. Odd to think that I might have family there.” He shrugged and then looked flintily to one side. “I seem to smell Lannisters.”
He suppressed a wince. “Tywin Lannister is riding with me to the Wall, with others including his brothers.”
The big man. “Brothers? Gerion?”
“You’ve met him?”
“At Castle Black. Not bad for a Lannister.”
Someone called from the group to their rear and he slapped the GreatJon on the shoulder again. “Have some lunch and ride with us for a while. There’s a lot I need to know about the North.”
It was good to have the GreatJon at his side. The man looked big and threatening but had a surprisingly shrewd mind. After they resumed their ride North after lunch – gods that man could eat and drink! – he rode next to him and filled in a few gaps in his knowledge about the North.
Where they could see habitation they also saw a huge amount of work being done, to sow or harvest or chop. A lot of firewood was being laid down to dry out and he even saw signs of a few coal mines here and there. And according to the GreatJon there soon would be some shaggier cows. Umber had a plan that made sense to him at least.
And then they reached an area where the trees by the left-hand side of the road became thinner and gave way to hills covered in grass. Umber paused them here and shouted out his warning that there were giants in the hills on their mammoths and that they all had to be mindful of their horses.
More than a few horsemen in Lannister Red scoffed almost openly at that, muttering to each other. The GreatJon noticed that, he could see at once, smirked more than a bit and then nodded at his King to ride on.
When the first huge shapes of giants on mammoths were seen there were more than a few startled shouts and pale faces, although Gerion Lannister joined the GreatJon in reassuring people.
One group of giants, with mammoths to one side, was close to the road, dickering with what looked like some men dressed in bronze armour. “Thenn,” the GreatJon said quietly. “They’re Thenn. Wildlings.” His face worked for a long moment before he sighed. “The best of the Wildlings. They obey Ned and enforce the law in the Gift and the New Gift. Never thought I’d say those words. Always thought that all Wildlings were scum.” He coughed a little. “I… I was wrong.”
He peered at the man carefully and then nodded. “There’s a lot of it going about,” he replied wryly, before looking at some of the riders about him. Young Lancel Lannister was staring at the giants in such a way that he seemed about to faint with astonishment.
Which was a bad thing, because when the wind shifted slightly and blew down from the direction of the mammoths more than a few horses became skittish. He reassured his own horse with a pat and a caress, as did the GreatJon.
And then the Lannister boy’s horse got a good whiff of something and neighed. The boy was too busy gaping at the giants to seem to notice – and then the horse reared onto its hind legs for a moment. Lancel Lannister swore and then went flying – only to be snatched out of the air by the great arm of the GreatJon, who grabbed him with a grunt and then lowered him to the ground as someone else calmed the horse.
“There you go boy,” the GreatJon boomed. “You alright?”
The young man seemed to shake himself, looked humiliated – and then nodded. “My thanks Lord Umber,” he said after a long moment. “I owe you a great debt.”
He could see a very pale Kevan Lannister to one side also nodding at the GreatJon, who acknowledged them both with a tight smile. “You’re welcome lad.”
After the lad had mounted his horse again and they all rode on he noticed that the giants had all stopped dead and were watching them closely, along with the Thenn after a moment. The GreatJon also noticed this and after getting a nod of permission from him rode off to talk to them.
When he returned the Lord of the Last Hearth was pale. He rode up next to him and then eyed him from head to toe.
“What’s amiss?”
“The giants.”
“What about them?”
“They asked who the ‘Storm-man’ was. The human who brings the thunder and lightning in his wake. The man with the sword of storms.”
He paled a little and then looked back at the giants and men in bronze who were staring at him. Gods. What was he? What did he need to be?
Jon Arryn
He still had strength in his arm and a good eye. He knew that. He knew it because that morning, just after dawn, he’d killed his wife with that arm and that eye. That and a very sharp sword.
She had been brought to the block dull-eyed and muttering nonsense. Something about darling Petyr and babies. He wanted to tell her that her Petyr was squatting in one of the nastier hells somewhere that was reserved for thieves and cuckolds, but he could tell at a glance that his words would have been worthless, that she would not have heard them.
She had been lost to madness and had been there for some time.
So instead he pricked at her back with the point of his sword, just enough to make her arch her back and stretch her neck in shocked surprise – and then he had picked the spot on her neck to aim for and swung. He had struck hard and true and his sword had severed her neck with one blow.
He’d been glad that her head had fallen with her face to the ground. He didn’t want to see her last moments, her eyes rolling, her mouth trying to open and scream. She had been his wife, she had birthed his son… and yes then she had betrayed him and then tried to kill him.
Now she was with the Silent Sisters. Her bones would be taken back to the Vale and quietly buried near the Bloody Gate. Not the Eyrie. She’d never be buried there. Or at her old home in the Riverlands. It was a form of revenge beyond death. Petty perhaps – but one day he’d have to sit down with his son and explain to him why he’d done what he had. Why he had executed the lad’s mother. She had loved him, in a twisted way.
She’d also poisoned the boy - and if Baelish had lived who knew if that twisted little maggot would have persuaded her to poison him as well? So much evil had followed from Baelish being fostered at Riverrun.
And speaking of the Riverlands he was now looking at a new issue involving the lands that bordered the Vale.
The Shield of the Riverlands looked so… old. Old but somehow enduring. The shape of it was ancient, the metal on it so like that of Stormbreaker, the leather old, worn but somehow still supple.
There were three others in the room. Quill, a silent watcher who he knew was worried about him and then Bronn and his Steward, who had changed into a dress. They were all looking at the shield and waiting.
A knock at the door was answered by Quill, who stepped to one side to admit Pycelle, who was holding several books and who looked almost excited as he sat down and then looked at the shield with what looked rather like greed.
“Well, my Lords,” the ArchMaester said with a smile. “Quite the ancient mystery!”
“Is this indeed the Shield of the Riverlands ArchMaester?”
The books were placed carefully on the table. “The Shield is something out of the age of legends that vanished during the Andal Invasion, my Lords. We have very few references to it. We know that it was owned by the Mudd Kings. Legend has it that bearing it raised the spirits of the men in battle. Legend also had it that when it was raised in the air at the right time it would shine like the Sun itself.”
At these last words Bronn and his Steward looked at each other, before the Lord of the Foxhold looked at the old ArchMaester and then at him. “ArchMaester, when Ursula here first picked the Shield up, it…. Well, it shone. Like a piece of the Sun was in it.”
Pycelle looked as if he was torn between scoffing and looking faintly impressed. “You are sure about that Lord Cassley?”
“Quite sure.” Cawlish said the words without quite biting them off.
Even Pycelle it seemed could detect the dislike in her voice, because he suddenly harrumphed and then pulled over one of the books and leafed carefully through it. “As for the ownership of the Shield, whilst it might be named for the Riverlands it was an heirloom of House Mudd, which of course is not entire extinguished and which married into House Cawlish. Steward Cawlish is of that blood and whilst the Foxhold was… well, fought over by Riverlands and Vale over the years, its current situation in the Vale is not disputed. Therefore, my Lords, Steward Cawlish, there can be no claim by Riverrun on this, erm, object.”
Jon nodded with a sigh. “Excellent.” Then he caught the look on Pycelle’s face. “What is it ArchMaester?”
“Well, there is the issue of wielding it my Lord. The other great artifacts of the First Men are currently carried by men – His Grace the King, Lord Stark, Lord Tyrell, Lord Dayne – if Dawn is indeed a blade of the First Men – and Lord Tyrion Lannister. Steward Cawlish is… well, she is but a woman, to put things bluntly.”
Ursula Cawlish fixed the old man with a look that reminded Jon at once of her father. Jordy Cawlish had had the exact same look of magnificent disdain. “ArchMaester,” she said after a long moment. “May I remind you that I am of noble blood and that the Shield shone when I picked it up, as Lord Cassley attested to?”
This prompted a moment of gabbling vacillation from the wretched man, before Bronn put an end to it. “She can wield it. I think she was born to wield it. And no-one should take it away from her or tell her that she’s too weak. She’s not. She heard the Call. And that’s that.”
He smiled slightly at the way that she was looking at the former sellsword who was displaying such remarkable hidden depths. And then he made a decision. “That is not quite the end of it, Lord Cassley. I think that there is a ceremony that I need to organise right here in the Red Keep and I think that there is a vitally important question that you need to ask the daughter of the Late Lord Cawlish that is linked to that ceremony.”
As he gestured to a faintly baffled Pycelle and a slightly smirking Quill to leave the room with him he could tell that Bronn had gone very white – but resolute – and that Ursula Cawlish had blushed bright red – but looked expectant.
If they survived the war that lay ahead the children of those two would be… interesting.
Robb
Running the North in Father’s absence was something that never became easier. So much to do, a never-ending stream of things to read, think about and sign, or sometimes just read and sign, or sometimes read, sigh and sign.
Which he had just done as he sat in Father’s solar.
He still had the feeling that his education about how to really rule the North had barely begun, although that was probably being harsh of him. That said, the last time he had been in at least titular charge of the North he’d ended up with crossbow bolts in his chest and a knife wielded by Roose Bolton ending his life.
Was he more cautious now? Yes. He was. Was he also being a fool when it came to his heart before his head? Possibly. Mors Umber was now in Winterfell, along with young Ned Umber. The boy was a bit young and more than a bit overwhelmed, especially by the Terrible Threesome, but he had a good heart.
Arya was so far utterly unimpressed by him. Well, perhaps that might change.
As for Mors Crowfood, he was, frankly, a force of nature. His height and powerful build were extended by the snow bear cloak and his ability to drink vast quantities of ale were already making him something of a… well, some regarded him with awe and some thought he was a rowdy drunk.
Rowan, the mother of Val and Dalla, would be at Winterfell in the next day or so and he was feeling extremely anxious about that. Was he being a fool about this? He knew what Father wanted for the North – the Wildlings added to the population of the land, turned from enemies into Northerners, expanding the population of the land.
Val was… someone extraordinary. Beautiful, deadly, intelligent and… someone who intoxicated his senses.
He wanted to back away at times. He knew what his last mistake had cost him.
In the meantime he had also been wandering about Winterfell, Grey Wind at his heels, looking for something that he had not the faintest idea about. The Green Man had told him to search for hidden things, but what could be hidden? He’d stared at the map of Winterfell for far too long and then walked the walls and stared down at it.
Was there a lost building somewhere? If there was then there was no sign of it. Was there therefore somewhere underground? But they had been through Winterfell after Father had been given the Hearthstone and found nothing.
He paused and drummed his fingers on the table. That said, they hadn’t found the annexe in the crypts with the graves of the wargs until after Father had been possessed by the spirit of one of their ancestors.
He couldn’t count on a similar possession. He was missing something. He just didn’t know what.
And so he left the solar and went out into the main courtyard. The Terrible Threesome were nowhere in sight, probably because Shireen and what Bran had named ‘her wagging finger of scolding’ had scared them off somewhere.
From the strains of a harp in the distance Domeric was also somewhere nearby and where Domeric was, Sansa would be too. Those two were a good union, especially as Domeric was nothing really like his father.
There were times when he thought very dark thoughts about Roose Bolton. And then other times when he forced himself back from those thoughts.
He had a nagging feeling that he needed to look deeper into Winterfell. The Broken Tower was being repaired, as was the First Keep. The more he thought about the hidden room in Father’s solar the more he wondered if that had been an earlier tower that had been enclosed within the building that had enveloped it.
This needed a Maester really but as Luwin was rather busy with Mother and the other pregnant ladies of Winterfell, he couldn’t really vex him with all of this.
Perhaps he needed to walk through the crypts again? It might not hurt.
Jon Stark
As the coast of Harlaw vanished astern at dawn he stole a look at Theon. He was standing on the starboard side of the ship, his hand on Mist’s head. He really did seem to gain strength from the direwolf. Jon did not approach the pair. He knew what he was thinking. He was preparing to meet his father and reject everything he stood for.
He looked back at the helmsman. The Reader was standing next to him, talking quietly to Asha Greyjoy. The older man was the opposite of everything he’d thought the Ironborn to be. He was quiet but authoritative, studious but still fierce when he had to be. The moment that he’d shown them the room with the glowing runes had been one that would remain in his memory for many years to come. It had shaken them all.
Off to one side was a pale Ygritte who, wonder of wonders, was not retching over the side. The wildling girl that he had such an odd relationship with was obviously concentrating furiously on the Reader’s advice on how not to get seasick.
The Reader bellowed a series of orders at his men that caused them to pull on various ropes whilst releasing others and after a moment he felt the ship shiver slightly as it started to somehow slip through the waves even faster.
“Aye,” said Asha as she approached him and then looked up at the sails. “My Nuncle knows his bloody business. We’ll be there well before sunset.”
He pulled a slight face. “What will your father do when he hears that we’re coming?”
The Ironborn woman – she was no girl, not now – stared ahead and set her face a little as she battled with what to say. “Depends on what he’s heard. Ships go back for forth between the islands with the truce. But we left the day after you arrived so he might not know that Stannis Baratheon’s sailing with us, and he definitely won’t know that Theon’s renounced his name. We know that there’s a good chance that we’re sailing into what my father thinks is a trap, but we have the people we need to let the jaws of that trap snap shut on empty air.”
Jon looked at the other ships around them, with Harlaw pennants snapping stiffly in the wind. Hopefully she was right.
They were blessed with that same brisk wind for the rest of the day, a westward wind that drove straight for Pyke like an arrow leaving a bow, and Jon wondered if they would have the same impact once they hit their target. Balon Greyjoy’s world was about to be changed in every way possible.
Along the way they passed fishing vessels, manned by a combination of Ironborn and people who could only be thralls, something that made him genuinely angry at the thought of it. Some of the crew of the ships they passed looked at them curiously, some cheered and others had an oddly conflicted look to them.
On they went and Jon found himself wondering how far ahead of them the pinnace that the Reader had sent before them was now. The small craft was fast but didn’t look as sturdy as some of the others did, but that said it was fast.
As they approached Pyke – as the island eventually started to loom on the Western horizon – he found out how fast. There was a shout from the mast, arms were pointed and then the little ship was seen in the far distance, its triangular sail set as it tacked from side to side. As it eventually drew level various sails were lowered, the ships slowed and then a package was carefully thrown from the smaller ship to the larger.
The package contained a message, one that the Reader read with care – and a look at Asha Greyjoy that made her eyebrows contract for a long moment before she nodded and then orders were shouted and the little flotilla set a slightly different course.
When all was settled for the new course he looked at Asha, who strode over. “My father has sent word that he will meet us at the North coast of Pyke. A place called the Parleystone.”
He nodded – but then he caught the look on her face. “What’s wrong?”
She pulled a slight face. “This doesn’t feel right. The Parleystone’s long since lost its significance, it’s a name that doesn’t mean much, there’s a much more important place on Great Wyck. That said, we’ll keep to the plan. Plain cloaks and cowls. We’ll match whatever my father means to do with means of our own.” She said this with a strained smile that didn’t meet her eyes and then strode off.
They sailed on, along the Northern coast, as the Sun started to head down towards the horizon, until they eventually reached what must have been the appointed place. There stood a great flat rock by the side of a sloping beach of grey shingle and as they rowed ashore in long cutters Jon found his eyes flickering to the headlands behind the beach. He couldn’t anyone there – but that did not mean that no-one was there.
As he leapt ashore, Ghost at his side, he strode rapidly up the beach, joined swiftly by Theon and Mist and then Ygritte, who looked glad to be ashore again but not at the expense of neglecting her sentry skills. She had her bow in one hand, but then as she looked about and the direwolves sniffed the air, all three seemed to relax just a hair. She looked at him and nodded, whilst the direwolves attended to some much-needed relief now that they were both ashore. Once that was done they both bounded off, alert in every way.
By the time he looked back at the ships, the Reader was shore, along with his men and Stannis Baratheon. The Hand of the King had brought along half a dozen of his best men and all had hidden their Baratheon tabards beneath plain cowled cloaks. He’s heard the King’s brother mutter about hating such mummery, but as the Reader had pointed out they needed to keep his presence a secret until the right moment.
As one of Lord Harlaw’s men bound the flag of House Harlaw to a tall pole that they had brought with them and then walked over to the flat rock and jammed it into the shingle so that it stood upright, before wedging it in place with stones at the base, Jon sighed and placed a hand on Dark Sister’s hilt. He really needed to give it a new name, to hide it in plain sight, but that felt vaguely wrong somehow for a sword with such a history.
And then he paused. Ghost and Mist had both stopped dead in their tracks and were looking out to sea. He walked over to his direwolf, waving at Theon to do the same and then all four stared Northwards. There was nothing in sight, save a distant fogbank, but something was causing the hackles on both direwolves to ripple briefly. “What is it?” he asked Ghost, but the direwolf just tilted his head to one side as if both puzzled and disturbed, before huffing slightly and sitting and looking about.
“Something’s amiss,” Theon said in a low voice. “I’ll have a word with Asha and the Reader.”
“Aye,” he replied. “Just because we can’t see trouble, that doesn’t mean it’s not coming.”
Theon strode off quickly, Mist at his side, and had that word. Asha looked bemused but the Reader nodded sharply and then talked to one of his men, who detached others to set a good watch, before glancing at Jon and then saying something to Theon.
The new Lord Greymist had a slightly bemused look to his face when he walked back. “He listened. Then he looked at me, looked at you, said ‘You’ll both do’ and dismissed me. What do you think he meant by that?”
“It means that sometimes you’ve got a brain in that thick skull of yours,” Ygritte said to one side and she passed them and stared at all four points of the compass. “There’s trouble coming. You’ll do.” And then she walked off with a smirk at Jon.
“Gods,” Theon muttered at him. “Bed and marry her. Watching you two circle each other like a pair of randy stoats is getting very wearying.”
They waited after that. Waited for a worryingly long time, as the sun started to set and dread started to gnaw at him. He didn’t know what was delaying Balon bloody Greyjoy, but at one point he heard the Reader telling Asha Greyjoy that her father was a fool, something that she did not disagree with. The Reader then ordered some of his men to start gathering the driest of the driftwood to make a bonfire to one side, in case they needed the light to re-embark.
But then, finally, he heard shouts to one side and looked up to see a procession of men striding along the headland and then down towards the flat rock. They held a standard before them, the banner of House Greyjoy snapping and booming in the stiff breeze, and as they approached he sent Ghost to the rear of their assembled party and then joined the others, his Stark tabard hidden by his own cloak and his face obscured by his hood.
As the Greyjoy party approached two men stood out. The first was a gaunt man with long grey hair that was flecked with white and a slight stoop who wore a Greyjoy tabard. The second was shorter, with long black hair that seemed to be mixed with something else – and the burning eyes of a fanatic.
“Damphair,” someone breathed to one side of him and he looked over to see Asha looking at the approaching men with a troubled gaze. And then: “And Father.”
The Greyjoy party reached the base of the rock and then the man with the stoop gestured at the man with the standard, who jammed it into the ground and then placed rocks at its base to match the Harlaw standard. And then what could only be Balon Greyjoy stepped forwards, the man with long hair a step behind his right hand side.
As he approached The Reader stepped forwards to greet them, Asha at his side – and then a long silence followed. The Reader and Asha just stood there, whilst Balon Greyjoy glared at them almost as much as the man who had to be Aeron Greyjoy.
Finally Balon Greyjoy broke the silence: “Harlaw.”
“My Lord.” The Reader nodded shortly. His eyes flickered to one side. “Damphair.”
Damphair – the name was apt, was that seaweed in his hair? – curled a lip at his goodbrother.
“Father.” Asha said the word simply and with some regret.
Balon Greyjoy’s nostrils flared for a moment and then he looked at her. “Daughter.” Something seemed to pass between them, but interestingly enough it was he who broke their gaze as he looked back at the Reader.
There was another moment of silence and then the Lord of Harlaw smiled ever so slightly. “No bread and salt?”
Balon Greyjoy’s lips twitched for a moment. “It’s coming.”
The Reader’s own lips twitched. “Of course it is,” he replied. “You requested this meeting. What say you?”
The long-haired man drew himself up. “I am the Lord of the Iron Islands!” He barked the words.
“I know,” The Reader replied. “I have never denied that fact.”
“And you have taken up arms against me!”
The Reader tilted his head to one side slightly. “Did not your people take up arms against us when they started murdering those who said that they had heard the Call?”
An unpleasant silence was the result of this, as Balon Greyjoy looked angry and his brother looked as if he was about to start raving, only to be held back with a wave of the former’s hand.
“The Call,” Balon Greyjoy snarled eventually, “Is naught but Greenlander mummery and-”
The Reader cut him off. “Was there a Greenlander in my study when I heard the words ‘The Others come. The Stark calls for aid. You are needed!’? No, there was not! Harras!”
A dark-haired younger man with Harlaw colours stepped forwards. “My Lord?”
“Where were you when you heard the Call nephew?”
“At sea my Lord.”
“Any Greenlanders with you?”
“Not a one my Lord!”
Red spots burned in Balon Greyjoy’s cheeks for a moment. “This ‘Call’ was-”
“You heard it too, didn’t you Father?”
The question by Asha was direct and seemed to pierce the Lord of the Iron Islands, who deflated a little and looked about with more than a hint of uneasiness.
“We are loyal to you, Lord Greyjoy,” the Reader said firmly. “All we wish is to help at the Wall. What is the threat in that?”
However, if Balon Greyjoy looked deflated his brother was the opposite. He seemed to swell with rage. “The Drowned God denies the Call! The Drowned God is all! No help for blasphemous Greenlanders!”
The Reader looked at Damphair with a look of utter disgust. “Asha,” he said eventually, “Who did you discover is sending help to the Wall?”
“All of Westeros,” Asha replied grimly. “From Sunspear and Highgarden to Dragonstone and Tarth. Even the Old Lion is sending help.”
Balon Greyjoy snorted. “That sour old bastard has to, after his children were caught fucking.”
But Damphair was not finished: “The Call is a nonsense! A lie from Greenlanders! Their so-called Old Gods that do not exist! The Drowned God-”
“Was once one of them! We know the truth now, Damphair! I have read the runes. We know the truth. When did you suspect that your Drowned God is mad and dying?”
The Ironborn in Balon Greyjoy’s group hissed at the apparent blasphemy and Damphair turned a fascinating range of colours, from white with shock to red with rage that seemed to be tinted with something else. Shock? Fear?
“ENOUGH.” The word came from the lips of Stannis Baratheon, who stepped forwards and shrugged off his hood and cloak. Behind him his men did the same and the Baratheon stag was visible on all their chests. “Enough. I am Stannis Baratheon, the Hand of the King. I speak with his voice and the King says this: there will be peace in the Iron Islands.”
There was a shocked silence – and then Balon Greyjoy raised a trembling finger. “Stannis Baratheon?” He hissed the name as if it pained his lips to say it. “Stannis Baratheon???”
“You seem to have heard of me,” The Hand of the King said dryly. “But you may call me ‘my Lord Hand’, as befits my title.”
The enraged Lord of the Iron Islands rounded on the Reader and Asha. “That’s why you were at Winterfell! To bring this man with you! Stannis Baratheon, the Butcher of Fair Isle!”
“Yes,” Asha said steadily. “Father, it was the only way to get you to see sense.”
“By bringing him here? The Butcher of Fair Isle!”
“Stop saying that,” the Reader snapped. “I was at Fair Isle. You were not.”
“He killed your sons!”
This time it was the reader who swelled with rage. “No! He did not! You killed them both! You, with your insane war that you could never win! You gambled that Robert Baratheon, a man who loves war, would not be able to bring the full force of Westeros onto us! You committed us to a war that we could never win!”
There was a long moment of mutual hatred and then the Reader let out a breath. “I, at least, will have children at some point. My wife is with child. And the Hand of the King is here to remind you that the King wishes for peace in these islands.”
“Thank you, Lord Harlaw,” Stannis Baratheon rumbled before stepping forwards, one hand resting casually on the pommel of his sword. “The Crown has heeded the Call. The King rides for the Wall, to help the Night’s Watch fight the ancient enemy there – the Others have returned and they care not a whit for our squabbles. We are fighting for each other and if you think that the Others do not care about you here then you are wrong. The Iron Throne will look favourably on those who help in the North. It will look askance at those who do not – or who hinder it.”
Balon Greyjoy looked from the Hand to the Reader and then back again, his face working through a number of emotions.
“Father,” Asha said quietly, “I have been to Winterfell. I’ve seen the King there. And I’ve seen things that you need to know about. The shades of the dead gathered at Barrowtown, until Ned Stark and his son bade them to leave. Strange fog gathered at Harlaw and vanished at the same time that the dead were dismissed in Barrowtown. Father, magic has returned. The Others are out there. As your heir, I urge you to see reason on this.”
“As my heir… Daughter you presume much. And strictly speaking Theon is still my heir.”
“No, he is not.” Stannis Baratheon said the words flatly. “Asha is now your heir.”
Balon Greyjoy did not blanch at this. He did not curse or wince. He simply flicked an eyebrow up and down. “Ned Stark took his head then? Well, he was a hostage after all.”
The words were said in such an indifferent way that Jon blinked and then bristled. Theon was not his friend in the way that he was Robb’s, but he was closer to the new Lord Greymist than he had been before.
“No,” and now it was Theon’s turn to shed his hood and cloak, before clicking his fingers and summoning Mist. “He could have, after finding out that you rebuilt the Iron Fleet. But he did not. Instead I have renounced my Ironborn heritage. I am Lord Greymist now, of the North.”
The blood drained from the face of Balon Greyjoy as his men muttered behind him. Finally he rallied enough to say: “Theon?”
“Father.” Theon replied flatly. “Did you hesitate about my fate for a moment before you ordered the rebuilding of the Iron Fleet? Was my life – the life of your last living son – worth nothing to you?”
His eyes were blazing and his father could not meet them for long. “We had to be strong,” he muttered eventually. “If you are truly Ironborn then you’d understand.”
“What I understand is that my father abandoned me to my fate as a hostage.” He looked down at Mist and then back up again. “So why should I not abandon my father’s name? I am Lord Greymist of the North. I am a man – a lord – of the North.”
“A dog to the Starks,” Balon sneered. “Good then that you ran away from your heritage. You are indeed no Greyjoy, boy. And I see that you have a dog of your own.”
“He’s a direwolf. And Lord Stark has been a better father than you ever were.”
“And have you abandoned the Drowned God?” Damphair shook his head in disgust. “Your father is right, it is better that you are lost to us.”
“The Drowned God?” Theon almost spat the words. “The Old Gods saved me from him! You see this?” He pulled out the Weirwood pendant from his shirt. “They gave me this after I dreamt that my brother Rodrik tried to drag me to him! I dreamt of an island made from bones, set in a sea of the dead. Rodrik was dead and rotting, but he was still alive in some way that I don’t understand and he wanted me to meet this… thing that stank of madness on a throne by the shoreline. I killed Rodrik and the thing chased me onto a boat where I was saved after I chose the Old Gods!”
Another silence fell, with many of the men muttering behind Balon Greyjoy, who had an odd expression on his face, as if he was troubled. Damphair on the other side had gone as white as a sheet. “An island made from bones, boy?” He croaked the words slowly. “And… a smell?”
“A stink of foulness,” Theon said softly. “And I woke up to find this pendant around my neck. It was more than a dream. I don’t fully understand it even now but… I follow the Old Gods.”
Damphair fell silent and stared at Theon as if he was not sure what he was, whilst Balon Greyjoy just stood there, his face still working until he finally groaned and then rubbed his hands over his face. “Oh,” he said slowly, “Very clever Harlaw. Well played. Well played indeed. Asha is now my heir, Theon is lost to me and you have forced the truce on your terms, not mine.”
“I have played nothing,” the Reader said, tilting his head to one side. “This is all the work of others. And of you. You were the one who denied the Call. You were the one whose orders broke the Iron Fleet. And you were the one who wanted this parley.”
The Lord of the Iron Islands just looked at him and then stared at the sea. When he looked back Jon could tell that something had broken within the man. He clicked his own fingers and as Ghost padded out from behind everyone he could see that Balon Greyjoy was looking at him. “Another direwolf? Who are you then?”
He undid the cloak and showed the Stark tabard on his chest. “Jon Stark.”
“Here to bear witness for your father?”
“Aye.”
“Well now, the Bastard of Winterfell is here as well. My humiliation is complete.”
He did not rise to the bait. Instead he just repressed his temper and placed a hand on Theon’s shoulder. “The North has welcomed Lord Greymist.”
Balon Greyjoy’s lip curled – and then a pair of hands came together in a clap of delight off to one side. “Ah! To be present at such a moment! House Greyjoy – and attendant dogs and vermin – united in one place! I’d cry if I could, but that’s no longer possible for me.”
The speaker was a slender bearded man with long black hair and an eyepatch over his left eye. The right eye was blue and it shone with malice and amusement, whilst for some reason the man’s lips were blue.
And he was alone. Standing there dressed in black leather breeches and a white shirt under a black leather doublet, but alone, with just a short sword and a dagger on his belt.
“Crow’s Eye.” The Reader hissed the words, before looking at Balon Greyjoy. “I was warned he had returned from his exile. Why is he here?” Asha had one hand on her sword and all of the Reader’s men were looking alert. Jon remembered what Asha had said of her mad uncle and placed his own hand on the hilt of Dark Sister.
Balon Greyjoy shook his head. “Brother. Things have changed. Leave.”
Euron Greyjoy threw his head back and laughed. “Oh, Balon! Did you really think that I am here to help you? That your poor pathetic plan to force a peace on these miserable pile of iron-rich rocks was ever what I wanted? You always were a fool!”
Everyone stared at him, Ironborn and Mainlander, in confusion. Eventually the man stopped laughing and looked at his oldest brother. “I’m here to kill you.” A languid hand waved at the others. “All of you actually. I am here for power, the kind of power that you can’t even begin to understand. You are all… beneath me now.”
Jon stared at him, confused, and then at the horizon in all directions. There was no threat that he could see. “Is he mad?” Whoever asked the question was speaking what he was thinking.
Euron Greyjoy walked forwards a step. “Damphair! Why don’t you explain to everyone why you’re so worried about your dying god? Yes, I see that look in your eyes, that look of utter panic. You know as well I do that he’s dying as he clings to that ledge and begs for scraps from our tables. A rape here, a murder there, a curse… crumbs to feed a dying creature.”
A look of false pity crossed his face. “We should put him out of his misery, surely? Is that not the right thing to do?” The look was replaced with one of mad glee. “But the opportunity that would emerge! When he dies a void would be there… a void that could – can – be filled! A new god! A young, virile god!” The grin somehow grew wider. “Me.”
“He’s mad,” Ygritte stated very firmly. “He’s out of his mind.”
Euron Greyjoy frowned slightly as he looked at her. “A Wildling? Here? How odd.” And then he fixed his eye on Jon. “A Stark.” He said the last word flatly, with something in his voice that might have been a tremor of uncertainty. “A Stark. A meddling Stark, full of rectitude and ‘honour’ and without any idea of how to use the magic in your veins from your Child of the Forest ancestors.”
Jon blinked at the man. What? But then the one-eyed man waved a hand. “Irrelevant. You die today. You all die today and I take a step towards achieving my goal.”
“Bold words from just one man,” the Reader said with narrowed eyes. “Where is your crew?”
The question seemed to amuse the lunatic. “My crew? My crew are… assisting me as only I know how to use them properly. You’d be amazed at what I have picked up from places like Valyria.” For a moment a shadow seemed to cross his face before another languid wave of the hand dismissed that as a topic. “I have help coming from another place.” He looked at the sea and then sighed slightly. “They are so annoying. No proper sense of timing. Well, what can you expect from such creatures?”
The hairs on the back of Jon’s neck stood up at the same time that he felt Ghost’s hackles go up. The fog bank off the coast was drawing closer and all of a sudden he felt colder. “What have you done?”
“What have I done? Well, I have allied myself to creatures that want to kill everyone on these islands for a start.” He paused. “They’re a bit fixated on that point and not very bright. Such a shame for them, but then I’m going to betray them anyway and use the magic within them once they’re done killing you all.” He looked back at the sea. “Ah! At last!”
The fog bank was heading straight towards them and all of a sudden Mist was howling a warning. Jon and Theon both drew their swords and following their lead so did Stannis Baratheon and the Reader as they all stepped backwards from the shore. Balon Greyjoy looked confused, whilst Damphair was white and shaking – and as they breathed out white vapour was suddenly appearing.
It was colder than it had been before. Far colder. Jon and Theon swapped a horrified glance of recognition and then the latter sheathed his sword and unslung his bow from his back and scrabbled into his quiver. “Ygritte! How many dragonglass arrowheads do you have?”
“Not many,” the Wildling girl muttered as she readied her own bow. “Didn’t think that we’d need them here.”
“Jon Stark! What’s going on?” Stannis Baratheon barked.
“OTHERS!” Jon bellowed. “The madman’s allied himself with the Others.”
“But we’re hundreds of miles South of the Wall! How can they be here?”
He shivered slightly. “This is the stroke we were warned of.” He looked back at the fog bank. It was shredding now – and then he saw it. A huge iceberg was coming straight at them, a wake somehow at its front as it cut through the waves in a path as straight as an arrow. “They went around the bloody Wall.”
“Iceberg’s don’t normally do that,” the Reader spat. “TO ARMS! Lord Hand, Jon Stark, what should we do?”
“Light that fire! Throw lamp oil onto it! We need fire!” Stannis Baratheon roared. “How many dragonglass arrows do you have available Lord Greymist?”
As someone thrust a brand into the pile of driftwood and another man ransacked a backpack for lamp oil Theon conferred with Ygritte and then looked back at the Hand. “Ten between us my Lord Hand. If there’s more than ten Others or wights in that thing we are fucked.”
“Valyrian steel will help,” Jon barked. “Who here wields Valyrian steel?”
“Harras!” The Reader shouted. “Please tell me you have Nightfall on you?”
“I do Uncle!” Harras Harlaw, a tall man with an austere face, stepped forwards and, after a wave of the hand from his uncle, joined Jon with a nod of recognition for his own Valyrian steel sword.
“Don’t be overwhelmed by how they look,” Jon muttered to the Ironborn. “It’s going to get cold – colder than you’ve ever been before. Avoid their swords – they cut through anything but Valyrian steel.” He looked back to the confused mass of men behind the Lord of the Iron Islands. “Pull back! There are monsters like you’ve never seen coming!”
The iceberg ground its way towards them and as it came closer Jon could see shapes in the ice, indistinct but still just visible – and then he saw the top of the mountain of ice. It was almost as clear as glass and within it he could see three figures within it, seated on thrones made from blue ice. Their eyes were open and shone with the malicious blue fire that he had seen North of the Wall. Others. There were Others somehow here.
“Euron!” Damphair screamed the word. “What have you done? Treachery! Blasphemy!”
Euron Greyjoy grinned at his brother, who was walking towards him, raving and waving his arms in the air. Damphair seemed to be out of his mind, screeching words and phrases about the Drowned God and faith. Jon opened his mouth to warn the Ironborn fanatic – and then Euron, with the speed of a striking snake whipped out his short sword and darted forwards to bury it in the belly of his brother.
“At last,” he said as he stared into the eyes of the white-faced Damphair. “I’ve been planning to do that since I was seven years old. You always were annoying. Now, tell that mad god of yours that I’m coming for his skinny arse in the gate at the Hightower.”
There was a moment of shocked silence, broken only by the grinding shriek of the iceberg forcing its way onto the beach – and then as Euron pulled his sword out, Damphair screamed in pain and then fell to the ground, trying weakly to stuff his entrails back into his stomach.
“Madman!!” Asha shouted in horror. “Kinslayer!”
Euron waved his sword negligently, spattering his brother with his own blood. “Oh, kinslaying’s the least of what I’m going to do to all of you, especially you niece,” he leered at her. “I have plans for your wighted cunt.”
Asha narrowed her eyes. “Not whilst I have breath in my body, you mad fucker.”
“That’s the point, Asha,” her uncle laughed. “That’s the point. You won’t have a say in anything. Aha! At last!”
The iceberg came to a halt and then suddenly the top of it seemed to shiver and then shatter as the three figures stood up from their thrones. White hair whipped in the wind as those inhuman eyes gazed down at them all – and the n the lead Other raised his sword into the sky – and then brought it down into the ice beneath its feet. The ice cracked as a fissure speared its way through the iceberg – and then the front of it shattered and the wights that had been trapped within it emerged, climbing over the ice and then surging towards the horrified onlookers.
“Stand and fight!” Stannis Baratheon bellowed as he got his men into line, joined quickly by the Reader.
Among Balon Greyjoy’s men however chaos reigned. “What are those things?” was the most common words on the lips of the men behind him.
“Wights! Stand and fight!” Stannis bellowed.
“Aye! Stand with the Hand!” The Reader shouted. “Stand with the Hand and the Reader!”
The words seemed to shake the men into action, because swords were drawn and the men came forwards to meet the onrushing pack of wights. There had to be at least 60 of the bastards, maybe more and Jon swallowed as they came on before adding his own voice to the bedlam. “Crush their skulls! Hack their heads off! Cut them to pieces!”
Bows sang behind him and two wights stopped in their tracks and then fell where they stood, arrows standing out from their chests. “They can die,” Theon shouted. “Dragonglass kills them!”
“Where the fuck are we going to get dragonglass on this bloody beach?” someone shouted.
“Brands! Use brands! Set fire to the wights! Lamp oil! Use lamp oil!” That was Ygritte, the most experienced wight fighter they had, and as he watched she darted forwards and thrust her dagger into the eye of a charging wight, which crumpled at her feet. Dragonglass. She had her dragonglass dagger. She caught his look. “Did you really think I’d go anywhere without that dagger Jon Stark?” And with that she grabbed her other dragonglass dagger and gave to the Reader, who took it with a grim nod
Another wight came at Jon and he felled it with a blow, before stepping back and watching as Harras Harlaw swept the head off a wight and then plunged his sword into its chest, kicking the stiffening body off and then staring down in horror as the arms of fallen wights killed by the others still reached for him.
“Cut them to pieces!” Jon snarled as he killed another wight with a blow.
Others were doing the same and to one side a wight went up in flames, and then another. The group around Stannis Baratheon and the Reader were doing better than the men around Balon Greyjoy. Someone had pulled him back and there were unmoving Ironborn laying dead on the shoreline, mingled in with the still-moving parts of wights.
And then the Others moved, leaping down from the iceberg to land as lightly as cats on the shoreline. The lead wight raised his sword again – and then suddenly the dead Ironborn were standing, eyes blue as they raised their weapons against the living Ironborn.
Someone screamed in fear and then Jon looked to one side. Damphair was standing again, no walking, his entrails dragging on the ground at his feet and behind him. But then a bow sang again and suddenly Damphair was falling again, this time forever with a dragonglass-tipped arrow in his chest. “Rest Uncle,” Theon said with weary sorrow. “Ygritte! How many arrows do you have?”
“Three!”
“I have two! Jon, we need to kill the Others!”
“Aye!” Jon roared, before grabbing Harras Harlaw by the arm. “Come with me!”
The pale Ironborn man tried to protest but then the Reader paused from stabbing his stone dagger into the eye of a wight and nodded. “Harras! Go with him!”
Gods, thought Jon as the two rushed forwards, we need Robb and Ice. He slashed at a passing wight and then stopped and readied himself as the three Others came towards them, long white hair blowing in the wind. Bows sang behind him and the Others ducked the arrows, one coming with the span of a man’s hand from hitting the right-hand creature. To one side Jon could see Ghost hamstringing any wights that he could, whilst Mist did the same to one side.
“Shit,” Jon muttered – and then the leading Other raised his sword against his, an almost bored look on its face. That bored look vanished the moment that Jon parried the blow with Dark Sister and then slashed at its face. Harras Harlaw took on another Other with the same result and Jon’s heart lifted slightly. The Ironborn man was good, very good. But this was the first time that he’d fought an Other.
Jon hammered at the icy blade of his opponent and then feinted one way whilst rolling his wrists and then slashing downwards. The Valyrian steel slashed into the leg of the Other, which then blew apart in a wails of ice and snow, followed rapidly by the rest of the Other.
But Jon had no time to celebrate. Harras Harlaw screamed suddenly and then staggered. Jon threw him a glance and then groaned. The upper half of a wight had grabbed his leg and was savaging it with its teeth. The distraction was just what the Other that the Ironborn had been fighting needed – the blade of ice caught Harras Harlaw in the neck severing the man’s jugular and he fell choking on his own blood, Nightfall slipping from his hands.
“HARRAS!” The Reader shouted in real anguish.
“Shit,” Jon said again, before ducking under a blow from one of the two Others and then darting down to pick up Nightfall. “Lord Harlaw! Catch!”
The blade flew through the air and the Reader judged its flight with care and then snatched it up before taking his place at Jon’s side. There was a bloodied scratch down his face but he had a face like stone as he looked at the creature that had killed his nephew and heir. And then he swung into action at the same time as Jon, hacking at the ice swords with a terrible fury.
“The Reader!” Men called from behind them and then Jon heard the sound of shattering crockery and then the sound of oil igniting. “Stand with the Hand and the Reader!”
The leading Other started to raise a hand, obviously to raise more wights again, but Jon jabbed at it and then pressed it back, before finally getting in a killing blow on its head. The Other vanished in a blizzard of ice – and then its companion joined it in death when the Reader took its hand off at the wrist and then stabbed Nightfall into its chest.
All around them Jon could hear the slithering thumps of wights collapsing, no longer animated by the fell magics of their creators and Jon could hear the glad cries coming from their companions, or what was left of them. The Readers’ men had been joined by some of the crew from his ship, who had brought more oil, who all looked shaken but jubilant.
The Ironborn of Pyke on the other hand were hushed and shaken, all looking down the bodies that covered the ground in front of them, many horribly fresh.
“Well, now, even my Goodbrother will have to admit that Others and their wights exist now,” the Reader said with a certain sadness in his voice. He looked down at the body of his nephew. “At what cost though.” He frowned. “What do we do with the bodies?”
“Burn them all,” Jon replied. “If there’s another Other out there – if this wasn’t the only blow against us – they could be raised again. We can’t take the chance.”
“Well fought,” Stannis Baratheon said as he cleaned his blade. “Where’s Euron Greyjoy though?”
“Well, fuck,” said a voice to one side and the three raised their blades as they saw the languid form of the exiled Greyjoy. “That did not go as I had foreseen.”
“You, Euron Greyjoy, will pay for your treachery,” Stannis Baratheon said through clenched teeth. “To ally yourself with Others!”
“Oh, please, you couldn’t kill me if you even tried.” And then he seemed to almost flicker, moving almost too fast to see. Jon cried out in alarm, but it was too late. Euron Greyjoy appeared like a grim wraith in front of his older brother and then pulled a dagger from his belt, plunged it into the stomach of Balon Greyjoy and twisted it, whilst grinning into his face. “Goodbye brother.” And then he ran again, heading straight for the sea.
Chaos erupted again as Balon Greyjoy started to scream. Theon loosed what must have been one of his normal arrows at his uncle, but the man moved like a snake, dodging with ease, before vanishing behind a rock. Men hurtled after him in pursuit – but then paused and looked about. “Where’d he fuckin’ go?” asked one.
Jon ran to the rock and looked about. The man was indeed gone. “Set guards. Watch for him.”
“Aye, me Lord,” one of the men said, obviously glad to have an order.
Jon looked about again in the gathering dark. Ghost was at his side, whilst Theon had Mist by him as he stood and watched as a pale Asha helped to tend to their screaming father. The Reader and the Hand strode over to him. “This isn’t over is it?”
The Reader shook his head. “No. We need to send warning to the other islands of what happened here. And then we prepare for this war on the Wall.”
He looked at the bodies everywhere. “I have a bad feeling about this.” And then he strode off to help.
Chapter Text
Sorry for the delay in posting this, it's been a rather odd month.
Arya
It was almost boring in Winterfell at the moment. The King was fun to watch from a distance and she’d certainly learnt some fun new words from him (he sometimes seemed to have only one volume), words that Mother would probably be horrified that she knew.
Not that she really understood what some of them meant.
She had the feeling that growing up might involve complicated things about people’s bodies and sweat.
Yeurgh.
In the meantime, as she sat on a bench in a courtyard in the sunshine, Nymeria asleep at her feet, Winterfell was sort of normal, if normal involved some very odd people here and there, some people who scared her a bit and others who made her laugh when she shouldn’t.
She knew that Ned Umber had been sent there to meet her and perhaps start to woo her a bit, or something that led to wooing. Just thinking about that made her giggle. Ned Umber was a little boy and he’d been soon sucked into the Terrible Threesome, making them the Fearsome (or Foalish in her eyes) Foursome. Shireen soon had him under her thumb.
She liked Shireen. She knew that she’d grown up with greyscale, something that made her shiver a bit. There were stories about that. Nasty ones. But now the Old Gods had saved her. And that made her shiver in a slightly different way. She’d seen red fire in the eyes of Father and of Jon. And the Old Gods had seen her.
There were times when she wondered what they’d made of her. They’d called her a warg, and she knew she was one now. Did they have a plan for her? Or Father? Or Robb?
Robb was being very grouchy recently, whilst staring at Val a lot when he obviously thought that she wasn’t looking. And Val was doing the same to him. It was like watching two cats circling each other from a distance.
Mother said that it was possible that Val was an Umber. And that her mother was due to arrive that day, or maybe tomorrow. And that Mors Umber, that one-eyed scary giant of a man, might be Val’s Grandfather. Now, he was both scary and funny. There were times when he looked at her and seemed to look right through her and wince.
It might be the fact that she apparently looked a bit like Aunt Lyanna, who had died long before she’d been born.
Nymeria whiffled her whiskers in her sleep and then rolled over slightly.
Frankly it made no sense to her – if Val was part Umber then why didn’t Robb just marry her and stop mooning about like an idiot? He liked her, she liked him, they’d helped the Hound kill the Mountain (a man who had truly scared her), so why couldn’t they just get it over with and be happy?
Why were older people so stupid?
And for that matter why was Septa Mordane so weird these days? She’d heard the Call, she knew what was coming, why didn’t she just accept it like Mother had? It was something to do with religion. Feh. Silly.
Bran’s suggestion that perhaps the Seven-that-are-One had been Old Gods who got lost in Andalos had not gone down well, which was odd, because it made perfect sense to her.
Well, the Septa was still teaching them, but also spent time in the Godswood and also in the Sept.
People were odd.
Movement caught her eye and she looked over to see Robb stalking about the courtyard, Grey Wind at his side. He seemed to be looking for something, but she had no idea what.
Perhaps Bran should talk to him about that door in the crypts that they could only see when warging?
Perhaps Robb already knew?
Nymeria woke suddenly, shook herself and then looked at her expectantly. She wondered why for a moment – and then she sniffed the air. Ah. Pork chops. Lunch? She grinned at her Direwolf and then stood up and led her off to the kitchens, with Nymeria doing what she had termed the Wag of Hope.
Jaime
It was a fine day. Nor warm, but the sun was shining. He was standing on a balcony overlooking the training yard, his hands on the wooden railing and he had to face facts. It was long past time that he did so, but he really couldn’t put it off any longer.
His son was an idiot.
He sighed as he watched the lad get knocked on his arse for the third time in as many minutes. Thorne had paired him against a scrawny lad from The Reach, who had arms like twigs and a tendency to make the same mistake many times in a row. And he was thrashing an increasingly dismayed Joffrey.
Gods. If Baratheon could see them now he’d piss himself laughing. He forced his eyes away from the sad spectacle – and then he realised that the Old Bear was approaching him with a look of resolve on his face.
“You need to do something about the lad,” Jeor Mormont rumbled. “I can tell that Thorne regards him as shit on the bottom of his boot already.” The raven on his shoulder cawed almost derisively, as if he disgusted it.
He could tell at once that he was right. The thin-faced man was regarding Joffrey with utter contempt written all over his face, before shaking his head and looking away. “BREAK!” Thorne shouted. “Catch your breath. And wipe that mud off your arse, Hill.”
Jaime ran his hand over his face as Joffrey slumped against a bench and looked around him. Their eyes met for a moment, but then he made himself look away. Gods.
Boots sounded on boards and he looked to one side to see that Thorne had joined them. The Master of Arms at Castle Black looked at him with a sneer and then jerked a thumb in the general direction of Joffrey. “Gods almighty, who taught that little shit? He holds a sword like it’s a bloody rolling pin, and he’d do about as much damage.”
“The Hound – Sandor Clegane.” Jaime shrugged a little. “The problem is that the boy never listened. He was always looking around for the nearest pretty girl or thinking up new lion-related names for his sword.”
Thorne curled a lip in his direction. “He doesn’t bloody listen even now.”
“And,” Jeor Mormont growled, “Every now and then he keeps telling people he’s a prince. Is he a lackwit? The boy’s a bastard.”
The boy represented his utter dishonour, but Jaime could not bring himself to say that. “I’ll talk to him,” he said after a long moment. “I’ll try and knock some sense into him.”
“Good,” said Thorne, “Because if you don’t I will and I’ll beat some sense into him. No man of the Night’s Watch in his right mind would want that little shit by his side when the Others bring their wights to the Wall. Not the way he is now. Talk to your son, Kingslayer. Now.”
His fingers clenched on the rail he was gripping. “I was never his father,” he said dully after a long moment. “Oh, I was the one who quickened his mother, but I could never be his father. He sees me as his uncle. I don’t think that he’ll really accept me as his father. He still thinks that Robert Baratheon fathered him.”
“Then fucking well educate him then,” Thorne snarled at him. “Because he’ll not last long here otherwise. They laugh at him now. They won’t do that for much longer. And as I said, I’d love to beat some sense into him, but Tywin Lannister is on his way to the Wall with the King and he’d be unamused if he saw that his grandson had a black eye and was missing some teeth.”
Ah. They really didn’t understand Father did they? He sighed again and then placed a hand on the pouch around his neck. Father was coming, and the King and Ser Barristan bloody Selmy. And once again he was going to be reminded about how badly he had disgraced his family and besmirched his honour.
The pouch… he tightened his grip for an instant and then he nodded, slowly and tiredly. This was going to be unpleasant. So he strode down to the courtyard and stood in front of his son. “Joffrey. Come with me now.”
A complicated expression crossed the boy’s face, a combination of surprise and glee and dread. Jaime repressed the need to sigh yet again and ushered him to the lift that led up to the Wall and once up there he found a quiet place with no watchers.
But then as he turned to look at him, Joffrey burst out with words that sent his heart into his boots. “Uncle Jaime! Are you here to explain your plan to get us out of here?”
“Plan?”
Joffrey stared at him as if he was mad. “To get us out of this hellhole!”
He counted to ten in his head. And then he cuffed the back of his son’s head. Joffrey yelped and reeled from him. “Uncle! How dare you strike me! I am a-”
“You are not a prince, Joffrey! Not anymore! Don’t you understand this? This isn’t a game, or a plot on the part of Stark and Stannis Baratheon! We are here and we deserve to be here, don’t you understand that?”
There was a total lack of comprehension behind those green eyes that were in front of him, He groaned internally and then finally said the words that had been haunting him. “Joffrey, it’s true. I betrayed two kings, one for the right reasons and one for the wrong ones. You tried to kill Robb Stark. We were sent here for reasons, Joffrey, not whatever nonsense your mother poured into your ear like poison. We are here and we will live here and we will die here. There’s no way out of this.”
“But Uncle-”
“I am NOT your uncle! I am your father!” There, the fatal word had been spoken. He could see the denial in Joffrey’s eyes, the incomprehension. “You know this, your Grandfather told you, Robert Baratheon told you and I am telling you now! I am your father! I loved my own sister and committed incest with her and the result was you and your sister and your brother! So, you are not a prince – you never were a prince, not really. You’re my son. You’re a bastard. And I’m sorry that you’re here. But here we are, at the end of the world, where we’ll have to fight monsters that want us all dead.”
The wind whistled harshly past them as they stood there, on top of the Wall. And it was there that he saw something die in the eyes of his son. “I… I was going to be King one day.” The boy whispered the words as he stared past Jaime’s right shoulder with dull eyes.
“Well, now you won’t be. You’ll never be. Just a Black Brother with me, if we survive this war that’s coming here to the Wall. Now listen to me – accept this fate. You have no choice. If you keep clinging to this fantasy that you are still a prince then the nods you see, with the grins that they hide from you behind their hands, will become sneers and later anger, before you have an ‘accident’ here at the top of the Wall and get discovered dead at its base. Now, I will train you and you will learn. Not whine, not complain, learn. Try and remember what the Hound told you. And forget ideas of escape. We cannot escape this. We cannot escape the reckoning for what we have done and what we are.”
Joffrey’s face worked for a long moment – and then he burst into tears and sat down with a sudden abruptness. And with a bewildered sense of confusion Jaime stood there next to him and patted him on the head, uncertain what to do.
He was a father and he had not the faintest idea how to act like one. And as he looked to the North, at the forest that stretched ahead to the horizon, he felt a sudden shiver of dread.
Something was coming. Coming for all of them.
Jon Stark
Balon Greyjoy may have been a sour piece of utter shit, but he took a day to die. The wound to his stomach was fatal and the Maester at Pyke had to judge the amount of the milk of the poppy to administer very carefully, as he didn’t want to kill him, but Balon Greyjoy’s screaming never seemed to end for that day.
It was a day he remembered for some time, a day etched in his memory. A horrible day. Pyke was a place that defied description at times. The Castle was… in pieces. It was, on its seaward side, a series of towers sitting on stacks of stone, linked by stone arches or rope bridges.
Just looking at the bloody place gave him the creeping horrors. Apparently the original Pyke had been on a headland. Now that headland was just a group of islands. How long would it be before the islands went as well? Asha Greyjoy had told him that a lot of stones and mortar were used in areas at low tide at times. If he had been in charge then he would have told them to start placing huge rocks at the base of the islands and to keep placing them until the headland reappeared.
Something else that gave him the creeping horrors were the people in Pyke. Oh, Asha and the Reader had taken the place by the scruff of the neck and shaken it good and hard, helped by the death of Damphair and the wounding of Balon Greyjoy by his mad brother. Everyone had united in anger and fury over that. And as the word went around of what Euron had said, there had been a lot of muttering.
Damphair’s Drowned Men had been dismissed at once. They had not exactly gone willingly, but their hearts had been in the boots once word of Damphair’s death – and word of Euron’s babblings about the Drowned God being dying – had gone around.
But the thing that was really haunting him was the looks that various people were giving him – or not giving him. Many of the servants were afraid of Ghost, but they were all unable to look him in the eye. Not him, not Theon, not any member of their party. They seemed to be afraid of something.
And having talked to Stannis Baratheon beforehand he knew what that something was. They were thralls – slaves in all but name. Some had been taken in raids on the mainland before or during the Greyjoy Rebellion. Some were hopefully descended from those who had been taken in the raids, because they looked rather young.
And some, upon hearing the Northern accent of some of their party, had looked as if they wanted to say something but were too terrified to say a word.
Apparently the Reader had had a word with a few people, but it still all made him very angry.
And now, as they sat there in a dining room off the great hall of Pyke and awaited the latest news, he was looking at a thrall pouring his wine who would not look at his face and who trembled a little, but whose face worked slightly whenever he said a word.
“You’re of the North,” he said to her as quietly as possible. “Taken in a raid?”
She froze in place, not looking at him, just down at the goblet she was pouring the wine into. “Aye,” she said eventually in the tiniest of voices. “Taken.”
“You can go home now. My word as a Stark.”
Her eyes flickered at him and then closed for a long moment. “Truly?”
“Truly.”
A tear leaked out of the one eye that he could see of her frozen profile – and then she drew herself up and nodded formally. “Honour to serve House Stark. I heard the Call.” And then she looked about the room, her face working, and all but fled.
Theon looked at him and then placed a hand on his shoulder. “Another taken from the North?”
“Aye.”
“Fuck their Iron Price. And fuck their Old Ways. No slaves. Not now, not ever.” Lord Greymist’s voice wobbled about a bit from emotion, but it was intense.
“There’ll be those that fight it,” said the voice of the Reader to one side, making them both start a little in surprise. “But then there’s always idiots out there that fight traditions being stopped. And any tradition that boosts the mad thing that is the Drowned God needs to bloody well stop.”
There was a moment of silence and then they both nodded at Lord Harlaw, before sitting there and sipping their wine. They all knew what they were waiting for, once the agonised screams had started to ebb and fade.
Sure enough after a while the Maester appeared at the door. “Lady Asha. My Lords. Lord Greyjoy wishes to see you. He has not long left.”
It was good that Stannis Baratheon had warned them all what it would be like to visit the room of a dying man with a stomach wound, because otherwise he would have gagged a little at the smell that no amount of scented candles could get rid of.
The Lord of the Iron Islands was a huddled shape on a bloodstained bed, even with the bandages. If he had been thin-faced before his mortal wound he looked worse now, his face all angles and hollows, his eyes sunken and dull.
As they entered the room Asha went over to him at once, whilst Theon stood in the middle of the room, Mist next to him, a pale erect figure with a look that combined sorrow with a wish to be elsewhere. Jon made way for the Reader and the Lord Hand, both of whom looked at Balon Greyjoy with hard eyes.
The dying man looked at his daughter and sighed a little, before looking around the room. “Ah,” he said in the merest of tired voices. There was blood on his teeth, as if he had screamed his throat raw. “Witnesses. Good.”
“Father-” Asha started to say, before being silenced by a ways of his hand in the air.
“I have… no time left. You are my… heir. Just you. They-” and here he directed a savage glare at the others in the room, “They are here to witness this. Nothing… else. Nothing for… them.” A complicated expression crossed his face, as many emotions seemed to clash.
“You were… right. Right about many things. I…” He closed his eyes for a long moment, whether in anguish of emotion or in pain, Jon could not tell. “I was wrong. I heard it. Heard… the Call. Damphair persuaded me… otherwise.”
“Yes, Father,” Asha said with a sigh. “I suspected that.”
“If anyone stands against you… if any fools question you… you are my heir. If Drumm questions you, kill him.”
“Yes Father.”
There was a long moment of silence. “Kill Euron. He’s… not right. Never was, but now… he’s something else. Something terrible.”
“I will Father, I swear it.”
The man was visibly weakening, his head wobbling. “Burn me. After. I die.” And then he was gone, the light fading from his eyes.
Jon bowed his head for a moment and then looked up at Stannis Baratheon silently touched his shoulder and then gestured at the door. As they filed out, leaving the weeping figure of Asha Greyjoy behind, he wondered what would happen next. And where Euron Grejoy was, the mad fucker.
Bronn
He’d never really thought about who he’d ever marry. Father had told him once to pick someone who wouldn’t snore and who you wouldn’t go to bed angry with, which was not particularly helpful. He’d once entertained vague hopes of marrying a barmaid in Oldtown, but she’d become attached to some rich twat with deeper pockets than his at the time.
And now here he was, standing in the Godswood of the Red Keep, by some alchemy that he didn’t fully understand. Father had been a believer in the Old Gods, as he’d lived for a time in Runestone and then again in the Neck, so something had rubbed off on him, but he’d been surprised when Ursula had told him that she wanted the Godswood for their marriage.
Given the nature of the Shield of the Riverlands that never left her side, it seemed fitting. The Foxhold had a small Godswood and also a small Sept, but not that he came to think about it, he couldn’t remember the name of the bloody Septon that must have been there. Oh. Wait. Yes, he remembered now. The man had left just after he’d taken up the title of Lord of the Foxhold, because he’d heard the Call. They’d have another ceremony there once they returned, just to reassure followers of the Seven there.
He was woolgathering again and after a long moment he looked back at the six foot tall weirwood tree that stood in front of him now. There was the merest suggestion of a slight and very small face on the trunk and that disturbed him more than anything he could imagine.
And then the man next to him, the man with the green cloak and the antlered hood whose name escaped him, cleared his throat and he looked over his shoulder.
Ursula Cawlish was standing at the end of the line of trees, Lord Arryn next to her. She was wearing a cloak of green and gold over a red dress and something that he couldn’t explain within him knew that those colours were right.
Something seemed to have frozen his lungs for a moment and as he started to breathe again he realised that something must have crossed his face, because Ursula was looking at him with the kind of burning gaze that meant that once they were in their rooms a lot of clothes would be torn off.
As she approached he took a deep breath. He had always known that he had the capacity within him to be a right bastard. He’d been a sellsword and as such he’d done a lot of things that he had not been proud of. That said, he’d always told himself that there were limits, that there were certain things that he would never do and truth be told he’d kept to those limits.
But now he was going to be a husband and he had to wall off that part of him that could be a right bastard forever. He was Lord of the Foxhold now, in love with a woman who was descended from royalty and… gods. He was in love with her. How could he not be?
And now here he was, in this place, at this time. He knew that this – their marriage – was not a thing that he could dare ever fuck up. No. Never. He had to stay true to this, matter what happened.
And judging by that gaze from her he knew that it was the right thing to do.
The Green Man, who had been taking care of the Godswood, cleared his throat to one side before launching into the words. He barely heard them, he was too busy looking into her eyes. Godsdamnit, he was marrying a woman descended from bloody royalty, albeit a long time removed. His father wouldn’t have believed any of this. His son, the Lord, marrying the daughter – alright, the legitimised bastard daughter – of a Lord.
He knew that there was going to be a lot of fuss over that damn shield, but right now he didn’t care. He was going to get married and be happy and make her bloody happy, even if he had to use that particularly athletic position that made his back hurt after a while but women seemed to adore.
Gendry
Apparently he no longer ‘rode like a sack of wet straw jammed onto a saddle’, or so his half-sister Mya had said. Well. That was good to know. However, he did not have what she described as ‘poise’. He had no idea what that bloody was, other than some way of sitting on a saddle and not falling off.
His life had changed in so many ways these past months that there were times that his head hurt. He was a blacksmith’s apprentice and he was riding with lords and the King – who was his father.
Aye, his head hurt.
He was riding with Mya and the Vale Lords a lot, mostly because he had no intention of going anywhere near that scary bugger Lord Lannister, who could terrify at a glance.
And the more he rode North the more he wondered how many others were also doing the same, driven by the Call. On the road he heard so many accents from places he had only ever heard of. The Reach. The Vale. Dorne.
All headed to the Wall. The end of the world, or so he’d heard in King’s Landing. And now the place where there was going to be a war. He couldn’t wrap his head around that. He and so many others were heading willingly towards the place where there was going to be a war.
They’d spent the night in an encampment where the privies had been rigorously policed after the King had issued orders placing those privies himself. He hadn’t understood why until he’d overheard two veteran Baratheon guardsmen talking about how lax privy placement meant men dying of the shits. Now that was a horrible thought.
They were in the Gift now and as they rode North they’d met more Thenn. They fascinated him, with their bronze armour. They seemed to be in awe of his father for reasons he didn’t understand and totally loyal to Lord Stark, again for reasons that he didn’t understand.
The Thenn also fascinated the Royce part of the party, especially Lord Royce with his bandaged armour, with the cloth hiding those bloody runes that kept frustrating him. He could engrave runes easily, but they wouldn’t bloody glow. Why?
Sarella’s words, that he had to think like a First Man, kept nagging at him. How? How could he do that? They’d lived all that time ago, without iron, without steel, without so many things that he took for granted.
All the things he’d tried to engrave runes that glowed had failed. Every one. It drove him almost mad. He’d hoped that the Thenn might have had the answer to it, given their bronze armour, but they didn’t have any glowing runes on anything they had, which was confusing as they wrote with runes. None of it made any sense and he brooded over it as they kept riding North.
The party paused as they reached the crest of a hill and he wondered why until the muttered comments rolled their way back through the column. Apparently the King had seen his first glimpse of the Wall. He frowned at that – they were at least a day away from the Wall, surely?
But then as the column resumed he rode up and over the brow of the hill and like the others he saw that line of white on the horizon and shivered. Aye. The Wall. Gods, it was huge. As he heard from one Lannister rider, men wouldn’t have built such a thing, still less maintain it, unless there had been something terrible beyond it. Something beyond terrible.
As evening drew in they made camp again near a village that seemed to have grown a lot recently, given all the new construction and the stones being moved. The King was about the camp once again with Stormbreaker and he could see how people reacted to the sight of them. Relief.
Could he ever do the same? Could he ever make men under his command be relieved by his very presence? No, he couldn’t imagine it. Not him. He was just a blacksmith’s apprentice.
And now, as he sat at a rough table and ate a quite tasty stew, he kept finding his mind wandering. Mya was next to him, japing with some Valeman about the lack of spices in the food, but his mind kept going back to those bloody runes. He was missing something. But what?
Someone down the table laughed at a comment that someone else had made about the Thenn and their bronze everything (before looking guiltily over their shoulder in case ‘one of those scary buggers’ was near) and then… and then… something clattered into place in his head.
“What?” Mya said after a long moment of looking at him. “What’s amiss? Do I have bloody spinach in my teeth again?”
“Bronze,” he said thickly after a while. “The First Men used bronze. We use iron. I’ve been trying to inscribe runes with iron, not bronze.”
Mya looked confused for a long moment and then seemed to realise what he was talking about. “Aye, but the Thenn use bronze and runes, but their runes don’t glow.”
“But they don’t inscribe the runes onto their armour! Wait, wait, it must be more than that.”
“Lord Royce’s blacksmith tried with bronze and he got odd results with that – some glowed and some didn’t.”
He screwed up his face at that and then concentrated as hard as he could. The First Men used bronze. Was that it or was there something else? He looked about, his mind racing. And then he gulped down the last of his stew, chewed his bread, swigged his ale and stood. “Is there any weirwood nearby?”
This obviously bewildered Mya. “What?”
“Weirwood. Did Lord Royce’s people use it in their carvings?”
“Why would they have used weirwood in carvings?”
“Because the First Men might have had weirwood handles for their tools!” And with that he darted outside and looked about wildly. There. He could see red leaves and white branches in a copse to one side. He made himself walk to the trees, thinking everything through. He wasn’t clever, not like Shireen, but it all seemed to make sense to him, and as he reached the white-barked trees he looked around for something suitable.
After a careful search he finally found a fallen branch that looked about the right size, with a good weight and thickness. He didn’t think about using a branch cut from the tree, that didn’t feel right. It would mean using green wood, or as green as weirwood got.
As he returned to the encampment he could see Mya standing by the tent, looking at him puzzled. “Why did you go running out?”
He held up the branch in response. “Right. Are there any Thenn smiths in the camp? I need a bronze hammer and a bronze rod, or something like a chisel.”
Mya stared at him and shrugged helplessly, but then they both started a little when a voice to one side said: “I’ll talk to the Thenn. We’ll get you what you need lad.” It was Lord Royce and he looked intrigued as he stood there in his jerkin. “I overheard what you said to Mya. Do you really think that might be the answer to the runes?”
Now it was his turn to shrug. “I don’t know my Lord. But I have to try this. It’s the only thing that makes sense to me. We’ve all tried so many ways to carve the runes to make them glow, but this seems like… my Lord, I can’t think of anything else.”
The Lord of Runestone nodded, laughed softly and then clapped him on the shoulder. “Gods, you’ve your father’s face and his stubbornness. Get to the forge and I’ll get what you need.”
He nodded back and then strode off to the forge, which was cooling down after the day’s work. That wasn’t what he needed there though – what ne needed instead was his knives hanging in a bag, and the small lathe. He cut the branch down to the most useable and straight part and then used the lathe to get the imperfections off the surface without taking too much off.
After a while Lord Royce arrived with a rather baffled Thenn, who handed over what he needed – a bronze hammer and a straight length of bronze. This was perfect and he quickly removed what looked like the pine handle from the hammer and then peered at the hole, before returning to the lathe and shaving what he needed to fit the weirwood handle into the head of the hammer. As for the bronze rod he used his iron hammer to square one end of it carefully, turning it into a press.
And then he pulled out one of the sheets of bronze that he’d been using for his experiments, one of the unused ones obviously. And then… he paused and looked at Lord Royce. “I need a rune to carve, or a phrase in runes. Something that means something. Something important.”
Lord Royce paused and then reached out to grab a piece of cloth and then a quill and a pot of ink. “Try this.” He wrote quickly and cleanly a few runes on the cloth. “It means ‘protection’. That should suffice.”
He looked at the runes, memorising them, and then he took a deep breath and started to hammer an impression of the runes into the bronze with the hammer and the press, striking as carefully and exactly as he could. After he finished the first rune he paused. Nothing.
“Keep going,” Lord Royce said softly. “It’s just one letter in a word, so why would it glow?”
He kept at it, tapping carefully until the runes were finished on the bronze. But then, as they all stared at them, they glowed fitfully for a moment. Deflated he sat back. “I don’t understand. That should have worked.”
Mya looked at the runes and then back at him. “You said that we needed to think like the First Men.”
“Aye.”
“The First Men prayed to the Old Gods. Did you when carving out those runes?”
He shook his head. “No.”
Mya swapped a glance with Lord Royce, who then cleared his throat: “Then try it again, whilst praying to the Old Gods as you carve the runes.”
He took this in and then frowned. “My Lord, I don’t know how to. I’ve never prayed to the Old Gods before.”
“Call to them, lad. Ask them to help you with every tap of that hammer”
So he tried again, this time muttering a prayer to the Old Gods with every single tap of the hammer into a new sheet of bronze whilst feeling more than a bit awkward.
And this time the runes glowed brightly long after he had finished the last one.
There was a long silence as the three of them – Mya had been a silent observer of all of this – stared down at the glowing runes.
“Well bugger me,” Gendry found himself eventually muttering. “There’s a thing.”
“More than a thing, lad.” Lord Royce was beaming at him. “Well done! Gendry Baratheon, Stongarm and Runesmith!”
“First runesmith in thousand of years,” said Mya with more than a hint of wonder in her voice. “My brother.”
He flushed at this praise. “I just tried to think like a smith of the First Men.”
“His Grace the King must know of this. I’ll send word to Runestone as well, along with your name.”
Gendry rummaged in his bag for a moment before pulling out the bracers that he’d been working on for some time. They were good steel with a soft leather interior lining. “My Lord, I was making these for my father. He needs new ones. I was going to engrave stags onto them, but now…” He took a deep breath. “Lord Royce, which runes would be suitable for His Grace the King?”
From the look on Lord Royce’s face it was the right thing to say and to do. The older man nodded and bent over another scrap of paper to sketch out more runes whilst Mya looked at the leather. “That’ll need ringlets and leather lacing. Let me help.”
He nodded. Leatherwork wasn’t his strongest skill – he wasn’t bad at it but he knew that Mya was better as she could work on saddles with ease.
It wasn’t hard work, but it was fiddly to find the right sized bronze sheets, both identical and then precisely stamp the runes into them. Once he’d done that he detached the leather, which he handed to Mya (who squinted at it and then muttered about his crap stitching) so that she could work on it, before attaching the sheets to the curved steel bracers with carefully placed bronze pins. This was bloody fiddly but he needed the practice for the more ornamental work.
All of this took time and he realised after a moment that he had an audience. Two Thenn were watching him, looking extremely impressed, whilst that other Vale Lord, Lord Redfort, was watching as well.
Mya handed the leather back to him and he raised his eyebrows. She had done very good work indeed. He smiled at her, reinserted the leather into each bracer and then addressed the last remaining little things that needed to be smoothed out. Only then did he stand and show what he – what they – had made to Lord Royce.
The Vale Lord nodded approving them and then held out some sacking. “Wrap them up and then follow me the pair of you.”
The moon was rising as they left the forge and the camp was starting to quieten as men and women started to retire to their beds. However, there was still light and activity at the King’s tent, where Ser Barristan Selmy was standing guard outside. He straightened as he saw them approach. “Lord Royce.”
“Ser Barristan. We need to see His Grace, we have important news.”
The old Kingsguard dipped his head and then slipped into the tent. There was a rumble of voices and then he came out again and held the flap of the tent open. “His Grace will see you.”
His father the King was sitting on a campstool, looking at messages whilst Lord Tarly and – Gendry gulped nervously – Lord Lannister sat in chairs by a small table looking at papers. As they entered three sets of eyes looked at him and he felt his cheeks flame with tension.
“What’s this information, Lord Royce?” The King boomed.
Lord Royce stepped forwards and then handed over the first panel with glowing runes on it. “Runes can be carved again, Your Grace. Runes that glow and offer protection against the Others.”
His father sat there, his mouth open in shock – and then he surged to his feet. “How?”
Lord Royce nodded at Gendry and Mya. “Your children, Gendry in particular, thought it out. They thought like First Men. Weirwood handles for bronze hammers to shape the runes and prayers to the Old Gods whilst carving them.”
The two lords at the table had also come to their feet and the King handed over to them the piece of bronze.
“It was Gendry more than me, Your Grace,” said Mya quietly. “And he has a gift.”
With trembling hands he handed over the piece of sacking. “Mya helped with this, Your Grace.”
Their father opened the sacking – and then went still. “I said the other day I needed new bracers,” he said thickly after a moment. “You heard then?”
“I did.”
The King pulled the bracers out, with their glowing runes. Lord Tarly stared at them whilst Lord Lannister looked at them and then stared at him intently before twitching an eyebrow upwards.
“Magnificent,” the King said at last before tugging them onto his arms and doing up the lacing. And then as the second one was made fast they all heard the boom of lightning far above as the runes glowed even more brightly for a moment.
And just for a heartbeat he swore he could see green fire in the eyes of his father.
Jon Stark
He had the overwhelming feeling that many of the Ironborn were absolute pain in the arses, he thought as he watched some idiot lord be dragged away to the dungeons. The man had burst into Pyke’s great hall to claim that his thralls were going to stay on the island, even if he had kill them to make them stay, and that Asha Greyjoy could not rule because she had tits, or some such nonsense.
The pale faced new Lady of the Ironborn, with the granite-faced Hand of the King and The Reader next to her, had reduced him to abject silence with mere words to the guards and a glare.
Good. He wanted to be away from this place and back to Winterfell as soon as possible. Because this place gave him the creeping bloody horrors. There were too many idiots here and he didn’t envy Asha her task of ruling the Ironborn.
At least there had been no further attacks by the Others, or at least none had yet been reported. He wondered what it had taken them to mount that blow, to get that iceberg filled with wights and controlled by those three Others to the shores of Pyke.
Valyrian steel blades were not common on the Iron Islands. Nightfall now hung at the hip of the Reader and apparently House Drumm had a sword named Red Rain, which might possibly have belonged to the now-dead Reynes, based on the name.
So, as he too had a Valyrian steel blade, he had to stay around for a bit longer – and he knew that some were wondering how Ned Stark’s bastard had such a weapon. The Hand was certainly wondering. Father had told him that the King knew his true parentage, but not the Hand and he wondered uneasily about how that conversation might go.
Asha stood suddenly and then looked at Jon and Theon as she rested a hand on some papers to one side. “My father had a lot of plans,” she said after a long moment. “Unrealistic plans in places. He wanted revenge against the North for its part in squashing his rebellion.”
Ah. He didn’t look at Theon. He knew what that other version of him had done in that other time.
“These are my late father’s plans for the invasion of the North.” She picked them up and then walked over to the fireplace and dumped them onto the fire, where they went up with a crackle and a roar. “And that is where they belong. The Others come. The Stark has called for aid. We are needed. And that is the end of it.”
There was a rumble of agreement and then they all watched as the papers burned. As they did a door opened to one side and a man walked in quickly. “My Lady!”
“Aye?” Asha said huskily as she looked at him. Then she saw the look on his face and straightened. “What’s amiss?”
“The Silence has been sighted! In a cove, on the North of the island! About three miles away, near Oyster Point!”
And with those words everyone in the room stood up. It was the first word they’d heard for days of Euron bloody Greyjoy’s ship.
“Double the guards in the castle – that kinslaying fucker knows his way around here all too well,” Asha barked. “Nuncle, ready the Sea Song and any other vessel you need. I want the Silence pinned against the shore. I’ll go overland with everyone and-”
But then another door banged open and the Maester hurried in, holding a message. “My Lady! A message from Winterfell!”
“Gods, what now? It’ll have to wait Maester, the Silence has been seen.”
“My Lady this might be related! The Mountain is dead – he tried to kill Lord Robb Stark and he was said to be possessed!”
There was a moment of stunned silence and then Theon and Jon both roared “What?!?” at almost the same moment and then ran towards the Maester, who looked rather alarmed at the sight of their approaching forms along with their direwolves but who held the message out. Jon got it an instant before Theon, who scowled but then read it over his shoulder.
The message was one of madness, but they both relaxed when they read that Robb was fine. “The Mountain is indeed dead,” Jon breathed. “Robb and the Hound killed him together. And his eyes… the Mountain’s eyes were black. And apparently just before his head was taken his eyes changed colour again and he said that he was attacking the wrong Stark. What does that mean?”
“This is Maester Luwin’s hand,” Theon muttered as he handed the message over to his sister. “He writes that the Mountain could have been possessed by a Valyrian spell.”
Asha looked shocked at this and then read it before showing it to The Reader, who was pale. “Euron mentioned visiting Valyria. And picking things up there. Gods, did Euron do this thing? What else can he do?”
“Black eyes,” Stannis Baratheon said wonderingly after taking the message from The Reader. “And which Stark was he trying to kill?”
Jon’s scalp prickled as he almost felt the eyes being turned towards him. “Why would Euron Greyjoy try to kill me? Surely – Gods he surely meant for Father to die! He’s headed to the Hightower and the Gate, where the Drowned God is!”
“Send a message to Oldtown at once,” Stannis Baratheon barked to the Maester. “Winterfell must have done so already, but we must be sure on this. Warn Lord Stark at once.” He looked at Jon. “And you, Jon Stark, must be careful. At least Tyrion Lannister had those ‘Warnings’ of his. We have nothing like that.”
The Maester looked from the Hand of the King to Asha Grejoy, who nodded, before bowing and striding briskly out.
“Right,” said Asha quietly, before running a hand through her hair and closing her eyes shut as she obviously thought things through. “Uncle, take three ships, with ballistae on them. As I said, we double the guards here in Pyke and warn them to watch out for that kinslaying fucker Euron. He knows every way in and out of this castle, so have everyone be on their guard.
“Warn the whole island. No-one is to help him. In the meantime we will head over to the cove where the Silence is and see what’s happening there and if he and his crew have landed there. Ygritte, Theon, have you replaced your arrows?”
“We have,” said Ygritte, who had moved close to Jon and was glaring at every dark corner as if there was a threat there. “Even found some dragonglass on the beach. There must be a place nearby where it can be mined.”
“Gods,” Jon muttered, “I pray for no more Others and wights.”
The Reader, who still had Nightfall at his hip, nodded curtly at that.
“Uncle, we’ll take banners with us,” said Asha. “When we are in place on the landward side we’ll signal you. Stand off the headland, out of sight, until you see our signal. Then sail in, anchor fast and train your ballistae on the Silence. The tide and the wind should be right for that, unless the wind shifts in the next hour or so. Is that clear, everyone? My Lord Hand, will you join me?”
“I will,” replied Stannis Baratheon, before directing a shrewd look at her. “You’re showing how you’ll lead aren’t you?”
“How can I not?” Asha shook her head. “If I cannot stand against my mad uncle, a kinslayer and who was willing to give us up to the Others, then how can I command the Ironborn?”
There was a silence and then she nodded again. “Right – let’s be about it.”
He had to say this about Asha Greyjoy, she knew how to get things organised. The Reader bowed formally at his niece and then strode out whilst the rest of them gathered their things and then also headed out of the doors. As they went through the castle Jon could hear orders being roared and the sound of man and women scurrying about.
By the time they made it to the main gate of Pyke there was a group of guards standing there, a mix of men in different colours from different houses, but all with hard eyes guarding for any threat. Ygritte was still sticking close to him and he eyed her. “Euron’s going after my father, not me.”
She looked at him as if he was an idiot. “Know that for a fact do you?”
“Well, no, but-”
“Shut up you idiot. You know nothing, Jon Stark.”
Which was the answer he was expecting, so he sighed, looked down at Ghost, who looked back at him, and then waited until Asha Greyjoy gave the order to march.
Three miles was not far, but that last half a mile was more stealthy as the scouts spread out and then reported back with a local minor lord who bowed hastily at Asha and greeted her: “My Lady.”
“Lord Tarling. You reported seeing the Silence?”
“Aye, me Lady, but…” His face worked suddenly. “There’s summat not right with her. She looks wrong – neglected somehow, as if she’d been abandoned for months. But I swear that she wasn’t there last night me Lady. I swear it. She wasn’t there.”
Asha stared at the man and then nodded, before issuing more orders. A chain of runners was organised, the last of which held a banner, so that The Reader’s ships could be summoned properly. And then they marched onwards… before starting to crawl as they reached a rise overlooking a bay.
A ship was anchored there and even to Jon’s eyes it didn’t look entirely right. The sails looked as if they had been furled in a hurry at the very least and the vessel had a slight list.
Asha stared at it with wide eyes, before she and the Lord Hand both took out Myrish eyeglasses and stared at the ship. “That’s not right,” Asha said slowly as she inspected the Silence. “None of that’s right. She looks fucking terrible. The sails have been furled by… no Ironborn would furl a sail like that! And those sails are faded and worn! The rigging looks ragged, no-one’s holystoned that deck in a month at least and she’s listing.”
“Look at the outlet for the chainpump,” muttered Stannis Baratheon. “No water on the planks under it. No-one’s pumped her bilges in a while. If I knew nothing better, she’s been abandoned for weeks. This makes no sense. No sailor would treat that ship so poorly. No-one on deck either.”
“Lord Tarling, you are sure that the Silence was not there last night?” Asha asked of the local lord. “And is there any sign of her crew?”
“The cove has no sign of any landing, my Lady,” Tarling replied. “Nor any sign of any other landings in the other coves nearby. No boats, no sign of footprints beyond the high water line, or even under it when it could be seen at low water.”
Ashe bit her lip at that, before taking a deep breath. “Alright. Send the signal.”
It took a little time for the runners to go and pass the message on, but eventually the three sleek shapes of the Reader’s command appeared beyond the vaguely oyster-shaped headland in a line before shivering their sails, furling them and then anchoring with a precision that seemed to impress Stannis Baratheon enough to grunt approvingly. Jon could see The Reader himself at the back of one of the ballistae that were now trained on the Silence.
Which just sat there, swinging at its anchor. With no-one on deck. No alarm being sounded. Nothing.
Just looking at the damn ship made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end and… it was then that he looked at the direwolves. Both of them had their hackles up as they looked fixedly at the ship. They were both broadcasting the same word: Danger. He looked at them and then at Theon, who looked worriedly back at him.
“What do they know that we don’t?” Theon asked softly. He looked at Jon and then asked even more softly: “Can you warg into Ghost?”
Ah. He sighed gustily, sat down and then placed a hand on Ghost’s head and tried to remember all of Arya’s not particularly coherent explanations. He vaguely sensed Asha saying something and Theon snarling something back before he finally made that connection.
All of a sudden he had too many legs, but that was fine, he knew how to walk, sort of. He peered back. Oh. That was him, with the white eyes and the pale expression, whilst Ygritte looked at him – his body that is – oddly and Asha Greyjoy stared at him as if she couldn’t believe what was happening.
And then he looked at the ship. He could feel his eyes widening and then all of a sudden he was back in his own body, shaking with terror. “Gods,” he spat eventually. “There’s something badly wrong with that.”
“What did you see?” Theon asked.
He struggled for a long moment to express what his direwolf had sensed. “Sensed, not saw. Blood. Evil. Something terrible has happened there.”
The men and woman around him muttered uneasily at that – and at him, although he heard Ygritte snarl that she’d seen more warging North of the Wall and they were not to be such fools.
Asha looked uneasy at that and then spoke in a low voice with Stannis Baratheon. And then she snapped out orders for a longboat to be brought down to the beach, for there to be a boarding ladder on it, lanterns, flints, short bows, arrows and shortswords. He frowned at this and Asha pointed at Dark Sister. “Ever fought on board a ship? Not much room there to swing a sword, even one like that. A dark place, a ship. Full of awkward angles. If Euron and his crew are on that ship – maybe they are and maybe they are not – then we might need to fight.”
“If they’re on it then where are they though? And why does that ship look like shit?” Theon sounded annoyed as he took his longsword off his belt and took a shortsword and a short bow, before shouldering a quiver with a selection of arrows.
“We’ll have to go and see,” Jon sighed as he removed Dark Sister and handed it over to the Baratheon guard. “Mind that well please.” He then took up a shortsword as well, made sure he had a dragonglass dagger at his hip and looked at Ygritte, who was looking at the longboat which was now in the cove with little enthusiasm. “Are you coming?”
She shot him a look of pure scorn. “Of course I’m coming. If it’s a trap then I’ll smell it first. And if there are Others or wights on board I’ll smell them first. You lot are children when it comes to fighting them.”
“I know, because I know nothing.” He grinned at her and then pointed at her bow. “That’s too long. Take a shortbow. You know nothing about fighting on a ship.” He grinned still further when she stuck two fingers up at him in the old gesture of defiance.
The direwolves would not go on the longboat and that reinforced that feeling he had that something was very wrong. Instead he and Theon left them at the feet of Stannis Baratheon who watched them go as the longboat was rowed out by a crew of ten men, five to a side. Asha stood at the bow, with one of her men, Darrin by name, whilst he, Theon and Ygritte sat near the man on the rudder at the stern.
They rowed a curving path, from the cove almost out to the Sea Song, where Asha and the Reader had a shouted conversation and then back to the Silence. As they approached Jon eyed it worriedly. The ship looked worn, as if it had sailed for months through rough seas with no maintenance, and as they approached its sides he stared at the portholes, looking for any sign of life. There was none, no movement in those dark and empty holes in the side of the ship.
Boathooks reached out from Asha and Darrin as they lurched by the ship and then after the rowers had stowed their oars the boarding ladder was hooked on and the longboat moored to it. Asha looked about, her face strained. “Right. We do this now. I’ll go up the right hand side of the boarding ladder, Darrin the left. Those of you with bows keep your eyes peeled. If I see anyone waiting for us, I’ll yell. The Reader’s watching this side and the Lord Hand has the other and we’ll hear if anyone on either side sees anything. Be wary all of you. Ulf and Torren, you stay here and guard the boat. Sing out if you hear anything. The rest of you – you’ll follow me with the lanterns.”
He watched as the two Ironborn swarmed carefully up the ladder, paused at the top, peered quickly over the side and then again further over and then vanished over the top. For a long moment his heart was in his mouth, fearing the worst, but then Asha’s head reappeared. “Up!” She called. “All clear!”
This was a good thing as Ygritte was looking rather green in the lurching boat, but she seemed to recover as they climbed the ladder and then assembled on the deck of the Silence and looked about. His gut was churning for some reason that he didn’t understand and he looked about carefully.
Nothing. There was no sign of anyone, as before. No sign of life. After a long moment something caught his eye. “What’s that?” He pointed at a piece of leather that was flat on the deck and which looked out of place.
Asha walked over to it and picked it up in a gloved hand, before frowning. “Part of the rigging,” she said, looking up. “Only… this is wrong. It’s rotted leather. That’s not right. It’s a strap for the sail. A reef point. No-one sane would sail with this attached to their sail.”
“Euron’s not sane, but he’s still an Ironborn,” Theon said grimly, before pointing at a door at the prow of the ship. “We need to check that.”
Two of the Ironborn sailors crept forwards, shortswords ready, before opening the door and then peering carefully in. Both then gagged slightly and pulled faces before looking in again. “Bunks my Lady,” one called out to Asha. “For the forepeak. Four of them. Smell’s from rotted food on plates in them. Badly rotted food. Apples, bread, some cheese, all rotted and green.”
Asha Greyjoy stalked forwards and peered into the room, before pausing. “Stand back,” she said quickly. “That should all be covered in flies and maggots. There are flies – but they’re all dead.”
“Poison?” Someone asked as they all looked uneasy.
“Maybe,” Asha said warily, before gesturing at the covering for the hold that was before the mainmast. “Light the lanterns and let’s see what she was carrying.”
What she was carrying, as was revealed by the lantern that they lowered into the hold with a rope, was not very much. There seemed to be some boxes, but what they contained was a mystery. There was, again, no sign of life.
“Right,” Asha said as she took a deep breath and then looked at the closed doors at the stern of the ship that Jon now knew led downwards, “Light the rest of the lanterns and let’s be about this. Be wary, all of you.”
They opened the doors quickly, with Theon and Ygritte standing ready with their bows, but there was no one behind them, just a patch of sunlight that showed the start of a staircase going down and then a dark void.
Heart pounding Jon took the lead with Asha on this, descending stair by stair with Asha, who was like him holding a lantern aloft with her left hand and a shortsword in her right. The others were behind them, watching and swivelling lanterns as they descended. Nothing.
At the base of the stairs was a closed door on their right, at the stern of the ship and a sliding door to their left. “Crew’s quarters,” Asha whispered as she pointed left and then as she pointed right: “Captain’s quarters. Euron.”
They paused and listened. Again, nothing. Then Jon frowned. “Captain’s quarters has a door that opens outwards. Why?”
Asha pulled a face. “It can be bolted shut from the inside. Makes it harder to break in during a mutiny.”
Ah. “Left first.”
Darrin grabbed the door handle with his gloved hand, looked at them all as he counted from five to one and then pulled it open. They stood there, ready for anything – but nothing emerged apart from a smell of rotted food again.
Jon peered in. This was beyond odd. There were hammocks in various states hanging from heavy-duty hooks in places or just laying on the floor. And no sign of life.
“Seachests are all there,” Asha said musingly. She pointed at one hammock. “And someone’s flute. Where’s the fucking crew though? Erik, Tom, the galley’s through there. Have a careful look.”
The two men hurried forwards – and then hurried back, looking nauseous. “Rotted food again, My Lady,” one of them said, looking as if he wanted to throw up. “Gods, that’s bad. No sign of the crew again.”
“Where the fuck are they all?” Asha muttered, before turning and looking back at the closed door. “There’s hardly room for them all to be in there. Right. Stand ready.”
Jon stood by the door and reached out with the same hand that held the shortsword for the handle. It turned slowly under his hand and he looked about to make sure that the others were ready. They were,=- by their nods – and then he pulled the door open and stepped back to deal with any attack.
What he was attacked with was the overwhelming stench of blood. Gods, it was foul and cloying. He looked into the room and almost threw up.
Blood. It was everywhere. It coated every surface. It was dripping down the walls, off the tables, down off their chairs, off the ceilings, gods it was everywhere.
He froze. It was dripping. That meant it was fresh. No clotting. So… very fresh. “Gods,” He said thickly. “Has this just happened? It’s fresh. Still dripping and-” He paused, suddenly struck with the certainty that there was someone horribly wrong with the world.
And then he looked up. The ceiling was plastered with a horrible combination of blood, skin, bone, hair and must have been muscle. And in the middle of the ceiling was what looked like a large and malformed skull of some kind, in the eyesockets of which were a pair of blood-stained eyes.
And as Jon looked up at it, those eyes looked down at them.
Afterwards Jon could never explain what sparked that automatic instinct for pure survival in him. He wrenched his eyes from the horrible thing in the ceiling and threw his lantern against the desk in the room so hard that it shattered and sent burning oil everywhere. A moment after that he slammed the door shut, pulled out his beltknife and then thrust it into the doorframe so hard that the blade vanished into the wood, leaving the hilt which jammed the door shut.
“RUN!!!” Jon roared at the others and was swiftly rewarded by them fleeing up the staircase as fast as they could. As they went up he could feel something thump against the door and then make a noise of distress that was enough to make him snatch Asha’s lantern from her hands and then throw that at the base of the stairs behind him. The oil went everywhere down there and caught fire in an instant, sending greasy smoke into the air as the dry wood started to catch.
Up they ran and Jon swore as one of the steps cracked and broke as his foot went through it, but he pulled himself up with a hand on the rail and as they emerged into the daylight he grabbed Theon’s lantern and threw that down the stairs as well.
“Watch out!” The call came from Darrin, who was looking upwards and Jon realised that there were pieces of rigging now hanging lose from the mainmast, which was audibly groaning – and then as he looked at it a great crack appeared in the wood.
Something screamed or groaned under their feet and the ship shivered. “Off! Jump for your lives!” Jon roared. “Never mind the boat, over the side and swim to the Reader’s ship!”
Whatever tone he used must have been a convincing one, because the party turned as one and made for the side of the ship. As Jon reached it the mast groaned again. Ygritte was trying to say something as the others all vaulted the side and dove into the water but he paid her no mind. “JUMP!” Still she tried to say something so instead he picked her up and jumped as something screamed again in the interior of the ship.
They plunged through the water and then he kicked upwards, up towards the light. As they broke the surface he could see that the boat had cast off and was headed away from the ship and that the others were swimming away from the Silence.
It was then that Ygritte started to flail desperately in his arms and caught him a right ding on the side of the head that made him get a mouth of seawater. He let go and of her – and then watched her flail even more desperately. “Oh bloody hell, you can’t swim properly can you?”
She spluttered something and he stroked around to behind her and grabbed her chest just under her breasts. “Stop struggling! It’s me. I’ve got you now. Relax. Kick your boots off and then let me get you to the boat. You understand?”
White faced and obviously terrified she nodded slightly and abruptly went limp after wiggling her body more than a bit as she kicked off her boots. He took a deep breath and then started to carefully tow her back towards the now approaching boat. As he did he could hear Asha Greyjoy shouting her uncle to ‘Sink the fucking ship, it’s possessed or something. Loose your ballistae now!”
There was shout of acknowledgement and then, just as Jon and Ygritte reached the boat and the men in it reached over to pull them up and out he heard the deep thuds as the bolts were loosed from the trio of ships at that accursed ship. All hit, gouging deep holes in the side of the ship.
As he heaved himself up and into the boat and then checked on Ygritte he looked back at the Silence, where smoke was now billowing up from the back of the ship. And as he watched the ship seemed to be rotting to pieces. The mainmast failed at its base and topped backwards over the stern, the rotted sail smothering the smoke for an instant and- Jon froze. There was something moving under that sail, something that didn’t look right. It was also on fire as the sail went up like kindling. Whatever was under it slumped downwards. Had there really been something there? Had it instead been a trick of the light?
“What the fuck was that?” Theon called out from the prow of the boat and he know that he had not just been him and that it hadn’t been a trick of the light as the ship burnt.
The Silence shuddered visibly again and then, as the men behind the oars shook off their shock and struck out for the Sea Song as hard as they could. He could see the Silence and it horrified him. The ship seems to be changing colour, as if the wood itself was decaying in front of their eyes. He could hear the Reader shouting orders to buoy the anchors and then prepare to cut the hawsers and make all sail and looked around wildly to see that Asha and her men were swarming up ropes on the Sea Song.
As they reached The Reader’s ships hawsers were let down from derricks, the oars were stowed, the hawsers attached to davits and then he grabbed Ygritte and hung on as the boat was hauled bodily out of the water and hoisted up to deck height and then swung aboard. The men were moving with a frantic speed and as he helped a retching Ygritte – how much seawater had she swallowed? – off the boat he heard The Reader shout out to make sail.
He strode to the side of the ship and joined the dripping wet Asha and Theon at staring at what remaining of the Silence, which was now low in the water, on fire and crumbling quickly. And then it seemed to somehow get compressed together in a horrible maelstrom of swirling wind, rotting wood, fire and water spray that howled into the skies for a long moment before it finally vanished beneath the waves with a bubbling roar.
The Sea Song and the other ships were moving by now and it was a good thing that they were because he really didn’t like the look of the fiery bubbles of something that kept rising to the surface, along with very dead fish.
Away they sailed and as he sat down heavily on the deck he could see men at the mainmast signalling to the party at the cove. He was wet, had been badly shaken and needed new boots.
By the time that they docked again near Pyke and then met the others in the great hall he was drier and had new boots and was wondering what was wrong with Ygritte. She’d recovered from her near-drowning and also had new boots but was looking at him differently and he wasn’t sure why.
He also had Dark Sister at his hip again and he thanked the guard that had returned it. And then he told the tale of everything that had happened on board the Silence, backed up by the others, including a very pale Asha Greyjoy, as they ate a hurried supper.
“Lord Jon here saved our lives, I’m sure of that. He moved fast when he saw that… that thing in there and throwing the lantern in was a good idea.” Asha Greyjoy sighed. “Lord Tarling, if any wreckage of the Silence washes ashore, it is to be burned at once. That ship was accursed. I have no doubt that what we saw in that cabin was the remains of my mad uncle’s crew and I have no idea what horrors he inflicted on them or what purpose he had. All I know is that he is to be killed on sight if he lays foot on the Iron Islands again.”
“But where can he be?” The Reader mused as he stroked his chin. “He vanished on that beach, his ship is gone, his crew is dead – I hope – and no ships have been reported stolen. Where is he?”
Silence greeted this question and Jon stroked the fur between Ghost’s ears. The direwolf was himself again and no longer fearful. The danger had passed for the time being.
“Once I know that Pyke is secure you and I should go to Great Wyk, Nuncle Rodrik,” Asha said eventually. “You too my Lord Hand, if you please. We need to talk to the Stonebrows and find out what they know. This civil war that my Father started is over.”
“His body must be burned anyway,” The Reader said sombrely. “As you promised him. It’s not the Ironborn way, but that needs to be the point now. The Old Way is gone. It died with your father and Damphair.”
There was a pause and then they went their separate ways. He was tired, he needed clean clothes and to wash the salt off him and he needed to think about what they had witnessed that day. He knew without a shadow of doubt that Father was in danger from that mad bastard Euron Greyjoy, he just didn’t know how the mad Ironborn could beat Father to Oldtown.
But as he started to close the door to his room it was blocked and then pushed open. Ah. Ygritte. “Are you alright?” He asked the words quietly and then frowned as she closed the door behind them and then walked up to him.
“I am fine, but you need to shut up and let me talk,” she said softly. “If we were north of the Wall then my father would have cuffed you about the head by now and told you to stop being a stubborn bastard and admit that you love me. Because I know that you do, just as I love you.”
“Ygritte-” He started to say, only for her to cut him off with a gesture.
“Shut. Up. Do you deny you love me?”
He stared at her, his blood boiling. “You know that I do.” The words sounded strained. “But I never know where I stand with you.”
She looked at him. “Right. Stand there.” Frowning he did as she walked behind him. “You saved my life three times today. Once when you slammed that door, once when you swept me off that hellship and then finally when you saved me from drowning. North of the Wall that would make me your wife. So I am your wife – don’t turn around yet! – and we can do whatever silly kneeler ceremony you like later. But here and now it’s just you and me and this bed. Now turn around.”
He turned. She was standing there, stark naked, in front of him. And in her eyes was nothing but invitation. So he stepped forwards, into her arms and swept her onto the bed as he kissed her mouth at last properly and helped her take those bloody salt-stained clothes off.
Sleep was forgotten for the time being. They were finally together.
Bran
Normally the pool in front of the Heart Tree in the Godswood looked inviting. The water was always warm and still. Today however he was looking at it with a real sense of unease as he stood there with Robert, Edric and Ned.
The issue was a simple one – did the pool contain Vermax’s eggs? And if so how could they get to them? And who should go into it?
It had been Robert’s idea, that the natural place for a dragon to lay their eggs had to be in the hot springs in the Godswood, but now that they were all there and looking into the pool, certain nagging doubts were running through his head. Well – judging by the others all their heads.
“How deep is it?” Ned asked as they peered into it.
“It… goes down to a warm place,” Bran said carefully. Now that they were there and looking at it… well, things seemed rather different. And, if he had to admit it, dangerous. “I don’t know how far down.”
“But the eggs might be there!” Edric said again with slightly less confidence then he had before. “I mean – it’s warm in there. Dragons liked warm places.”
They all stood there and stared at the pool again. All of a sudden he had a lot of butterflies in his stomach. Perhaps this wasn’t a very good idea?
But then where else would Vermax have laid those eggs?
He was in the process of opening his mouth to say something when someone cleared their throat behind them in a very meaningful manner. They all froze. Oh no. He turned his head. Shireen was standing there, arms crossed, eyebrow raised.
“And what,” Shireen said in a voice that made her sound exactly like her father, “Do you think you are doing?”
They traded shifty looks, daring the others to break the silence. Finally Robert pointed at the pool. “It makes sense that Vermax’s eggs are-”
“In a place that Vermax couldn’t have reached without tearing down the Godswood and enraging everyone and certainly every Stark in Winterfell?”
Silence fell as they all thought about that. Then Ned raised a hand. “What if Vermax hovered in the air above the Godswood, just above the pool and, you know, aimed and-”
He was cut off by Shireen raising a hand and then, lips twitching, closing her eyes and shaking her head as she grimaced. “Ned. No. Just… no. Now, enough of this nonsense, it’s almost time for the midday meal and there’s training to be done after that.”
Deeply deflated the boys eyed each other again and then sloped off. Bran felt secretly relieved. He was glad that he wouldn’t be diving into the pool. Summer was off to one side, rolling on his back on a tree root to get at an itch probably and he rubbed the direwolf’s furry tummy, making him squirm.
And then, as the others vanished off through the trees, he saw the direwolf freeze and then stare upwards at about the same time that he heard something snap far above his head. He looked up at the red canopy above him. Nothing – until a white twig hit the ground to one side. Something was up there. But what?
“Bran?” It was Edric’s voice and he turned. “Are you coming?”
“In a bit! I’ll meet you in the Great Hall!” And then he went back to staring upwards into the branches. There was a faint breeze blowing that rustled the leaves, but he suddenly had the very strong feeling that someone or something was watching him closely. Oddly enough he felt no threat, just caution.
He walked to the Heart Tree and peered up again. “Hello? Is there anyone up there?” There was a soft creak and again a twig seemed to snap. “Who are you? My friends are gone, it’s just me here and my direwolf, Summer. My name is Bran.” A pause. More silence. “Hello?”
Something creaked again to one side. Bran looked but saw nothing – and then as he looked back he froze in place. There was a figure hanging by its hands and feet from a branch above. It had brown skin, largish ears, was wearing a green jerkin and was studying him intently through reddish eyes.
He never knew how long he stood there, staring upwards at that figure, lost in wonder. And then it seemed to sigh a little, dropped down onto a branch, pivoted with an inhuman grace, bounded onto its feet and then dropped lightly to the mossy earth by the trunk of the Heart Tree.
Bran swallowed. It – no, she – had three fingers that ended in black nails and was studying him closely. After a moment she leant back and sniffed. “Hello Stark.”
He was lost for words for a moment. “Hello.” Then he rallied. “Are you one of the Children of the Forest?”
The reddish eyes almost rolled for a moment. “Yes I am.”
“I didn’t know that there were any left in the North.”
Something flickered in those eyes. “We remain here and there. We were away. Protecting ourselves. But now I’m here.”
He nodded. Then he frowned. “How did you know I’m a Stark?”
She looked at Summer meaningfully. “The direwolf was the clue.” And then she stared at him, stared as if she was memorising his face intently. “Ah. I was right.”
“Right about what?”
“I can’t tell you yet.”
Confused, he frowned at her. “I don’t understand.”
She smiled ever so slightly. “I’ll explain one day. You should join your friends. They’re an interesting group. Two of them are Children of the Storm. One is a falcon and the other is part Giant. But you can’t tell them about me. Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“It's a secret.”
“I can keep a secret!”
“Really?” She smiled slightly and leant towards him. “So can I.”
This was deeply strange. He tilted his head. “You haven’t you always been here have you?”
This bought him another smile. “The Green Man opened the way here. It’s… complicated. Let’s just say I travelled with him and leave it at that shall we?”
“Alright.” He wanted to run and tell the others who he had met, but there was something in those red eyes that stopped him. “Why can’t I tell the others about you?”
“It’s not time yet.”
“When will it be time?”
“Soon. You’ll know when.”
“I will?”
“You will. You need to tell your brother about the door though.”
He stared at her, shocked. “The door in the crypts? I thought that Robb knew about it.”
She closed her eyes for a long moment. “He doesn’t, not yet.” As she opened her eyes again she seemed to pin him in place with a look that he couldn’t describe. “You have a long way to go. You’ll get taller. We are… I do not know the right word. We will be linked, you and I. I’ll be here until you need me. And beyond that.”
Deeply confused he looked at her. “I don’t understand.”
“You will. There is a fate that you have been turned from and new one that you will embrace. And you can’t tell anyone that I’m here just yet, even your friends.”
“But they can keep this secret!”
“Can they? No.” She reached out and ran a black fingernail down the side of his face. “Ah, I see now. No, they would not understand.” The finger reached his lips, paused and then she touched the same finger to her own lips and smiled slightly. “They would not understand.”
He stared at her, feeling that this was somehow deeply important, that something had happened. “You know my name. What’s yours?”
She peered at him again. “In your language? I am called Quicksilver. I am young. I have the greensight, so I won’t live as long as others. And I have a purpose.” And with that she held his face with her hands in a gentle but firm grip, kissed his forehead, each cheek and his lips with a gossamer touch and then released, stepped back and vaulted upwards into the canopy far above.
Chapter Text
It has, once again, been a rather odd and very tiring month. I am so very tired for so many reasons and fortunately I have a week off of work coming soon-ish. I would like to make it clear that I am not making a certain character suddenly heterosexual, merely possibly bisexual and deeply confused about the whole thing.
Jaime
Teaching someone like Joffrey took a toll on a man. The boy was sulky, reluctant and seemed to be all thumbs and left feet. He also didn’t seem to understand the time it would take to learn how to fight properly.
“Why is this so hard?” The boy had a whine that reminded him of his mother at times. “I’m a Lannister, this should be easy!”
He stared at the boy. “True learning comes through constant repetition. Constant practice. You think that my skill with a blade came overnight? I was in a training yard in Casterley Rock every morning and afternoon from the age of six, practicing, practicing, practicing.” He held up a hand and flexed it. “Your uncle has a phrase for it that caught my ear once and I liked it: muscle memory. Do something often enough and you can do it without thinking, your mind prepares your muscles without you seeming to think about it.”
Joffrey scowled the moment that Tyrion was mentioned, but actually seemed to think about it for a moment. “The Hound… the Hound used to say I didn’t practice enough.”
“You didn’t.” He said the words harshly. “Your mother thought she was protecting you. She coddled you instead.”
A look of misery crossed the boy’s face at the mention of his mother and he suppressed a sigh. Then he gestured at the practice dummy. “Keep at it. It takes time and practice. You should have a talent for it. You’re my son.”
Joffrey flashed a look of conflict and misery at him but then started his practice again. He was sloppy and badly co-ordinated but the basics were there.
“Ser Jaime,” said a voice behind him and he turned to see Jenn, that oddly bossy Wildling woman who helped out the Maester at times. According to Otherbane Ed she’d been married to some demented lunatic who worshipped the Others enough to give up their sons – and the sons he had with the other daughter-wives he had – to the creatures. “Maester Aemon wishes to see you.”
He looked at her, noted her intent look and then nodded. “Very well. Joffrey – keep practising those forms.”
The boy grunted but kept at it as they walked towards the Maester’s office, up a set of new stairs and then over to the door, which Jenn rapped on quietly, slipped in, talked in a low voice and then came out again. “Maester Aemon says to come in.”
He walked past her to discover that the old Maester was sitting at his desk, many books open in front of him. For a moment he thought of Tyrion with deep fondness, but then thrust that thought behind him. “Maester Aemon?”
“Ser Jaime, come in if you please.” The Maester sounded tired and Jaime looked at him carefully. The Maester looked up and then smiled slightly. “Your pardon. Tiredness and worry. Sit, please. Worrying news from Winterfell came some days past and the Lord Commander and I have been asking questions of many people.”
He sat as requested and then looked at the old man. “What news?”
The Maester of Castle Black leant back in his chair and looked at him. “The Mountain – Ser Gregor Clegane – is dead. And in most odd circumstances.”
Jaime just stared at the man for a long moment. “The Mountain – dead?” He said the words in disbelief. Then he leant forwards, dread roiling in his guts. “How? What happened at Winterfell?”
“It would seem that he killed the two men acting as his wardens, given his… proclivities… and then tried to assault Mance Rayder’s goodsister, being stopped in that assault by Rob Stark. He then tried to kill Robb Stark.”
The dread deepened. “Oh gods,” he muttered. “Is the Stark boy dead?”
“Fortunately not. He was able to fight Ser Gregor off for long enough for Sandor Clegane to intervene eventually. Between the two of them – well three if you include the girl – they killed him. But here is the thing, Ser Jaime – the Mountain’s eyes were jet black in all of this.” The Maester raised a gnarled finger that circled his right eye. “All of his eyeballs – jet black.”
He just stared at the Maester for a long moment. “I… I don’t understand.”
“He was possessed,” Maester Aemon said almost sadly. “Maester Luwin in Winterfell said that, based on a reading of a book there that I should very much like to read, he was possessed by an old Valyrian spell that allowed someone to warg into him. Something that many describe as, well, as being-”
“Evil.” Jenn said the word by the door. “Evil. Warging into a human is evil beyond words.” She said the words as if they hurt her mouth saying them.
He struggled with this for a long moment. “Someone… warged into The Mountain?”
“Yes,” the old Maester said heavily. “Ser Gregor had apparently told people that he had been suffering from dark dreams. It might have be a premonition. He was indeed possessed – but fortunately was killed.”
“How?” Jaime blurted the word in general bafflement. “He was a giant of a man, how did they kill him?”
Maester Aemon tilted his head a little. “From what was written, Robb Stark stuck a dagger in his eye. This was insufficient. Sandor Clegane then stuck a sword through his chest. This too was insufficient. Whoever was warging the man then said, through his mouth, that he was trying to kill the wrong Stark, whereupon Robb Stark thrust another dagger into his other eye, after which Sandor Clegane struck his head from his shoulders. Which was sufficient. However, it must be said that your brother said that the Warnings glowed red near the body. Which was burnt.”
He sat there for a long moment, trying to think all of that through. “The wrong Stark?”
“Indeed. The First Ranger has been warned and we are now quietly talking to anyone who has had dark dreams. Which brings me to you Ser Jaime. I know that I said that you should come to me when you were ready to talk about the dark dream that you had on the way to Castle Black, but this threat of people warging into people is too much to ignore. I have to ask you this – what was your dream?”
He sat there, struggling for words for a long moment. “I was in Casterley Rock,” he said eventually. “After a battle against the Others and their wights that the Westerlands had thoroughly lost because of my father’s inability to believe in the threat we were facing. Wighted gients with tree trunks had smashed the gates of the Lions’ Mouth. We were losing. I met Tyrion, who said that we should flee and then I went to my father’s solar. There was word that Ned Stark held a fist again, but no-one knew what that meant. My… my family was there, my father, Cersei and… well, our son.
“My father agreed that the Rock was lost, Cersei harangued us, and then… well, then I knew it was just a dream I think, because there was this odd noise and then there was this Other on the back of a giant blue spider that he’d used to climb the Rock. I remember dying in this dream, as the Hound got just my son out, and this voice in my head as I died, telling me to get up, that I belonged to it… and that was it.”
He looked at the old Maester and was shocked to see that he was gripping the arms of his chair as if he was in pain, whilst Jenn’s eyes were very wide and her mouth hung open. “Maester Aemon, it was just a dream!”
“You did not know that the Others have been known to ride such creatures?” The oldest remaining Targaryen said the words carefully and he felt the blood drain from his face.
“Giant blue spiders??”
“Ice spiders,” Jenn said in tones of dread. “Wildlings have seen them riding such creatures.”
“It is not widely known amongst the Night’s Watch, but is being talked about as they will have to be dealt with when they attack.” Maester Aemon leant back in his chair, steepled his fingers and looked at him with those Targaryen eyes. “Well, now. Interesting. Where were you when you had this dream? Describe the location.”
“In a grove of trees, in the Gift,” Jaime explained, feeling bewildered. “I slept with a blanket under my head on a tree root.”
Aemon tilted his head a little. “What kind of tree?”
“A weirwood tree. When I woke and went around it to, erm, relieve myself, I saw a face carved into it.”
“You pissed on a Heart Tree?” Jenn spat, obviously angry. He looked at her, baffled and confused, before shrugging, which seemed to anger her even more.
“Jenn – enough.” The Maester said the words softly, but with enough power to make her glare diminish a little. “Most interesting.”
“Why interesting?”
“Because my boy I think that you have a touch of the Greensight.”
He just stared at the man, genuinely unsure what to say. “The Greensight? Like my Uncle Gerion and his son say they have?”
“Oh, they don’t just say that they have it, they truly do have it Ser Jaime. When they were here in Castle Black I talked to them carefully. A terrible and nebulous gift, the Greensight. Divining what it means can be like trying to hold smoke – you think you have it and then it is gone. Better perhaps than prophecy. Rhaegar thought he understood prophecy.” The old man’s upper lip curled into a snarl. “The fool.”
Jaime struggled with where this conversation had taken them. “But what I dreamt about… what was it then?”
“A future perhaps, one that is mercifully lost to us. You said that Lord Stark held the Fist again – the Fist of Winter? He now holds it. No, what you saw was like something your brother once told me of in a dream of his own. Interesting. I must think on this.”
He nodded absently, still bewildered – and then he heard the sound of horns in the far distance, brassy and abrupt.
“Ah,” said Maester Aemon as he stood. “His Grace the King approaches. Ser Jaime, if you have any dreams that disturb you, please come to me at once.”
He nodded and stood as well, before following the old Maester to the door and then looking up at the Wall dully. Robert Baratheon was about to arrive and Father would be in his wake. He couldn’t deal with Father right now.
It was time to stand his watch on the Wall.
Brynden
As they approached Castle Black he could almost feel the Wall, like a presence in his head. There was something there, something that he couldn’t put his finger on, like… the opposite of a shadow? That made no sense, he knew, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.
He could see blonde hair loom into view out of the corner of his eye and he knew without even looking that it was Brienne. “Do you feel it too?” She asked the question with something in her voice that said that she felt the same thing that he did.
“The Wall? Aye, I feel it. Like… something I can’t put into words.”
She nodded and eyed him for a moment. There was something between them as well, something that he really couldn’t describe, or put his finger on either. He liked her, liked her more than any woman he’d met in many a year, but he had no idea how to approach her at times. He was too old for her.
But there was something there…
He looked back at the Wall and then ahead at the approaching bulk of Castle Black. The King was near the head of column, with the other Lords, but the Green Man was further back. He’d asked why and the old man had smiled sadly and said that today he’d meet an old friend who had until recently thought that he was dead.
Castle Black may have had bulk, but there was no way that their full party would be able to be accommodated in it, so some men had been left behind in Moletown, whilst others were in Queen’s Crown, which was bustling again. Even then he could see that some temporary structures had been constructed to one side.
He had been to Castle Black once before, years ago, escorting some ‘volunteers’ for the Night’s Watch from Gulltown who Jon Arryn had firmly wanted gone from the Vale in the wake of Robert’s Rebellion. Then he’d noticed how shabby Castle Black looked, how worn.
Now, however, the place looked transformed. He could see new tiles on roofs, new walls, new buildings, a flood of carts coming to and from the place, along with horsemen. As they approached the gates he could see that the place was bustling, but that bustle was quietening down as ranks were formed of man of the Night’s Watch, headed by old Jeor Mormont with an older man next to him with the chains of a Maester.
As the King dismounted the assembled men and women in the courtyard knelt and he took the opportunity to look around at the faces. Yes, that brat Joffrey was there, a conflicted look on his face, but where was the Kingslayer?
The King gestured and then as the assembled throng stood he stepped up to the Old Bear and clasped arms with him. “Lord Commander, good to see you again.”
“Your Grace,” Mormont rumbled. “Castle Black is yours. We must talk in my solar.”
“Aye,” Robert Baratheon said – and then, his face, working a bit, he looked at the Maester. “Maester Aemon?”
“Your Grace,” the old man said with a creaking bow. “Be welcome to Castle Black.”
“Maester Aemon, we are kin,” the King said haltingly. “You are, I believe, my great-grand uncle? You remind me of my grandmother, who I loved most fiercely.”
“Rhaelle,” the old man said with a fond smile. “She was so young the last time I saw her, but she often wrote to me about how happy your grandfather made her.”
The King nodded choppily and seemed for a moment to be deeply moved. And then he smiled. “We will talk later of her. I have… well, there is much that I must repair with you.”
Armour creaked to one side as someone approached and then the old man looked at the Green Man as he walked up to them and then pulled down his antlered hood. “Aemon.”
Aemon Targaryen was pale as he looked at the other man. “Duncan. I heard from the Lord Commander that you had survived.” He visibly searched for words for a moment. “It seems that I have much to talk about with you. And you are the Green Man now?”
“I am,” the tall man said quietly. “So we must talk of more things than you might think.”
The King cleared his throat to one side, before taking Stormbreaker from Ser Barristan and then striding out into the courtyard, where all the assembled men and women looked at him. He looked back at them levelly.
“The Call has been sent,” the huge man called out in his deep voice. “The Realm has answered! We know what marches on the Wall. We know what comes for us all! Castle Black and the Night’s Watch – all of you! – will have the full support of the Realm. This I swear, by the Old Gods and the New!”
He drew his sword and thrust it in the air and as he did so the assembled throng raise their arms and drew swords of their own as they cheered him deafeningly. And as they did the runes on the bracers he wore shone.
Edmure
His sister was dead and he did not know if he should wear black or not. Based upon Father’s aspect he did not think that he should. Father refused to speak of her, even after news came that Jon Arryn had taken her head in the Red Keep. He had looked at the message without flinching, passed it to Edmure so that he could read it, beckoned with his fingers for it back – and then crumpled it and threw it into the nearest fire, where it vanished.
Lysa was gone. And he, if no-one else did, mourn her. Yes, in her last days she had been quite mad. But she had been there to help bring him up. That counted for something. So he had quietly, in the Sept, mentioned her in his prayers. It mattered to him at least.
And he needed as much help as possible, because Father would not last forever, he knew that. Yes, he’d rallied, but the bad days, where Father could do little but sit in a chair in his solar, a blanket on his lap, still happened, like today.
As he approached Father he looked up from the message on his lap. “It would seem,” he said wryly, “That your search of Oldstones was for naught. The Shield of the Riverlands was not there. It was instead in the Foxhold, just over the border, in the Vale. The Cawlishs had it all along.”
He thought about this. “Aye, but the Cawlishs are gone, surely? Lord Cawlish is dead, he had no son to inherit.”
Father sighed. “Jon Arryn gave the Foxhold to a Lord Cassley, the man who caught… Baelish.” He hissed the name with venom and hatred. “Cassley’s steward at the Foxhold was Lord Cawlish’s bastard daughter, who Cassley had legitimised for reasons that I thought were unclear – until now. He has married her. At the Red Keep. Where she bore the Shield of the Riverlands. So – it is denied to us.”
He raised his eyebrows at that and then sighed a little. Truth be told, he had been worried about the hunt for the Shield. It had at times seemed to be a hunt for a myth and even if it had been found he wasn’t sure about if he should wield it. “Does it have… powers?”
“Apparently it shone when she first picked it up.” Father shook his head and then passed a hand over his forehead as if fatigued, before laughing softly. “Edmure, this past year has been like nothing I can ever remember. Legends and myths have sprung to life almost beneath our feet. And I am not well. I’m sorry my boy. A great burden will be on your shoulders soon.”
“Don’t say that Father, there are many years ahead of you yet!” He put his hand on Father’s shoulder and was encouraged by the strength in Father’s hand as he grasped his arm.
“Thank you my boy, but we both know that my recent rally is only delaying the inevitable. Now – you spoke of marriage and I might have found someone for you, although not the person you might have thought.”
“Oh? Who is she?”
“Roslin Frey.”
“Father – a Frey?!”
Father sat back and satisfaction danced in his eyes. “This one’s different. You’ll like her. Trust me on this Edmure.”
He sighed. “Let us talk again after I meet her.”
Renly
There were times when he almost had to bite his cheek to keep from laughing out loud in the throne room, when fools stood before the Iron Throne and did foolish things. In this case the fool in question was Lord Piglott, a minor lord from the border of the Crownlands and the Stormlands who bore an unfortunate resemblance to, well, a pig.
Obviously there were times when courtiers mispronounced his name.
Lord Piglott today was standing in the throne room, one hand hooked into his belt and the other stiffly waving in the air as he stated his case before Jon Arryn, who was sitting on a chair just below the Iron Throne and who looked as if he was not particularly impressed by the performance.
Sadly Lord Piglet – Piglott – did not seem to be noticing that fact. He was more fixated on the fact that his suit was firstly one that was set against Lord Kellington, who was not sadly present despite being summoned, and secondly was based on an obscure law of the First Men.
Or so the bloody man obviously thought about that second point. Renly knew rather different, hence his amusement.
Piglott continued to drone on, obviously oblivious to the fact that Jon was looking at him as if he was wasting his time. His suit was a land ownership matter, not a particularly significant one, but one that he obviously thought that he’d win.
The volume under Renly’s arm said otherwise. It was a set of notes about legal matters that had been all but codified under Renly, in one of the few things that he had to admit he’d achieved as Master of Laws. He had come to wonder about just what his legacy might be, something that nagged at him.
Robert had rediscovered his strength and was doing what he did best – campaign. Yes, he had denounced Cersei’s children as bastards, but he’d legitimised three of his bastards. House Baratheon had expanded a little but it was still on the precipice of disaster. Stannis was Robert’s heir for the time being and was being a surprisingly good Hand.
And what was Renly doing? He needed to be the Lord of the Stormlands that it needed. The Stormlands were going to war soon. A war on the Wall, against creatures out of legend. He wondered what Father would have thought of all of this. He had so few memories of him and Mother.
Piglet – damnit, Piglott was continuing to drone on and from the drumming of Jon’s fingers on the arm of his chair he was close to telling him to get to the point. And then he heard a door boom open and the sound of boots approaching.
Looking to one side he saw a tall man in riding garb, a bandage around his head, with a young man – no, wait, a young woman – next to him. A daughter, by the resemblance. Both stopped, bowed to Jon and then glared more than a little at Piglott, who noticed them and then fell silent for a moment in what seemed to be a genuine moment of shock.
“Lord Kellington,” Jon said as he acknowledged him with a nod. “Your presence here is most welcome.”
“Thank you Lord Arryn,” the man replied. “My apologies for my delay in getting to King’s Landing, we were delayed by an attack by would-be outlaws on the road.”
Renly pricked his ears up at this, as did Jon. “Would-be, my lord?”
“Men drably dressed but rather too well equipped to be normal outlaws, my lord. We drove them off thanks to my daughter here, who joined me at the last minute with more men.”
He narrowed his eyes at this – there was something about this matter that made him wonder about the truth of this attack. And then Piglet – damnit, Piglott – stepped forwards again. “Lord Arryn, if I may continue to state my case?”
“You may not,” Jon said in a voice like iron. “Something about it has bothered me for some time now. Lord Baratheon, as Master of Laws what say you about this case?”
Jon was laying on the formality and he suppressed a smile as he stepped forwards. “Lord Piglott has correctly stated that his suit is based upon a law of the First Men. However, he has not stated the law in full, which is where it fails rather badly.” He hefted the book up for a moment. “There have been previous attempts at using this law to satisfy land ownership disputes. Those attempts have always foundered on the complete recitation of said law.”
Piglott glared. “My Lord! I must protest! I have stated the law in full! Who says I have not?”
“A previous Lord Hand, Lord Tywin Lannister.” As Renly said the words he could see Piglet go white. “Who stated in these notes that he had been informed on this law by one Lord Surestone, a noted expert on the laws of the First Men.”
Piglott seemed to hem and haw a bit over this. “I am not familiar with this Lord Surestone,” he eventually said stiffly. “Surely he must have-”
Whatever he was about to say was forestalled when Jon raised a hand. “Lord Piglott, I knew Lord Surestone. We fought together at the Stony Sept and again at the Trident. He was of the North and knew it and the laws of the First Men very well. Lord Lannister recommended him to me as an expert on those laws. Lord Baratheon, you say that the full law has not been quoted by Lord Piglott?”
“It has not, Lord Arryn.”
“Would you please read the full law?”
He did so, in a level voice that hid how much pleasure he was getting from the clear discomfort of the piggish lord in front of him.
Jon drummed his fingers for a long moment on the arm of his chair as he considered. “Lord Piglott, it would seem that your suit against Lord Kellington is much diminished by this.”
Piglott blustered verbally for a long moment – but then, finally nodded reluctantly.
“Lord Kellington, what say you?” Jon called out.
“Lord Piglott’s suit is entirely diminished by this, if not destroyed, my Lord,” Kellington snapped as he glared at his adversary. “And I must say that I am somewhat suspicious about the attack upon my party on our way here. These ‘outlaws’ were very well equipped and were commanded by a young man who fled upon being defeated and who bore an strong resemblance to Lord Piglott.” From the way he said that last word he was making a great attempt at pronouncing it correctly.
This resulted in more bluster from Piglott, before Jon cut him off with a wave of his hand. “Enough! Lord Piglott, your suit is denied, as it has no standing in law. Lord Kellington, you own the land whose ownership has been disputed. Please provide further information about the attack against you and your men to my seneschal. It will be investigated.”
Piglott went even whiter, bowed hurriedly and then all but fled the hall, his men following him. Renly sighed and then strode down to clasp hands with Lord Kellington, who nodded at him and then at the approaching Jon Arryn. “My Lords, my thanks. This has been a most unpleasant affair. Piglet’s efforts to gain that land have been annoying.”
“Piglott, Father,” his daughter said dryly, and Renly looked at her. She was tall, thin, not in the least buxom, but had a look about her that made him feel… confused. She looked at him and then nodded. “Lord Baratheon. I am Bethany Kellington.”
He took her proffered hand, bowed over it and then released it and watched as father and daughter talked with Jon about the matter.
“Give that man an inch and he tries to take a mile,” Jon said eventually. “Send word if you have trouble with him again. And Quill will get to the bottom of this attack against you, I promise you.”
The Kellingtons bowed at this, made their excuses and then strode off. He watched her – no them – go.
He suddenly had much to think about.
Jaime
He stayed on the Wall for as long as he could. He’d stood guard up there before and listened to people talk about the tricks required to stay warm up there. He knew how to walk about there – not too slowly as to get chilled from the wind, but also not too fast as to start to sweat.
There were braziers up there as well, where he could warm his hands periodically as he stared North, at the far horizon and the snowy tree-covered hills there. What was lurking in there, under those trees? Where were the Others and their wights, what they planning?
At least Baratheon’s presence in Castle Black had lifted the spirits of his new brothers. The King was on the Wall and they knew that Westeros was with them, even bits of Dorne. He sighed a little at that. Things were happening.
And every time he looked down into Castle Black and saw a red cloak he sighed a little. He would be around the men of the Westerlands again soon. And Lannisters. His kin.
The family he had let down so very badly. There really were times when he had thought about stepping off the Wall and ending it all.
By the time that the sun started to march down to the West he was getting hungry and knew that he really needed to get down off the Wall and get some food. Sleep too.
Boots sounded off to one side and then stopped. He paused, sighed and then turned his head. Father was there, dressed in warm clothes and directing as scathing a glare at him as he had ever seen. Tyrion had once said that there were times when Father looked at him as if he was dog shit on his boot and now he was directing that same glare against him.
He tilted his head back a little and then turned himself. “Father,” he said, staring back north of the Wall. “If you’re expecting a witty comment from me then you’ll be disappointed. This isn’t the place for wit.”
For a moment he felt almost as if he could feel the glare scorch his skin. But then Father stepped forwards and turned north as well, looking over the Haunted Forest. “On my way here I thought up almost a score of speeches to throw in your face, of the kind that I threw at… her.” He said that last word with such venom that Jaime flinched a little. He knew who Father was speaking of.
There was a long moment of silence. “And then, when I caught sight of the Wall, all those speeches withered and died, as I realised that I was looking at the place where my eldest son will die.”
A chill seemed to go through him for a long moment, because that was true. He was going to die here, at some point. There was no way around that.
More silence followed. And then Father asked: “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you not tell anyone of the wildfire? And why did you listen to her and do what you did?”
He stood there for a long moment, feeling the cold wind prickle at the sweat on his brow. “I was barely a man when I was appointed to the Kingsguard,” he said thickly eventually. “And just a few years older when I was left in King’s Landing after Rhaegar returned and then rode out to the Trident to die. I was alone – no-one to truly talk to as I started to realise that Aerys had gone completely mad and intended to burn the city to the ground in his mad obsession to become a dragon. I did what I did.
“And afterwards, when Stark found me in the throne room, his disgust was so strong that I… I was taken aback, I did not explain why I had done it. What right had a wolf to judge a lion?” He looked at Father sternly. “And every time I tried to talk to you about why I killed the Mad King you brushed me off, you always had a more important meeting to go to. Aye, I should have said something, but you were never ready to listen. And yes, I was a fool. I thought that the wildfire would degrade, I truly did.”
Father’s nostrils flared and his mouth worked for a moment as he stared north again. And then he twisted his head and looked away as if to avoid the truth.
“As for her…” he closed his eyes, memories battering at his mind. “She was persuasive. I was insulted by people around me. Baratheon didn’t love her. It was… insanity, I know that now. But at the time, being stuck in the Kingsguard, with no recourse that I could see for…” He clenched a hand and then rubbed his forehead briefly. “What passed for love? Affection? No – I was a fool.”
More silence, a horrible and strained moment as they both stared north into the Haunted Forest.
“At least you admit to your stupidity,” Father said eventually, in a hoarse voice. “What that stupidity has cost this family… well, you’re not that much of a fool not to know.”
“I know.” He sighed deeply. “How is Tyrion?”
“In Winterfell, with his wife. He has wedded Dacey Surestone.”
A weight that he had not really known was there seemed to slide off his shoulders. Good. That was good. “I’m glad to hear it. I know how much he loves her.”
“He is also my heir.” Father said the words with a level inflection. “It is official.”
“Good,” he almost spat. “You should have done that years ago. He’s a better man than I am. Cleverer, too.”
Father’s gloved hands came up to rest on the Wall and then curled into fists. “I know that now,” he said eventually. “He is indeed better in every way. I was wrong about him.”
The silence that fell was the longest one yet. Father broke it. “Come on down and get some food. There are plans being made that you need to know of, for this fight on the Wall.”
Father strode off and after a moment he followed him.
Chapter Text
Theon
He wondered how long it would take for the smell of ash to leave his nostrils. The odd thing was that they’d been upwind of the funeral pyre the entire time, but he could still smell the smoke.
They’d burnt Father’s body at first light. There had just been a few there, him, Asha, the Reader, a few lords of the Iron Islands. It had been a time for Ironborn only, or at least those close to the Greyjoys.
At least there had been no mutters of ‘Greenlander’ directed at him, even though that word was now true about him.
Anyway – Father’s body had been burnt on a pyre, consumed by a fierce blaze that was fuelled by lamp oil. Nothing had happened to the body as it had burnt. Thank the Old Gods.
And now he sat with the others in the great hall of Pyke as they broke their fast. Boots thumped to one side and Stannis Baratheon joined them – and then a door creaked open and Jon and Ygritte came in. They were holding hands and there was a look to Jon that he recognised in an instant.
Heh. At last. As the two last entrants made their way to the high table he smirked at his sister. “A stag if you please!”
She scowled a little at him and then laughed and tossed the coin in the air at him, so that he could snatch it from the air and then wink at Jon, whose face reddened a bit.
“Lord Harlaw,” Jon said eventually after he and Ygritte had sat down and then attacked some warm bread rolls. “Who other than Drowned Men can perform marriage ceremonies on Pyke?”
The Reader, who had been addressing a plate of bacon with some gusto, looked up at this, before leaning back in his chair with a somewhat wry look. “Ah. A good question Lord Jon. Septons tend to be driven away from here on the Iron Islands. As for the Old Gods, perhaps the Stonebrows might know on Old Wyk.” He ate some more bacon. “Might I ask why you ask that?”
Oh, he knew. His uncle had a twinkle in his eyes.
Jon looked at Ygritte, who openly smirked at him and then whispered something in his ear that made him blush a lot, before looking around the room at them all. “Ygritte and I are to marry. As soon as possible.”
Asha grinned at Ygritte, who grinned back from her seat further down the table. “Is there not a Heart Tree on these islands?” the Wildling girl asked after snagging herself some bacon of her own.
The Reader laughed softly. “Nay, none. Once, maybe, but not now. The Drowned Men would never have allowed one to exist on these islands. They would have chopped down and burned any that they found, even before Harren Hoare started to build Harrenhall with every piece of wood he could find.”
This made Ygritte look genuinely baffled and she exchanged a look with Jon, who muttered something about finding someone somewhere to perform the ceremony. He looked intent and Theon knew exactly why. He wanted a wife, not a lover and then have legitimate children. No bastards.
They all continued eating and Theon found himself wondering about what lay ahead of them. The trip to Great Wyk and the Stonebrows and then what next? It had to be back to the mainland and the North.
And then the doors opened again and as he looked up he could feel his jaw drop. Mother. Mother was walking in, on the arm of a man clad in green, with a dark green cloak with horns attached to the hood. A Green Man?
Chairs scraped as he, the Reader and Asha all stood almost as one. “Lanny?” The Reader asked in an astonished voice.
Mother came to a halt and then smiled slightly before curtseying hesitantly. She was still thin, still visibly strained, like butter scraped over too much bread, but there was something different about her, there was a focus and a poise that he hadn't seen before.
The last time they'd met, on Harlaw, Mother had been weepy and yet almost distant, as if she thought he was a shade of the past, a ghost, a memory. But now... there was a look in her eyes that he hadn't seen before.
“My husband is dead,” Mother said in a level voice that shook a little at the edges, “And my daughter is now the Lord of the Iron Islands. I am here to support her in every way. And this Green Man here has helped me to see certain truths at High Harlaw.” She looked at Nuncle Rodrik. “Certain runes.”
Nuncle Rodrik blanched. “Lanny, the runes are terrible and-”
But Mother waved a hand in dismissal. “They confirmed certain feelings I'd had for years. Years, Rodrik. You read a lot. Can you deny that you did not have doubts too?”
The Reader stood there for a long moment, his face working a little. “I cannot,” he said eventually in a hoarse and strained voice. “But we would be fools if we did not acknowledge that there will be others who cling to the Old Way.” He looked at the Green Man. “And who would you be?”
“Alwyn, of the Isle of Faces, my Lord Harlaw,” said the man with an accent of the North. “And aye, I am a Green Man. I am here to meet with the Stonebrows, who sent a message to the Isle. Old connections must be remade.”
He stared at the man. Old connections? What old connections? He must have muttered the words out loud, because all of a sudden the Green Man was looking at him.
“The Stonebrows - and others - can tell you the story, but there were always those on the Iron Islands who would send their sons and daughters to the Isle of Faces, when they heard... well, call it a different kind of Call. A longing perhaps, or dreams. Word was sent. Word came back. It was quietly done.”
That made sense and he nodded slowly as he looked at the man with the green cape and the antlered hood. “There is no Godswood on the Iron Islands though.”
“No,” the Green Man said quietly. “The Drowned Men were always jealous for their own god. They would never brook any sign of the old ways.” He smiled slightly. He seemed to be waiting for something as he and the Reader escorted Mother to the table and sat her down, watching as Asha and Theon scrambled to find a plate, cutlery and food for their mother. It wasn't his imagination, she did look better.
After a long moment, as Mother ate quietly, Asha looked back at the Green Man. “Green Men normally tend to Godswoods. Are you here to plant one?”
“If Lord Harlaw will permit it, perhaps one on Harlaw. But first one on Old Wyk. The Stonebrows and others have waited a long time, their patience must be rewarded.”
“Won't that make them targets?” Theon blurted out the words. “I mean, if they weren't already, surely that will make them doubly so?”
The Green Man smiled a little. “I think that there will be those who will defend them, no matter what happens. Winter is coming. As do the Others, as you know. Word came of their attack here. Yes, there will be fools who deny it. But more will believe now.”
He looked at Asha, who looked deeply conflicted. He knew why. Even now, despite everything that she had seen so far, there was still conflict within her. Some roots lay deep. Then she took a deep breath. “After Great Wyk and perhaps Harlaw, we will talk, Alwyn of the Isle of Faces,” she said in a troubled voice. “Talk of many things.”
The Green Man nodded. But it was Jon who spoke next. “Alwyn, can you marry people, as a Green Man? Under the eyes of the Old Gods?”
The man from the Isle of Faces turned and smiled a little. “I can, Jon Stark.”
Jon blinked at this, as did Theon, but then he looked at Ygritte, who was beaming by his side as they both stood. “Then we have a marriage to carry out.”
Aemon
The arrival of the King had also meant the start of a great many meetings and planning sessions, because the King, the Lord Commander, the First Ranger, the Master of Arms at Castle Black and himself had spent a long time talking the previous night. But then all of that had been about the affairs of the Night’s Watch and how the repairs to the castles on the Wall were progressing and what else was happening.
The other matters – the more personal ones – well, those could only wait until the next day. And now he sat in his study, a cup of moss tea in his hands made by the fiercely protective Jenn in his hands, waiting. Craster’s widow seemed to have decided that he was in need of her protection. Well, she had her numbers and was surprisingly literate – not that he had pressed her for her full story. She would tell him if she wanted to. Such things needed tact.
A brief smile twitched at his lips. Appearances were so illusory were they now at times? She had come to Castle Black as a Wildling, but now she was very much more as she showed off that hidden side of hers. Roses bloomed in the most surprising places at times.
A fist pounded against the door and he looked up. “The door please, Jenn. And then, as we discussed, please leave us. This will probably be his Grace the King.”
She sniffed, but he had indeed discussed things with her beforehand and she knew that privacy was important now and then walked over to the door to open it. Om the other side was indeed King Robert, who strode in with a certain hesitancy, nodding at Jenn as she curtseyed quickly and then slipped out, closing the door behind her.
“Your Grace,” Aemon murmured as he bowed. “Be welcome to my study.”
The King looked about the place, at the ranks of books and papers and nodded choppily at him. “Great-grand uncle Aemon.” He pulled a chair out and sank into it, looking strained and troubled, before finally looking him in the eye and sighed. “I have already apologised to Ned Stark about this, but I really need to apologise to you above all. I am sorry about Rhaegar’s children – they should not have been killed. It was all on Tywin Lannister.”
He sighed himself. “Tywin always was one for the darker gambits of the Game of Thrones.”
“Aye.” The King ran a large hand over his face. “I never thought that I’d ever be King. Just the Lord of the Stormlands, at Storm’s End. By the time I got to the Red Keep and saw Tywin Lannister standing next to those bodies, obviously expecting me to be pleased whilst judging me with those cold green eyes of his… I reacted as I thought he’d expect. It wasn’t until I saw Ned’s face that I realised that it was as wrong as wrong could be. I was wrong. I’m sorry. They were kin to me. I just… well, I never understood Rhaegar.”
“Not many did,” he replied wryly. “He would write to me, you know. Letters about prophecy and legend and what I knew about the Wall and our family. He thought he was touched by something. He thought that there was a destiny he had to fulfil. By the end though, his letters were dark things indeed. He wrote of terrible mistakes he had made.”
“He raped Lyanna Stark,” Robert said in a voice like iron. “I know what he did. All of it. I know that it sounds strange, but she came to me in a dream, when I was in Winterfell. I know, that sounds mad, but she said that the walls between the living and the dead were thinner there.” He looked at him carefully. “I have sworn an oath about… what Lyanna told me.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I know the truth about Ned’s ‘son’. He is not at risk from me, I have sworn it. After all – he’s family.”
A weight he had not known was on him lifted. That was good. “You must tell me more about this ‘dream’, in time. But first-” He looked over his desk and grabbed the precious package he had taken out earlier. “Please read these, when you have time. Your grandmother wrote to me, often. Letters of humour and wisdom and love. She loved your grandfather fiercely, and of course your father and you and your brothers.”
As he handed the letters over he could see how much the King was moved, as his face worked and tears appeared in his eyes. “I recognise her handwriting,” he said softly as a large hand fingered the cover of one of the letters. “Gods, but I miss her.”
“She was very proud of you.” He took a deep breath. “Her letter after Summerhall broke my heart. When Jaehaerys died after just three years on the throne she was deeply upset and then… well there was Aerys. She often wrote of her worries about him. And she was right to. What he did…” He shook his head in distress. “I knew from your grandmother’s letters that House Targaryen was on the brink of disaster. I hoped that your Father’s friendship with Aerys would… temper him. After he and your mother died… all I had was fear. Especially after Rhaelle died as well. Nothing but fear.”
There was a long moment of silence in the room as they both stared at the past.
“And then,” Aemon said at last, “Aerys murdered Rickard and Brandon Stark, after Rhaegar abducted Lyanna Stark. When word came of those crimes, I knew that House Targaryen was… doomed.” He reached out and grasped the King’s forearm. “I know that this will surprise you, coming from a man with my name, but you were right to do what you did, to rebel against the Iron Throne. Aerys was mad, mad enough to murder Lord Paramounts and order the deaths of other Lords Paramounts. And Rhaegar was a man obsessed with a prophecy that he did not understand and which led him down a dark road indeed. Even your father would have rebelled.”
Robert Baratheon looked into his eyes for a long moment and then nodded choppily. “Thank you. Yes, I know what you mean.” He sighed gustily. “In the meantime I have much to do here, whilst trying to work something out. We met Giants on the way here and they said that I was the man who brought storms with him, whilst Lyanna said that I need to let her go and become the Storm King I was destined to be.” He spread his hands in bafflement. “How? Is it a Durrandon thing that is tied to Stormbreaker? Is it more complicated than that, involving my Targaryen blood? Is it prophecy, something I don’t want to touch with a bloody bargepole because of Rhaegar and his madness?”
He leant back and pondered matters for a long moment. “There is much to discuss there and much for me to research. And I will do my best to give you answers. My very best.”
Robert smiled at him after a long moment. “Thank you. One last thing – the Green Man says that we will need Daenerys Targaryen and her dragons. That… might mean that House Targaryen becomes a part of Westeros again, somewhere. We should… discuss where and how she should be approached.” His face worked again. “I have doubts… but I am willing to think matters over. Apparently she vanished after Pentos fell to the Braavosi, but I’m sure she’s out there somewhere. She has three dragons after all. She too has a destiny.”
A little more weight fell from his shoulders. “I agree, my King.” He paused. “Your Grandmother would have been very proud of you, right now.”
The King chuckled. “Ned once told me that I always find my way back to the true path eventually. After prodding. Mayhaps he’s right.” Another sigh. “I lost my way before, Aemon. Please help keep me on the right path now.”
And so he reached out and clasped hands with Rhaelle’s grandson.
Robb
Bran always had the same look whenever Mother brought him into Father’s Solar for his daily lessons. It was a look that combined dread with sullen sulkiness. He knew that the lessons about the North could be dull, but it wasn’t dull enough to make his little brother slump in such a way.
“Bran,” he said eventually, “You need to learn this.”
His brother just glowered at him for a long moment. “Why?” It was remarkable how much whine he could put into one word.
“You need to know about how the North is run. You need to know about which House is which, what relationship they have with House Stark, what their local rivals are, which friends they have, what they trade, what they grow, what’s changed and so on. A lot’s changed after the Company of the Rose came back and started to reunite with their kin or rebuild from scratch. You have to learn all of this.”
“But I’m never going to rule the North! You’re Father’s heir, and then Jon and Sansa and Arya!”
He sighed. “Bran, Father was never supposed to rule the North, Uncle Brandon was. No-one imagined that he and Grandfather would die in the way that they did. And that’s why you need to learn, especially as you’re the heir after me. Sansa and Arya are girls and although Jon has been legitimised, he follows Rickon in the succession.”
His brother scrunched his forehead. “But that’s stupid,” he muttered. “Jon’s older than me. Sansa knows more than me. Arya’s a better warg than me.”
“It’s the way it is, Bran. Boys before girls and bastards after the legitimate children.”
Bran glowered again. “’It is the way.’ Stupid way.” He returned to the books, but Robb could tell from the side glances he was giving him that there was something on his little brother’s mind.
Eventually he looked at Bran. “What’s wrong?”
Bran looked shifty. “Are you still looking for something here in Winterfell?”
“Yes.” He smiled thinly. “I have no idea what, but the Green Man told me to look. That said, it might be more about the journey than the destination, as I’ve been looking at a lot of books about the earliest days of Winterfell.”
From the look of bemusement on the face of his brother, the last point had sailed far, far over his head, so Robb sighed yet again and then asked: “Why do you ask?”
The shifty look intensified. “Well…” Bran said – and then he was interrupted by a knock on the door, which opened to reveal Maester Luwin with a message scroll in one hand.
“Your pardon, Lord Robb, but you need to see this at once.” The old man strode over and held the message out, which Robb took, read and then repressed a groan over.
“Ah,” he said eventually. “So Alekyne and Delena Florent are on their way to Winterfell? Luwin, could you please pass the word to my mother and Ser Courtney Penrose that I need to see them at once?”
Luwin coughed a little and then slid his hands up his sleeves in the way that he did at certain times. “I took the liberty of anticipating your orders as I came here and have already done so.”
He smiled at the Maester. Luwin was an absolute gem at times. And it wasn’t long before he heard the sound of footfalls and voices in the corridor outside before Mother and Ser Courtney arrived, their faces curious and he stood to greet them. “Mother, Ser Courtney. This just arrived.” He handed over the message and then watched as Mother held it so they could both could read – and then react to with slight grimaces.
“I’ve been expecting this,” Ser Courtney said eventually. “Ever since word went out of Edric’s legitimisation. Aye, the Florent’s will be here in numbers and his mother will want to make sure that he remembers that he’s half-Florent. Those foxes aren’t stupid.”
“They are both cousins to Lady Baratheon are they not?” Robb asked as he dredged up what he knew about The Reach. “Will she welcome them, given Edric’s new status?”
Mother tapped the message against her chin as she considered the matter. “Perhaps. The fact that Stannis is formally Robert’s heir at the moment, until a later decision is made might complicate matters. I don’t know enough about the Florents to guess otherwise. Based on this message, they won’t be here for some weeks. They’re sailing to White Harbour and then riding from there, so it should depend on tides and winds.”
“I’ll talk to Edric,” Ser Courtney said gruffly. “Tell him that his mother is on the way.” He pulled a slight face. “The Tyrells won’t like this much. Aye, I know, Mace Tyrell is dead and Willas Tyrell has a head on his shoulders, but the Florents have always had a better claim to Highgarden then the Tyrells and it’s foolish not to admit that they won’t look on Edric as a possible threat. With your permission Lord Robb I’ll have a word with Ser Rodrik Cassel about security.”
Robb nodded and the Stormlander inclined his head and walked out, leaving him looking at Mother. “Could you have a word with Lady Baratheon, Mother? She’s… difficult to talk to at times.”
The ghost of a smile crept over Mother’s face. “She is indeed. I shall talk to her and will be most careful in my use of words. Luwin, how goes her pregnancy?”
Maester Luwin visibly weighed his words. “It progresses well, my Lady. I am watching carefully what she eats and how much she does and am telling her why as I do so. The North seems to agree with her so far in terms of her health and I am wondering what the noxious airs of Dragonstone might have done to her in terms of her past pregnancies.” He paused. “I am also talking to various servants to keep an eye on who serves her food, noting who remains who served the former Queen. I recognise that this might seem a trifle paranoid, but promised Lady Baratheon that I would do my best to see her pregnancy to a successful conclusion and I intend to keep my word!”
He blinked a bit at the intent manner in which the Maester spoke but then realised his wisdom and nodded. As Mother and Luwin departed, talking softly, he leant back in his chair – and then he looked at Bran, who had been watching the whole thing with a look of extreme impatience.
“Can I go and talk to Edric about this? His mother’s coming!”
Robb directed what he hoped was a quelling look at his little brother, who deflated a bit. “Bran, you need to finish your studies for today. This is something you need to work on every day.”
His brother rolled his eyes and then sighed in a highly exaggerated manner, but then returned to the books. After a moment he looked up. “Robb, what I was saying about you still looking for something, I mean, I think that I might-”
There was a knock on the door and they both looked up to see Jory Cassel at the entrance. “Beg pardon Lord Robb, but there’s a party of Wild- er, Free Folk in the Great Hall. The Lady Val says that her mother is here.”
He stood so quickly that Grey Wind jerked upright in a rush from his slumber with Summer and looked around for whatever enemy had alarmed his owner. Bran jerked back in his seat as well, until Robb gestured at the books. “Keep reading.” And then he strode out with Jory at his side and Grey Wind at his heels. As they reached the door to the courtyard he looked at Jory. “Find Mors Umber, if you please Jory.”
There were indeed Free Folk in the Great Hall, with five Thenn in their distinctive bronze armour acting as escorts. Some of the Free Folk looked a bit bewildered, some looked curious – and then there was the tallish woman who looked about the hall with a combination of familiarity and unease. Val and Dalla were standing next to her, looking happier than he had seen them look for some time. As he approached Val glanced at him and then turned to face him.
“Lord Robb – this is our mother, Rowan.”
Rowan looked at him with eyes that had widened a bit – and then she curtseyed in a way that made some of the other Free Folk look at her in a rather bewildered manner. Well now. She knew her courtesies.
“We expected you a week or more ago,” Dalla said with a slight frown of concern. “Is anything amiss?”
“I… was delayed,” Rowan replied softly. “There was much to see and… well, there were many people on the road.”
That seemed a thin excuse and he eyed her carefully. “You’ve been here before,” he said in a low voice that made Val and Dalla both stare at him. “Winterfell is not new to you, is it?”
Rowan stared at the ceiling, the floor and her daughters, before looking at him with what seemed to be tears in her eyes. “I never thought I’d ever see it again,” she said in a choked voice – and that really made her daughters stare at her in shock.
“Mother?” Val asked in a voice that made her sound as if she was trying to hold a lot back. And then in a rush: “What do you mean, Mam?”
But before Rowan could reply another voice spoke. “I thought you were dead.” Mors Umber was in the nearest doorway, Jory next to him, the one-eyed man’s face as white as a sheet. “I chased after the whoresons who took you, I went beyond the Wall looking for you, I thought that you were dead.” His face worked in agony, memories chasing across his features.
Rowan’s face fell as she closed her eyes for a long moment – and then she faced Mors Umber. “Father.”
“I thought you were dead.”
“I almost was.” Her face worked for a long moment. “You almost found me. He had a knife to my throat, ten miles north of the Wall. You were there with fifty men, all mounted. I was about to knee the whoreson who took me in the balls, but he knocked me out first.”
Mors Umber closed his eyes as if in agony. “I thought I heard something at the time, but my men thought otherwise. Gods fucking damn it!” He took a step towards her, almost hesitantly. “Rowan…”
She burst into tears and then ran into his arms, as Robb marvelled at the change in the huge man. He’d always viewed him as the drunk brute of the Umbers, but here he was, looking as if he was about to burst into a thousand pieces with emotion.
“Why didn’t you come home sooner? Did that whoreson have you chained up?”
Rowan Umber smiled a savage smile. “He died, Father. Hard to breath after you have your freshly severed cock and balls stuffed down your throat.”
The hall echoed with the sound of Mors Umber’s laughter. “That’s my girl!” Then he looked at his daughter. “I take it that there’s a ‘but then’?”
“But then I met a better man. Their father,” she said, gesturing at a visibly gobsmacked Val and Dalla. “Gywn, his name was. A good man. I gave him two daughters and a stillborn son. And then he died, in a fight against the Others. Mance Rayder, Dalla’s husband, said that he cut Gwyn’s head off his shoulders after he was dead so that he couldn’t be raised again as a wight.”
Mors Umber looked at the three women for a long moment – and then he drew his daughter close to him again and kissed the top of her head. “I’ve a lot to think about,” he said eventually in a husky voice. “I’ve always hated fucking Wildlings after they took you. But now… I’ll think about it all. My daughter is returned to me and I’ll not forget that, Lord Robb. And I have granddaughters. One’s married to bloody Mance Rayder and the other’s…” He looked at Robb fiercely. “Treat her right, boy. Treat her right. Or I’ll have something to bloody say to you.”
He nodded to the hulking man and then he looked at Val, who had a look on her face that combined shock with sudden hope. “I… will leave you to talk to your family. Umbers, all. Val, Dalla, Umber.” He nodded formally and then looked at Val. “We must talk.”
“We will talk.” She said the words with utter finality. And the look in her eyes…
He had to be careful now. So careful. There was something precious hanging in the air and he could not jeopardise it. So he nodded again and then strode off, almost in a daze, back to Father’s solar.
When he reached it he could see that Bran was somehow still sitting there and almost vibrating with tension.
“What happened?”
“Val’s mother, Rowan, is in Winterfell, Bran. And she’s Mors Umber’s daughter.”
His brother absorbed that. “So Val’s an Umber?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to marry her?”
He considered that. “Perhaps? If she says yes?”
Bran sat there for a long moment. “So things are happening?”
He frowned slightly. “Yes? What do you mean?”
Bran sighed and scowled at the same time. “Robb… I’ve been trying to tell you something. There’s a door in the crypts. A door… that you can only see when you warg. Is that important?”
He sat there for a long moment as all his dreams of a fast marriage to Val hit the obstruction of Bran’s words.
“Say what again?”
Jaime
He was tired of the way that Father’s men avoided him now. They eyed him as if he was diseased. Oh, if one of them had to speak to him, to pass on a message that Father wanted to talk to him, they did that quickly and curtly, but on the whole they regarded him a cursed man who had brought shame to the Lannister name and to the Westerlands and who would die here on the Wall.
Which was all quite true.
Addam Marbrand, his old friend, was among the men and so far he had successfully avoided him. He had no wish to see Addam turn his glance away from him, to look embarrassed at where the former Golden Lannister of the Kingsguard was now.
So he’d spent time up on the Wall and training Joffrey in some out of the more out of the way places. His son had been sulky and distracted, obviously thinking about his old life and how unfair everything was now that he was no longer Prince Joffrey Baratheon and now merely Joffrey Hill.
He needed to have a quiet word with Father about making sure that Joffrey didn’t persuade a Lannister guardsman to ‘help’ him. No Lannister could abandon their vows, not now. Grandson or not, Father would not stand for it.
And now he was sitting in a corner of the main hall of Castle Black, looking down at some boar sausages in a stew that was actually quite tasty. Fresh crusty bread too. Tollett had told him that the food had improved since the Call. Compared to what he was used to, it was… tolerable.
And then a hand fell on his shoulder and someone sat down next to him as he ate his stew. Startled he looked at the fellow – and froze. Addam.
“Cornered you at last!” Addam said with a scowl. “You can’t run off or skulk away around a corner because you saw me.” His old friend looked him up and down. “The beard suits you for this location, you’re a bit skinny, you look like shit and you’re an idiot. There, I’ve got that off my chest.”
He sat there for a moment, almost choking with emotion at the words of his oldest friend. “Addam…”
“Whaff?” Addam said through a mouthful of stew.
“You… I’m not a popular man and-”
Addam’s free hand smacked against his chest. “Piss on that. Do you really think that I’m a fair-weather friend? That I’d turn my back on oldest friend, just because you’re on the Wall now after doing something truly stupid? Gods Jaime, what did you take me for?”
He wanted to put his hands over his face and cry for a moment, but he pushed it back. “Thank you Addam,” he said eventually. “Thank you.”
Addam looked about the room carefully and then lowered his voice. “Gods, what a mess. I talked to Tyrion in Winterfell before we left, he sent his best and asked me to give you this.” A letter emerged from his jerkin and Jaime took it with a smile. “Before you ask, he’s doing well. Very happy with that wife of his. I’m not sure which of the two them reads the more. A good match.”
He looked down at the letter, which had his name on it in Tyrion’s bold and distinctive hand. “I’m glad he’s happy.”
His oldest friend smiled at him and then addressed the sausages in his stew again. After a moment of chewing he glanced up again. “I’m surprised you haven’t had your jaw dragging on the ground about the other people here.”
Jaime felt his brow furrow. “Who do you mean? The King? My Father?”
Addam stopped eating and directed a very odd look at him. “I know that you’ve been on the Wall a lot and teaching Joffrey not to chop his foot off, but you must have heard that-” He looked around as two people walked into the room and made for the head table. “He was in Castle Black!”
He looked around. The man was older than he was and looked like… “Is that the Blackfish?” He blurted the words with some astonishment. Ser Brynden bloody Tully. Gods. He stared at him and frowned a bit. “He’s younger than I thought? And who’s he with?”
At first he’d thought that the Blackfish’s companion was a young man, but no, despite the leathers of a man, he was a she. Tall, blonde, not pretty, but a lively face and clear blue eyes. “Who is she?”
“Brienne of Tarth, the Evenstar’s daughter. And I have no idea what it is between the two of them. They both have green cloaks and the same clasp like a horn and before you ask yes the Blackfish has less grey in his hair than I remember and no they’re not a couple. Or perhaps not yet.”
He watched as the odd pair sat and then started to eat after helping themselves to food. The Blackfish. The bloody Blackfish.
“Remember when we used to blatter at each other with wooden blades when we were boys?” Addam smiled wryly. “You wanted to be as good a fighter as the Blackfish, a knight as good as he. We lived for the tales of him in the War of the Ninepenny Kings. Him or Ser Duncan the Tall. Gods, the arguments we had over who was better! And now they’re both here.”
Jaime shook his head slightly. “Both? I don’t understand.”
Addam eyed him again. “You did hear that The Green Man is here didn’t you?”
Oh, that. He shrugged. “I heard that the Call had brought out a few Green Men from their island. Or so someone said. I didn’t believe it. They never leave the Isle of Faces.”
Addam gaped at him, giving a view of a half-chewed sausage. Then he hurriedly chewed and swallowed. “Oh,” he said eventually. “They left alright. The Call released them. Did you hear it? The Call?”
He shook his head. “Not really. There was a dream, I think, and I felt something, but no, I didn’t hear it. Did you?”
His old friend went still, his face working for a moment. “Do you remember how we once talked about how old Ashemark is, how there was a castle beneath the castle? It must have been old. Yes, my father and I heard the Call. Father sent help to the Wall as soon as he could. It… it was like nothing I’ve ever experienced.”
There was a moment of silence as Addam seemed to go away somewhere in his own mind. And then he shook himself and returned. “But that’s not as important as this. Jaime, The Green Man isn’t just any Green Man. He’s The Green man, the head of his order, if you can call it that. There’s tales of him battling the Faith Militant with the Blackfish and Brienne of Tarth by the shores of the God’s Eye. And before he was The Green Man he was Ser Duncan the Tall.”
This was ridiculous and Jaime threw his old friend a disbelieving look. “Addam are you drunk? Ser Duncan the Tall died at Summerhall.”
“No,” said Addam with a shake of his head. “He was injured there. Gods, you should see his arm and the burns on it! But he lived and became The Green Man. Don’t ask me how he’s lived this long, I couldn’t tell you. Something to do with the Isle of Faces and Old Gods. But it’s him. Your father says it's him.”
Something cold seemed to run up and down his spine for a moment and he wanted to shiver as he looked about. It was insane, this tale, but if Addam said that Father said it was true… Gods… Then he paused. Why had Father not told him about this? Oh, they had talked in a desultory manner after their meeting on the Wall, but it had not been a real talk, not really. Father was not good at small talk.
He shook his head again and then readdressed his stew and the sausages within. “I feel like we’re living in a song, a tale… a legend?”
Addam snorted a little. “We’ll be fighting legends. Myths I might have said once. But now? After seeing those cages with those heads and hands? We’re fighting for everyone South of us. Everyone in Westeros.”
“Well said,” a deep voice behind them rumbled and they both jumped a little and turned in their seats. There was a tall man standing behind them, dressed in green leathers and with a deeper green cloak that had a hood with what looked like antlers draped on his shoulders. He was old, slightly bent, but there was a look about him that told Jaime that he had seen a lot of fighting and retained a lot of vigour. This was no weak old man.
There was also a weighing, considering, look to his glance as he eyed Jaime that made him feel most uneasy, most uneasy indeed.
“Ser Duncan,” Addam said thickly after a moment. “How fare you?”
“Well, Ser Addam,” The Green Man said after a moment. “And you are Ser Jaime Lannister.” He said as fact, not as a question.
Jaime flushed a little and stood to bow slightly. “Ser Duncan.” Now that he could see him closer he could notice that he fitted the description he’d read. Even seen a picture of once. His skin crawled with the madness of it all.
The Green Man observed him for a long moment and then smiled the merest of half-smiles. “Come and see me in two days, Ser Jaime, you and I have a journey North of the Wall to plan out.” He nodded to them both and then strode away to the same table as the Blackfish and Brienne of Tarth, leaving the two men gaping at his back.
Jaime eventually closed his mouth and sat down heavily, Addam mirroring his actions. He had yet another feeling that his life was about to change.
Robb
It looked like a stone wall, stone laid on stone with the merest hint or mortar every now and then. There were runes carved in paces on the topmost course of stones and also on the lowest course, but it was otherwise an unremarkable wall in the Crypts, in a passageway that led towards the lower – and older – levels of tombs of long-dead Starks.
And there was no doorway there that he could see. He looked at Bran, who was biting his lip and looking like a boy who was either worried that he wasn’t being believed, or needed a piss, or both. Summer on the other hand was sitting next to Bran with a look of utter unconcern.
“Here?” Robb asked. “You’re sure, Bran?”
“Here.” Bran said firmly. “I’m sure.”
“How did you even see them whilst warging?”
Bran looked at him whilst he knotted his fingers together briefly. “I was looking for Vermax’s eggs,” he admitted eventually. “The King said that they weren’t likely to be in here, as it’s narrow and Vermax was big, but we thought that perhaps if Vermax really really squeezed up and narrowed out then…” He caught sight of Robb’s upraised eyebrow and sighed. “I know. But I wondered if Summer might be able to see something that I couldn’t, so I warged into him and looked and looked and looked and didn’t see a thing – until I got here. There’s a big door here. Or at least it looked big to Summer. He’s still small.”
Robb looked back at the wall and then glanced at Grey Wind, who was staring at the space that Bran had pointed at. The direwolf had his head quirked to one side as if puzzled by something.
“Warg into Grey Wind and see, Robb!” Bran sounded excited and he repressed a sigh. Warging was still something that he was getting used to, even with regular practice. Bran and Arya and yes even Sansa seemed to be far more adept at it than he was so far, even if the latter had been a little unsure about at first, due to the lingering remains of Septa Mordane’s strictures.
Speaking of whom, Septa Mordane had been talking about going South of the Neck to the Isle of Faces. Mother was still trying to puzzle through her reasons, but it was clear that Mordane’s feet were on a different path than before.
So he sighed a little, sat down opposite the wall, his back against the other wall and then half-closed his eyes and sent his mind into that other place where he could start to grasp his way through… to…
All of a sudden he was off to one side, feeling smaller but furrier and he made a note to try and remember that all of a sudden he had no arms but four legs. He blinked and then looked at his own body, which was sitting there with white and unblinking eyes. He looked at Bran, who was looking excitedly at him and at the wall, where-
He took a step back. There was a door there. There really was a door. He stared at it. It – no, they, there was a join in the middle – were stone, like the stones around it, with carvings that stretched up and over the top that looked like the trunk and branches of a tree. At the curve at the top he could see an arch of runes and he scowled a little. They were archaic. And then he looked down. There were three sets of… of handprints? They looked like slight depressions, six of them, and the middle ones were smaller than the others and looked a bit different from the others, although he wasn’t sure why.
A moment of confused impressions and then he was back in his own body and standing hurriedly and running his hands over what felt like a smooth wall. “Gods,” he muttered, before standing back. “I saw it but can’t feel it. Magic. It must be magic.”
“Did you see it?” Bran asked with excitement running through his voice. “You saw it, didn’t you?”
He turned and grinned at his brother, before ruffling his hair, provoking an indignant squawk from him. “I saw it! There’s a set of double doors here, with runes over the top and… places for hands. Odd.” He looked back at the wall and ran his hand over his chin. “Most odd.”
“Do you think that Vermax’s eggs are behind it?”
Instead of rolling his eyes Robb instead made himself look patiently at his little brother. “Bran, the runes are in the language of the First Men and there’s no reference at all to them in any record. They’re old. When Jacaerys Velaryon was here with Vermax, I doubt the doors were open.” He looked back at the wall. “No, these are truly old. And we need help on this.”
Almost as if in answer to his last words he heard distant footsteps approaching and then Jory appeared, looking as if he had been running. Seeing his face Robb straightened. “Jory, what’s the matter?”
“Word from the Iron Islands, Lord Robb,” Jory panted. “Balon Greyjoy is dead – and the Lord Hand wrote that there was an attack by the Others on Pyke!”
Shock froze him in place for a long moment – and then he shook himself free of it all. “What? Are you sure? How?”
“Maester Luwin has two ravens with the same message, Lord Robb. All I know is that the attack was a failure, thanks to Lord Jon and Lord Greymist, as well as the Lord Hand. Asha Greyjoy is the new Lord, or perhaps Lady of the Iron Islands.”
“Bran, take Summer and go back to the courtyard. I’ll talk to Tyrion and Dacey about what we found – the runes will need to be translated.” He could see Jory frown in puzzlement and he gestured at him. “Never mind that Jory. Where is Maester Luwin?”
“Lord Stark’s solar, Lord Robb. I was one of many sent to find you.”
He nodded and then, with Grey Wind at his heels, he ran. Others, on Pyke? How? And how much time did they now have?
Oberyn
He’d never thought that he’d be grateful to see the Wall in his life, but he was glad to see it now, that line of white on the horizon. They’d be there by that afternoon, if this wind held true – and as Seaworth had said that it would, then he saw no reason to doubt that.
If Stannis Baratheon, the tooth-grinding stubborn fool that he was, did not know that Ser Davos Seaworth was a gem of a man, albeit a rough one, then he was an absolute imbecile.
There had been three times when Seaworth had ordered a change in course that had probably saved all of their lives. The first time had been four days after departing King’s Landing. He had been quietly talking to Seaworth about their course when the man had stiffened suddenly, literally sniffed the air, looked at the pennant at the mainmast and then recalled where he was, nodded formally to him, begged his pardon and then said that there was a squall coming and that they needed to change course.
Bemused, he had said yes immediately, whereupon Seaworth had started to bark out orders and then oversee the flags needed to communicate those orders, so that the flotilla changed course enough to hug the cost of a particularly unattractive and rocky part of the Southern Vale.
Shortly after a squall had indeed turned the sea to white mist off to the East, where they would have otherwise been sailing. If they had been in that spot they would have been in desperate trouble, or even a puff of green fire.
Afterwards he had simply looked at Seaworth and said that if he ever sensed the same thing he was to shout orders first and ask his permission second, as his dignity, in this case at least, was less important than dying in an instant because of the wildfire exploding due to a rope not being pulled on at the right moment.
And then there had been that one, truly odd, moment. As they had been sailing North at one point he and others in the crew had heard what sounded like a deeply submerged voice moaning a single repeated word: “Beware!”
As a man with ties to Essos he had a feeling that he might know what had been bellowing the word.
As they sailed on he frowned and then scampered up the rigging to the crows nest with his Myrish spyglass, before focussing and then squinting. Only then did he allow himself the luxury of a grin.
“Deck there!” he bellowed. Far below he could see the helmsman and Seaworth next to him, look up. “Eastwatch-by-the-Sea in sight just three degrees off the Port side!”
Waves acknowledged his words and he shimmied down the rigging and joined Seaworth as he bellowed orders and arranged for signal flags to be hoisted. It was all excitingly nautical and he hoped that he'd be able to dock himself with someone who had a nice tight opening as soon as they made landfall.
By the time that they finally beat into the harbour at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea he was thanking the notes that Sarella had sent him about what to wear this far North. Mother Rhoyne's tits, but was it cold up here.
There was a reception committee waiting for them at the docks, led by a short, lean, man with a widows peak and a bit of a beard. As the gangplank went down and Seaworth leant over the railing the man stepped forwards. “Still alive then, Seaworth?”
“Oh, aye, still alive, Pyke.” There was a moment of silence and then the two men both grinned as Seaworth strode down the gangplank and embraced the other man. “You old whoreson, how are you?”
“Still alive, despite the dead.” Pyke's face sobered. “You've brought a load of Aerys Targaryen's madness then, as was ordered?”
Seaworth nodded, before gesturing at Oberyn. “We have. Cotter Pyke, this is Prince Oberyn Martell of Dorne, who has made it safe for now. I trust you have a place for it?”
Pyke nodded shortly. “Aye, as ordered. GrandMaester Pycelle's instructions have been followed to the fucking letter, or so I'm told. We've built a building that should take it all safely.”
“Thank you, Pyke,” Oberyn said formally. “It should be safe for two days or so, as we have used certain powders on it when we left King's Landing.”
The bearded man nodded with a grimace. “Horrible fucking stuff. But that said, it should be useful against those blue bastards and their unliving ranks.”
“What's the latest word?” Oberyn asked intently.
“All the Wildlings, or those of them who are still alive are now South of the Wall,” said Pyke grimly. “The Giants too. It was a good thing we got to Hardhome with those ships when we did, two ten-days later the place got walloped by a snowstorm that you wouldn't believe. I saw it on the horizon as we sailed away with the last of the Wildlings and I swear it got colder faster than I've ever known as it came close. Not that they had anyone at Hardhome left to raise into a wight. All the Wildlings were gone and their dead were burnt. The ice drake skeletons too.”
“Ice drakes?” Oberyn asked, his eyebrows shooting up. “I thought that they were a myth and - ah. Oh. As much a myth as the Others and their wights?”
“I saw those skeletons, Prince Oberyn,” the man in black replied sombrely. “I don't know if there are any alive now, but there were once. Explains a lot about Hardhome and how it might have died.”
“But no news otherwise?” Seaworth asked shrewdly. “No assault on the Wall?”
“Nothing,” said Pyke with sounded like relief. “Which is good - men - aye and women! - and supplies come in every day on ships from all over Westeros, but we're still repairing the castles West of us here and the Gift and New Gift will take time to start producing food again, even with all them Wildlings.”
There was a way that he almost spat that last word that spoke volumes about the way that he really felt about them. That said, the man was obviously trying to repress those thoughts. He thought about twisting his tail a but, but then decided that such a thing would be a bit petty.
“Which reminds me - there's a letter for you, Prince Oberyn. From a Maester called Alleras, or something like that.” He pulled out a rectangle of waxed leather with its edges stitched together that had his full name written on it and he took it with a mutter of thanks.
“Ser Davos, I'll read this whilst you get the ships organised with Commander Pyke here.” The black brother looked a bit confused at the title, but then Seaworth started to talk and lead him away and as they left Oberyn pulled out his smallest knife and attacked the stitching.
Inside was indeed a letter and he pulled it out with fingers that were just a little clumsy due to the gloves he was wearing. Yes, it was from Sarella and he frowned at the news she had listed. She seemed to have written it in instalments as news came in and then sent it, quite recently, from Castle Black.
So, Jaime Lannister had indeed taken the Black, as had been reported and was on the Wall? That whoreson Tywin Lannister must have choked on that, as well as the fact that the dwarf was now his heir. He bore no ill-will towards the man, not with the memories he had of Cersei making him cry as a baby because she was a creature of hate and bile, and he would make a far better Lord of the Westerlands than his brother could ever dream of being.
He wondered what Doran was thinking now that Robert Baratheon was single again and obviously looking for a wife. Did he have a plan for Arianne? Well, if so he had reservations about sending another Martell anywhere near King's Landing.
And what was this bit about runes and making them glow by carving them onto bronze bits of armour with bronze tools whilst praying to the Old Gods? He chewed a lip briefly. Interesting. He'd have to try that.
But then the hurried scrawl at the end of the pages rose off the paper and hit him between the eyes. The Mountain was dead. The monster who had haunted his dreams for so long, the man he had imagined killing in oh so many endlessly inventive ways was dead. He wanted to exult that Elia was finally avenged and then scream with frustration that he had not killed him with his own bare hands.
There had long been a vial of manticore poison that he had wanted to test on 'Ser' Gregor fucking Clegane.
But now the man was dead at the hands of Robb Stark and Sandor Clegane. And in such circumstances! Possessed by foul magic, probably Valyrian at that, was the verdict in Winterfell and he had to say that he couldn't disagree. He searched his mind for any mentions of such magic in his time in Essos. Ah - there had been a mention, briefly, in Volantis about the 'great deeds' of Valyria.
He'd been at a gathering where it had been the fashionable thing to talk about the Valyrians and the things that they could do, things that on reflection were enough to make anyone with any sense shudder. Yes, just because something could be done did not mean that it should be done.
He'd heard things about Gogossos that had given him nightmares.
So, someone had possessed The Mountain. Who? And why? Which Stark had been marked for death and again why?
He slid the letter into a pocket and then strode off to rejoin the others. He had a lot to do and a lot to now think about. As soon as the wildfire was properly secured he'd head for Castle Black.
For one thing he didn't like the way that his daughter wrote about this Allarion Lannister. he might be Ser Gerion Lannister's son, who liked to stick two fingers in the general direction of his brother, but he was still a Lannister.
Chapter Text
Domeric
Luckily Sansa had been with him when the message had arrived that Robb wanted to see him at once, that there had been some sort of an attack by the Others on the Iron Islands. His beloved could be trusted to make sure that his lute wasn’t dropped or unstrung or mistreated in any way. There were times when he could see Arya looking at it in a considering way, as if she was pondering mischief with it.
He hurried down the corridor towards Lord Stark’s solar, nodded at Jory Cassel who was outside it panting slightly, and then went in. Robb was inside, staring at the map of Westeros on the wall, with a pale Lady Stark to one side and a scowling Tyrion Lannister on the other, whilst Dacey Lannister was off to one side consulting a large book.
“Robb, you sent for me?”
The heir to Winterfell nodded and handed over a raven message, which Domeric unscrolled. As he read the words he could feel the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. “The Others attacked Pyke? How is that possible?”
Robb gestured at the raven message and he kept reading. “They used icebergs, with the Others and their wights embedded within them? How is that even possible?”
“They’re not human,” Tyrion Lannister said as he continued to stare at the map. “We need to stop thinking of them as human adversaries. They have resources and magics that we do not understand, or have forgotten about. Too much time has passed since we last knew them. They became legends and stories and we dismissed them as such. However – Dacey? Anything in that?”
His wife looked up from the book. “Nothing. There has never been an attack by the Others that bypassed the Wall in such a way, or none that was ever recorded.”
“Humph.” Tyrion smiled his thanks at his wife, who smiled back, and then returned his gaze to the map. Domeric swapped a glance with Robb and joined him there. “Why Pyke?” Tyrion almost snapped. “Why there? No other reports of attacks, or at least so far, so why there?”
Robb tilted his head to one side as his eyes swept the map. “Any number of reasons,” he said eventually. “A reconnaissance in force. A trial, to see if it could be done. An attempt to create a lodging on a place that would have been utterly unprepared for them, if it hadn’t been for Jon, Theon and Ygritte, as well as the Lord Hand. Or… it might have been something to do with the madman, Euron Greyjoy.”
Domeric shivered slightly as he looked at the message again. Euron Greyjoy had killed one brother and fatally wounded another. Kinslayer. Cursed by every god. He squinted at the small writing at the bottom of the message. “Your brother writes that Euron Greyjoy… vanished after the attack? How is that possible? And what’s this about wanting to replace the Drowned God?”
Robb shook his head in bafflement. “I know not. But I don’t like the fact that he said that he had allied himself with the Others. As to the Drowned God, well, I-”
There was a thump at the door, which opened to reveal a panting Maester Luwin. “My… my Lords, my… my Lady. Another… message from Lord Jon.” He held out twin scrolls and Robb snatched one out of his hand and unrolled it in front of him, whilst Luwin gave the other to Lady Stark and Dacey.
The writing was tiny and there was much of it as the scroll could take, but as he read it Domeric could feel his eyebrows arch upwards. “Madness,” he breathed eventually. “Sorcerous… madness!”
“A cursed ship and a creature made of blood and bones, or what Jon thought was such a thing…” Robb shook his head in horror. “Why? Was it Euron Greyjoy’s crew? Who else would make such a thing?”
Tyrion Lannister raised a finger, his eyes tightly closed and everyone stared at him as he face showed the deepest of calculations. “Luwin!” The word burst from his mouth and made everyone jump. “The book of Valyrian practices! It mentioned the work of fleshsmiths did it not, the terrible spells that my Uncle Gerion might have seen the evidence of – the kind of horrors that Gogossos might have held – did it not?”
Luwin nodded with a look of revulsion, but Tyrion kept on wagging his finger. “And that story of what Ned and Jon faced at Barrowtown – the things in the fog, made from bone… We know that Euron Greyjoy has been voyaging all over the world, perhaps even to the Smoking Sea – what if he picked up knowledge from Valyria and then combined it with something he learnt from the Others?”
He found that the sensation of blood draining from one’s face was a singular one that was not very nice. As he looked at the others in the room he realised that they too were feeling the same sensation.
“Euron Greyjoy possessed The Mountain.” Dacey said the words in horror. “But which Stark was he aiming for? If not Robb then who? And why?”
“Ned.” Lady Stark was ashen. “He’s gone South to deal with the Gate at the Hightower. Where the Drowned God is. It must be he that Euron Greyjoy is targeting. We must warn him!” She staggered, close to being overwrought, and was deftly caught by Dacey and Luwin, who escorted her to a chair, the Maester then scurrying over to the table to give her a little wine in a cup.
“Euron Greyjoy intends to replace the Drowned God, or steal enough of his powers to become a god,” Tyrion breathed. “Luwin, is Lady Stark alright?”
The Maester inspected her face for a moment and then nodded slightly. “I think a sleeping draught after this though.”
“Can someone else send your fastest raven to the Hightower?”
Luwin nodded. “Aye, Lord Tyrion.”
The heir to Casterley Rock caught the eyes of the heir to Winterfell and the heir to the Dreadfort. “Then we have a vitally important message to write. Now.” He paused. “And we’ll use the second and third fastest to the Hightower as well. Ned must be warned in time!”
Gendry
He stood at the door to the forge and looked out at Castle Black as it started to come awake that morning. There were certain things that had to be done of a morning and one of those things was to light the forge. Or rather the first forge. There were three of the buggers now and he thanked the gods for Lord Stark, who had arranged a steady supply of coal to Castle Black and the other castles as they were restored.
He was… well, he didn’t know how he felt right now. Too many names. He was just about starting to get used to being called Gendry Baratheon, but that wasn’t all that he was being called. He was called Gendry Strongarm by some, Gendry Runesmith by others, ‘That Bastard Boy’ by yet others… gods. He was tired of it all.
He was certainly tired of avoiding Joffrey bloody Hill. The brat obviously still seemed to be pissed off at his very existence, let alone his new name and the fact that Father praised him so widely because of his rune carving abilities, which was a bit daft because Mya had discovered them as well.
Well, at least he wasn’t trying not to be noticed by anyone in Lannister red anymore. Yes many of then tended to look down their noses at him, but it seemed that the Old Lion had made it clear that any more ‘unfortunate events’ – like the attack on Robb Stark by the little ponce back at Winterfell – would not be tolerated.
The Old Lion was one scary fucker.
What was also scary was the weight that was on him right now, a weight that he worried about. He’d talked about to Lord Royce two nights previous, about how much he admitted that he didn’t know about making runes, about how he was afraid of making an error. What were the rules about rules? What did they mean exactly? How did they combine. Could they even be combined?
He knew a lot about being a blacksmith. He could make any manner of hand weapon, be it axe, sword, flail, mace or spear tip. He knew how important weight was and heft and thinness of blade. He knew how to judge a metal by its colour when heated, to tell when was too cold to beat it and when was too hot to quench. He knew all manner of quenches, which oils to use, which blends, the moment to quench. He knew all about making handles for all kinds of things, again with the width and length so dependent on the man or woman wielding it.
But now he was carving runes and making them glow and he was both proud of the fact that he could do so and terrified of fucking it up by making some mistake that one of the First Men Runesmiths in the depths of time would never have made even as children.
The words had tumbled out of his mouth and he ended up slightly breathless as the bearded old Lord of Runestone just sat there and looked at him with those measuring eyes. And after a long moment the Lord had just smiled at him and clapped him on the shoulder.
“By the Old Gods, you’ve got a head on those shoulders of yours, Gendry. Good lad. Those are the right things to worry about, the right questions. Lad, you’re not alone on this. I’ve sent ravens to Runestone, the Thenn are already working on things and Lord Redfort and I have men here as well. And you.” He’d reached out to one side, snagged a book from the table and held it out him. “Here you go. It’s yours.”
He'd taken it with a frown. Oh. It was a book about runes? “So… this could-”
“That will teach you a lot about runes. It’s a copy of an old book from Runestone. Don’t lose it lad, it’s valuable.”
“It’s mine though?” He’d said the words a bit faintly.
“It’s yours. Study hard lad. There’s a lot riding on those runes.”
He looked down at his hand and the book it held. And then he turned back into the forge, put the book carefully down to one side, shrugged his jerkin off, put a leather apron on, looked at the sheets of bronze to one side and then reached out and opened the book.
He had a lot to bloody learn. But learn it he would. And he was Gendry bloody Baratheon and he’d thump the skull of any snooty twit who said otherwise.
Ned
The further South they sailed the warmer he got and he liked it not. It reminded him too much of Dorne and his search along the border of Dorne and the Stormlands, until he and his companions finally found the so-called Tower of Joy.
He knew that he’d have nightmares about that bloody place until his dying day. Friends lost, his sister lost, a burden placed upon him and a sword he had to give back to its rightful owner and the woman that, in a more sane time, should have been his wife.
They’d made good time in their voyage South, but he would still find his fingers drumming on the wood of the railing where he’d stand after his daily walk about the ship whenever they were at sea. He wanted to be there already, he didn’t want to spend more time than he had to on this, there was too much to do in the North.
They’d docked a few times for supplies and his brief time at Lannisport had left him with the peculiar feeling that the Lannisters were taking things very seriously indeed, judging by the way that the port was starting to react to the messages from Tywin Lannister in support of the Call.
Of course there had also been the way that so many of them had reacted to his presence in the Westerlands, staring at him and then muttering about the Call and cheering him – and their astonished reaction to Frostfyre, who had taken the opportunity to go hunting along the shore and then vanished for an hour or so in the woods to the West of where they had moored. From the feeling of happy contentment he felt from her direction, as well as the blood around her muzzle when she came back, she had found a good enough meal to take her through her next long nap, almost hibernation, which seemed to be her way of getting through the voyage.
After all, a direwolf couldn’t exactly squat at the heads on the ship.
And the more he thought about the fact that he was feeling what Frostfyre felt, the more he… wasn’t worried? He was coming to terms with it. He was, at some level at least, a warg. Father would have been proud of him, he knew it. Astonished first, but then proud.
The winds were kind to the ship, not too strong, not too soft, and as they headed south he ticked the headlands and landmarks off in his mind, as he consulted the maps.
He had to admit that the southern lands made him a more than a little envious. Green fields, villages all over the place, towns in areas that made best use of the coast or the land. And as they approached the borders of the Reach he became even more envious. Rich, rich, lands. Rolling fields of wheat or barley, orchards almost groaning under the weight of their fruit, windmills working industriously away…
And then the thought of all of that withering under whatever this mysterious thing was that he’d been called upon to help young Willas Tyrell with made him pause and almost shake his head in horror. The Reach needed his help. This trip was worth it. He had to be here, even though Starks did not prosper south of the Neck.
Well, at least he was dealing with Willas Tyrell and not old Mace. That said, he had long wondered if the man had been a complete fool. The siege of Storm’s End had been long and curiously clumsy. Had be done that on purpose or had he merely been an idiot fixated on something that he lacked the wit to achieve? Would anyone ever know, now that he was dead?
It was just to the west of the Shield Islands that the first cry came from the crow’s nest that there were ships ahead, coming towards them. Captain Morgwn, a blunt man from Torrhen’s Square who knew these waters like the back of his hand, sprinted up the rigging with his Myrish spyglass, took a sighting and then descended via a rope.
“A squadron of Reacher ships, Lord Stark,” he said, looking puzzled. “And unless I am very much mistaken one of them is the Arbor Queen.”
That was a name that made him think back to the Greyjoy Rebellion and he frowned slightly. “Lord Redwyne’s flagship?”
“Aye, my Lord. We’re almost at the Shield islands, but not yet near the Arbor, so I’m puzzled.”
As the ships drew closer a great flurry of signals burst out from them, which Morgwyn ordered be answered with signals of their own. And then the squadron shook into a clear shape and approached, signalling again.
“Lord Stark, Lord Redwyne wishes to come aboard at once,” Morgwyn said. “Urgent dispatches, they’re signalling.”
Ned nodded, a frisson of dread running through him. Dispatches? Here? The squadron of ships came abreast of them and then turned southwards to join them in unison and Morgwyn muttered that they seemed to be almost decently handled. And then they all collectively slowed as a boat was lowered from the Arbor Queen.
Paxter Redwyne was a little older and a little balder than Ned remembered him from the Greyjoy Rebellion, but what remaining hair he had was still red and he still had that look of half amusement and half bellicosity that his sons had obviously inherited. As he hauled his way with practiced ease up the rope ladder that had been let down for him and came level with the deck he looked about – and then saw Ned and nodded firmly.
“Lord Redwyne,” Ned said, bowing to the man as he stood on the deck and took a deep breath. “We meet again.”
“Lord Stark.” Paxter Redwyne bowed deeply and then looked at him. “The Call was heard at the Arbor. House Redwyne answers it.”
He smiled at the man. “And House Stark is grateful for what House Redwyne has already done. Your sons were both at the Wall and beyond. As they shall tell you.” He looked to one side at where a group of other men had gathered – and where there were two red-headed young men who looked as if they were barely restraining themselves from dashing over and flinging their arms around their father. “And they have very much to tell you.”
“Horas and Hobber!” Paxter Redwyne beamed at his sons – but then sobered. “I must greet them in a moment. First, Lord Tyrell sent me to get you to Oldtown safely. Ravens came with unsettling news from Winterfell.”
He looked at the older man’s face and ice seemed to run up and down along his back for a heartbeat. “What has happened, Paxter?”
The Lord of the Arbor held out a message. “There was an unsuccessful attack against your oldest son, Ned. It’s a mad tale, one that made me shake my head, but after getting the earlier letters from my sons about what they saw and witnessed… well, you need to read this.”
He read it and found his forehead creasing from shock and bafflement. The Mountain had killed two men, almost assaulted Val, and then had come within a hair’s breadth of killing Robb, before he and Sandor Clegane had killed him. And what was this about black eyes, in the most literal sense and the words about Robb being the wrong Stark?
“This is madness,” he breathed as he absorbed the implications. “Sorcery? And Valyrian sorcery at that?”
“Apparently Tyrion Lannister’s daggers, being the work of the First Men, reacted to the body of the Mountain,” Paxter Redwyne pointed out. “I heard that you bear the Fist of Winter. Perhaps that will also warn of Valyrian black magic?”
A shiver ran up and down his spine. “I don’t know, Paxter, I don’t know. Hopefully it will.”
“I hope it does,” Paxter Redwyne said seriously. “Because if you are the right Stark that means that you need to be protected and defended. I know what worries Willas Tyrell and that terrifies me. We need you in Oldtown, at the Hightower and every man under my command knows that. So we’ll get you there, Lord Stark. We’ll bloody well get you there.”
And only then did he bow formally and then go over and greet his sons, leaving Ned staring down at the message in his hand. Someone might be trying to kill him. Well now. Let them bloody well try it.
Robert
He stood there at the top of the Wall and stared North. Bloody hells, it was cold up here, the wind like a knife through you if it blew hard enough from the North – and it could. He couldn’t quite imagine what it would be like here in the Winter that was to come. Worse, far worse than anything he could imagine. He’d known a winter or two in the Vale, when the Eyrie was too cold to be lived in and everyone descended to warmer quarters. At the time he’d thought that that had been the coldest place ever. Not compared to how this place would get.
Well now. Best that he started to get used to the cold at the Wall whilst they still had Summer to enjoy.
At least he could start to plan things out now and he narrowed his eyes as he looked at the trees that stretched off into the far distance and the snowy hills and mountains that he could just about see beyond that. He disliked that damn forest already. You could hide a damn army in that mass of trees – and for all they knew there already was one there.
The last of the Wildlings were still trickling in, the rearguard in some cases, composed of men and women who had been fighting the Others and their wights for months or years. They were all equipped with spears and arrows tipped with dragonglass these days, but they spoke of the enemy having numbers that could swamp even the best equipped force. Fire was still the best deterrent, something that kept the white-haired fuckers back and destroyed their wights, but even the hottest fire could be snuffed out by snow.
He thought back to that dream he’d had in Winterfell and the Other that had been hunting Lyanna. It was something that still brought a chill to his spine when he remembered the way that the Other had looked at him. He’d fought all manner of men before, Dornish, rebel Stormlanders, Reachmen, Crownlanders, Rivermen and Ironborn, but they’d all been men with the faces and expressions of men.
That Other had been… well, wrong. Alien was the word that he’d heard Maester Aemon use. Yes, that was the word. The right word too. It had looked at him with a look of such… indifference, as if he was a beetle beneath its boot. Insignificant. He wasn’t used to that.
He huffed a little and looked at the forest again. He needed to memorise the view from here and from the Nightfort and all the bloody castles. They all had people in them again now, even if some of them were little more than ruins that were being rebuilt. Time was their enemy as well now, they needed to rebuild much after centuries of neglect.
There were times when he wanted to curse his bloody ancestors, the Valyrian ones at least. The Baratheons and the Targaryens had been too obsessed with cementing their control over the Seven Kingdoms whilst neglecting the needs of the North. The Night’s Watch had been protecting all of them, but they hadn’t realise that. They’d seen it as this odd Northern tradition, or the Stark’s private army, or some such rot.
The castles should never have been allowed to fall into disrepair. They would take time to repair, rebuild, reman. Gods, he wished that Ned was here with him now. They needed to plan so much.
Boots sounded to one side and he looked over to see Tarly approaching and then bowing. “Your Grace.”
“Tarly. Up to see the potential field of battle?”
The bald man quirked a smile at him for a moment before nodding at the silent spectre that was Ser Barristan Selmy to one side. “Aye, your Grace. I do hear tell that you are not fond of a siege?”
That bought him a tight grin. “Stony Sept. That was a nasty little corner. Pyke was better. Better to be the besieger than the besieged.” He felt his eyes tighten as he looked North again. “We must hold them here. Best place to fight. Narrowest point to the South is the Neck and I don’t like the idea of being up to my neck in foul-smelling mud and marsh, do you?”
“No, your Grace,” said Tarly. “The logistics will be nasty once winter comes.”
“Aye, and we can’t gamble too much with the men.” He sighed. “Every man – aye, and women, I’ve seen them down there – that dies might add to the enemy’s number. We have to take that into account. Wights. Bloody magic. Pain in the arse, but we can’t ignore that. And this place-” He gestured at the Wall. “When Winter comes we’ll need protection up here for the men from the wind. If they’re freezing to death from the wind as they keep watch, the enemy’s winning already. And what if they attack in a blizzard? Can you imagine it?”
Tarly shivered a bit as he looked North as well. “Aye, you have the right of it, your Grace,” he said eventually. “Covered wooden walkways perhaps, with wool between planks? Duckboards to tread on and braziers suspended from the ceilings? It will be expensive, but glass windows here and there?”
“Enough to keep the men alive up here, whilst watching and waiting,” he agreed. “And then we need to have the ground in front of the Wall surveyed. Where is it higher than the land around and where lower?”
Tarly eyed him with a frown and then comprehension dawned. “The Wildfire!”
“Aye. Not much point using it on the buggers if it flows downhill and against the bloody Wall. We need maps, Tarly.”
The Lord of Horn Hill nodded. “I shall talk to the Lord Commander and get onto it once your Grace.” And then he was gone, walking briskly away. Well now. Tarly was a man like him. Born for war.
He thought about the sad shadow of a man he had been that Robb Stark had seen in the future that was now gone from them and sighed for a moment. Gods, how had he let himself go so badly? But then that was gone. He was here, now, at this time. And he was fucked if he’d fail in this. He’d not lose this bloody war, there was too much at stake.
More boots to one side and he looked over to see the Green Man approach him. “Do you know that I still have no idea how to address you? Ser Duncan? The Green Man? What should it be?”
“The Children of the Forest have a title for me, but I fear that neither of us can pronounce it.”
He chuckled at that, before sobering. “What’s amiss?”
“I will be heading North into the Haunted Forest in a day or so with young Jaime Lannister, on a… well, I need to meet an old acquaintance there.” The old man smiled slightly. “But before that I need to talk to you about something else. You have come far in this past year, but you need to go further. You must put aside your hatred for Rhaegar Targaryen. It is holding you back, just as your grief for Lyanna Stark did. If you are to become the Storm King that we need you to be, you must move on.”
He clenched his fists for a long moment as he felt his nostrils flare. “You ask much.”
“There are things that you need to understand. This is important your Grace.”
He closed his eyes for a long moment and then nodded choppily. “And how can I? What would you suggest?”
“Come with me. You and Barristan. I can show you both what is needed.”
They followed The Green Man down to the bottom of the Wall and then they mounted the horses that he had ordered saddled. He frowned and then looked at the Green Man. “Where are we going to?”
“North of the Wall. We need a Heart Tree for this.”
Ser Barristan looked up at this. “North of the Wall? Is it safe? Should there not be more of us?”
“It is safe,” the Green Man nodded. “We have time. The Others are moving, I sense, but they are still well North of us.”
They had to ride half a league to a grove of weirwood trees and he stared at them as they dismounted. Nine of the trees had faces carved into them, faces that seemed to peer at him as if the trees themselves were wondering what and who they all were. He shivered slightly, more in unsettlement than anything else. “What should we do?” He asked in a careful voice.
The Green Man walked to the middle tree and placed a hand on it, before extending his other arm off to one side, the sleeve rolled up despite the cold. “Barristan has done this before, your Grace. Take your gloves off and hold my bare arm.”
Frowning a little he pulled off the leather glove on his right hand and then he and Ser Barristan did as the Green Man had asked. “What n-”
Darkness fell and he had the unsettling feeling of falling straight down, everything too sudden to utter a word. And then, suddenly, he was on the ground, looking around wildly. It was dark, it was warmer, there were men singing off to one side and he could smell woodsmoke and food cooking and horse dung.
It was a camp. The camp of an army. Someone somewhere was using a whetstone to sharpen a blade and he could smell latrines somewhere.
“The Trident.” The words were spoken by Ser Barristan Selmy, in tones of shock. “This is the Trident. Before the battle at what became known as the Ruby Ford. This was our camp.”
“The camp of Rhaegar Targaryen,” the Green Man rumbled. “Who had been at the Isle of Faces not too long before.”
He was about to mutter something about where that whoreson was, when suddenly he saw movement to one side and then a white-cloaked figure strode straight through Selmy’s body, passing through it as if it did not exist – before coming to a sudden halt and looking around almost wildly. He blinked. It was Selmy himself, or rather a younger version of him, more colour in his hair and fewer lines on his face.
“I remember this moment,” the older Ser Barristan said in a stunned voice. “The night before the battle I had the oddest feeling, as if someone had walked over my grave. I was sensing… myself?”
“Some circles take time to close,” the Green Man said gravely. “But, yes, you were.”
The Selmy from the past looked about again, before shaking his head and striding off towards a large tent which was surrounded by guards, and then flaming torches and then banners. And the largest of the banners was one that he had not seen for some time. That bloody red many-headed dragon on black. The Targaryen banner.
The trio followed him, before slowing slightly as two more white-cloaked figures approached.
“Ser Barristan!” Bloody hells. It was Prince Lewyn Martell, along with that earnest bugger Jonothor Darry. “What news?”
“Little and none of it good,” the younger Selmy said gruffly. “We know who faces us now and in what numbers. No reinforcements will reach us in time for tomorrow. And Lord Tyrell continues to besiege Storm’s End with his full army.”
Martell and Darry both pulled faces. “Still?” Darry barked. “He could invest it with a tenth of the man he has and march North to meet us!”
“He could, but he has not,” the Selmy from the past said. “He is either a fool committed to this siege or he is betraying us.”
The two Kingsguard traded looks. “I always thought Mace Tyrell to be a damn fool,” Martell muttered. “Perhaps I was wrong. And what of Lord Lannister?”
“Nothing. Ravens are sent but return with nothing but empty words, if that. The Lion has retracted his claws.”
“Then we must do what we can with what we have. Even then…” Darry looked about and then beckoned the other two Kingsguard closer, making Robert also approach. To one side Ser Barristan had his eyes closed as if in pain, whilst the Green Man was staring at the large tent.
“Morale is not good. Connington’s men are dispirited by their defeat at the Stony Sept and the Riverlanders are all asunder. The Rebels are in full accord however and they are flush with victory and match our numbers.” Darry shook his head. “We need more time and more men. Barristan, you must speak with the Prince. Persuade him from this course of action. His plan is… well, I think it unwise.”
“How is his mood?”
Darry and Martell exchanged glances, before the Dornishman answered: “Also not good. He sleeps badly, he looks tired all the time now and he seems… dispirited. Although he received a letter from Kings Landing early today, written by little Rhaenys, which has lifted his spirits a little.”
The Selmy from the past – Gods this was strange! – frowned a little. “I wish I knew what happened at the Isle of Faces. He was downcast before and then truly depressed after that.”
Martell glared at Darry. “If you had bloody well done your duty and stayed with him on that bloody island then-”
“I could not!” Darry glared back, before an unsettled expression crossed his face. “Prince Rhaegar instructed me not to follow him, that I could not come with him, that I had to wait at that jetty. But I tried to. He walked down that path between those white bloody trees and I waited a moment and then tried to follow him by walking through the trees. But after a few minutes I lost sight of him and then somehow – somehow the path was gone! I swear it, my brothers! I wandered and I ran and I looked – and then I was back at the shore. I ran again, back to the jetty – and the path was gone! I know this seems like madness, but… well, it was gone. I walked, I looked, I went back into the trees… but there was no path. Every time I ended up back on the shore, heading back to the jetty. I swear it! Something kept me from the Prince. And then, after a while, I looked up and there he was, walking back on the path. Looking like… like he does now.”
The Green Man chuckled slightly to one side. “The Isle of Faces keeps its secrets well.”
Martell was looking at Darry in bafflement, before looking back at Selmy. “Barristan, you must persuade the Prince to change his mind. If we must fight the rebels tomorrow then we must be at his side. The plan of his to scatter us across the battlefield – it goes against every one of my instincts. We must be there at his side. If we can press hard and kill one of the main traitor lords then we can prevail against them. Should Stark, or Arryn, or especially Baratheon falls, then their ranks will waver and split.”
The younger Selmy looked uncertain but then nodded. “I will try. I cannot promise anything, but I will try.”
And so they followed him as he walked to the large tent with the Targaryen banner. Robert swallowed back his bile as they approached it and forced himself to be calmer than he felt. Gods. He couldn’t believe that he was here, seeing this.
The Selmy from the past talked to the guards by the entrance to the tent and then entered it and they followed him in. Ser Barristan had an odd expression on his face as he walked by Robert’s side and the Green Man had a look of faint distaste.
He saw his cousin at once as he entered the tent and could not help the growl of hate that emerged from his throat. And then he blinked as Rhaegar Targaryen looked up from the papers on the table in front of him and for a moment seemed to look straight at Robert, his eyes widening for a moment before he saw the other Selmy.
And by all the gods he could see that Rhaegar looked terrible. He was pale, he looked as if he had not slept properly for a week at least, or a month, such were the black lines under his eyes and his hands shook slightly.
“Barristan.”
The Barristan from the past bowed. “My Prince.”
“What news?”
“The scouts have confirmed at we face the full force of the rebels, my Prince. They match our numbers. Baratheon is here, along with Stark, Tully and Arryn. The morale of our men is not good and the Tyrells and Lannisters are not here. My Prince – surely we should wait or retreat to gain the advantage of numbers and better ground.”
Rhaegar looked at him and then around the tent, before sitting again at the table and passing a trembling hand over his eyes. “If morale is not good then how many would desert if we retreated?”
“Some cravens would flee, I will not deny it. But if we sent messages to Lord Tyrell, ordering him, in the name of the King, to send us just a third of his host then we can prevail.”
The man that he hated so much bit his lip for a moment. He seemed genuinely torn. “What was so clear a week ago is not anymore,” he muttered. “And what was clear this morning is also not clear.” He closed his eyes for a long moment. “I… I must think on this, Barristan. Rhaenys wrote me a letter.”
The past Selmy looked confused for a long moment at this change of topic. “A… a letter, my Prince?”
“She is so young and yet so talented already. A letter to her daddy, telling me about her cat, Balaerion. And telling me to ‘beat the bad men’ and come home so that she can kiss me on both cheeks and show me her cat.”
The Selmy from the present closed his eyes in anguish and Robert felt himself swallow. Oh. That poor child. The Selmy from the past nodded. “Your daughter is much loved.”
“She is.” Rhaegar looked about the tent again. “Barristan, I need to think and also to pray. I will call you once I have made a decision. And please move the guards a little away from the tent, I must not be overheard.”
“My Prince?”
“Barristan. Double the guards if need be, but move them – and yourself – away from the tent. I must not be overheard.”
The Selmy from the past looked confused but then nodded and strode out of the tent, calling out to the captains of the guard. As he did so the Selmy from the present looked at Robert. “I remember this. We could hear him talking at one point, but no-one knew what he was saying.”
“We will know now,” the Green Man said grimly. “He doubted the path I told him to take. It was hard for him not to after his child wrote to him.”
There was a long moment of silence in the tent as Rhaegar looked at the letter in front of him, but then as the sound of men marching away from the tent diminished he looked up again. “You’re here again, aren’t you? The presence I felt in the Hall of the Green Man at the Isle of Faces. I… heard something, sensed something. What are you? Who are you? The Old Gods? My Ancestors?”
The silver-haired young man walked about the tent slowly. “I know what must be done tomorrow, I know, but how many must die before my own sacrifice is enough? I… I know that I must die, but I want to live. I want to see my daughter again and hear the tales of her cat! I want to see my son again, and the daughter that Lyanna will bear me. I have a wife that I still love, a mother that I must protect and father whose crimes I must make right! But how can I if I must die?”
His face crumpled for a long moment and he sank back into his chair again. “I am not afraid to die. But I also want to live. So, tell me. What must I do?”
There was a horrible strained silence in the tent. Robert looked at the man, an unexpected sympathy welling up for him, matching the hatred. Gods. He looked over at the Green Man. “And yet he will still fight in the morning. What are we here to do?”
“Draw Stormbreaker, place the tip of the sword on the ground in front of you, hold the hilt with both hands and trust me, your Grace.” The Green Man closed his eyes for a long moment and then when he opened them again there was a red fire burning in them. “He will see you. And you will know when and what to speak.”
He did what the Green Man had said, drawing Stormbreaker from his sheath and holding it as he had been asked to. And as his hands wrapped around the hilt a wind seemed to come from somewhere to the South for a long moment, making the flames of the candles that lit the tent bend horizontally before returning to normal.
Rhaegar looked about wildly as the wind struck, but then relaxed – and then his gaze reached Robert and he froze in his chair, his eyes widening. For a long moment he sat there – and then he stood shakily.
“Robert?” He asked the question in a low, uncertain voice. “Is that you? How can you be here? And so… changed?” He half-raised a hand before his eyes for a moment. “It is you but yet not you… in robes and with a sword… and your face…” He froze. “Your face. You are older.”
“I am older indeed,” he ground out through gritted teeth. “Looking back at you.”
“Your sword… the clouds around you… I see lightning and hear thunder as if…” Rhaegar’s eye widened again. “You are the Storm King come again.” He swallowed and then shook his head a little. “The Storm King. So – I was wrong about that again. Prophecy wrongly interpreted by me. Again.”
“Prophecy?” He asked the word with a scowl. “About what?”
“I thought… I thought that the power of the storm was something that would follow the Prince that was promised. So, you are the Storm King.”
“I’m trying to become that.”
“You’re looking back from when? Or where?”
“Sixteen years. I’m at the Wall. The Others are coming. Ned Stark has sent out the Call.”
Rhaegar screwed his eyes shut. “Then I am dead.”
“That you are.”
“Robert… cousin… I am sorry. Everything I have touched has withered and died. I am sorry. So sorry. The Realm is broken due to my foolishness and stupidity. I thought I was obeying prophecy. I was wrong. I should not have done what I did. And Lyanna… please tell me that she is at your side now.”
He took a deep breath. “No. She died.”
Rhaegar groaned deep in his throat and scrubbed at his eyes for a long moment with both hands. “How?”
“You left her in a lonely tower in the Dornish Marches, with three idiot Kingsguards without a clue about how do deal with a girl who was pregnant after you raped her. No Maester. No midwife. She died of childbirth fever after giving birth to a son.”
And now Rhaegar moaned and sank to his knees on the rug on the floor, rocking with anguish before beating at the ground with his fists. After a long moment he looked back up at him, his face smeared with tears and anguish. “So I was wrong yet again?”
“You were.”
Rhaegar Targaryen ran a hand over his face – and then he slowly stood and wiped the tears from his face. “What hope do you have now?”
“Some. The Realm rallies. The castles on the Wall are being rebuilt. We will fight.”
“Then tomorrow I must die.” Rhaegar looked him in the eye, resolve building on his face. “Do not tell me how. But I do, do I not?”
“You did. Will. It was clean.”
“Then, again, I must.”
“Your Grace,” the Green man said softly, “Step back. Take your hands off the hilt. He will see you fade.”
He nodded and did as he was told. Rhaegar’s eyes widened again, as he looked about the tent, before nodding and then walking back to the table and picking up the letter from his daughter. “BARRISTAN!”
There was an acknowledging shout and just before the Selmy from the past entered the tent Rhaegar ignited the letter from his daughter on a candle and then threw it into the nearest brazier.
“My Prince?”
“My orders stand. We fight tomorrow. You and your brothers will command and fight where I have ordered you to. The army needs leaders. You must be those leaders. I will do what I need to. And there will be no discussion on this. I understand your objections. But my orders stand. I command it. No argument, Barristan. I command it.”
The face of the Selmy from the past worked for a long moment – but then he nodded sharply. “Very well my Prince. I will order it so, as you command.” And with that he was gone, his white cape billowing behind him.
Rhaegar strode over slowly to a side table and poured himself a large goblet of wine. “So, I die on the morrow,” he said softly, before taking a large swallow. “As it must be.” He held his goblet up. “Robert: save the realm.” And then he drank again.
The scene seemed to shiver and freeze – and then, suddenly, Robert was back at the Heart Tree, releasing his grip from the arm of the green Man and then falling to his knees.
Only then did he weep.
Chapter Text
Willas
One of the first things that he had done after Father had died was to have the message network redirected to the Hightower. There had long been a system of messaging from the coast of the Reach to Highgarden, the Hightower and the Arbor against Ironborn raiding. Now it was informing of the progress of just one ship.
“Lord Stark will be here in a few days,” he muttered and dropped the message onto the table by the window. There was a breeze coming through the window that made it quiver a little and he placed a paperweight over it to prevent it from flying through the air and out of the doorway.
“Good,” said Grandfather, and he looked at him worriedly. There was something slightly off about him these past few days, as if he was coming to terms with something. Perhaps they all were. The blight was still out there, still spreading out from Oldtown like a slow pestilence, and the weight of worry on him was ever-present.
Aunt Malora also worried him. She had always been highstrung, flighty even, fascinated by books of magic, or so he had been led to understand. Now she was a hollow-eyed wraith at the table, looking downcast and depressed as she leafed through a book about the Hightower. He had heard that she had had a tremendous argument with Grandfather, with repeated shrieks of ‘Why??” – but no-one knew what that argument had been about.
“I’ve doubled the guards,” Grandfather said eventually. “Ned Stark must get here safely. Oldtown is abuzz with rumours about all kinds of things and I’ve had to stop people from suggesting the maddest of ways of dealing with the Gate. Gods, our bloody ancestors.”
Willas raised an eyebrow at that and Lord Hightower made a noise deep in his throat that was almost a snarl. “Guard the Gate, we were told. And we have. But so much has been lost, so much forgotten! We forgot what was behind it. Past Hightowers built the Hightower stage by stage and we even used Bran the Builder to build it higher, but at some point we forgot, or allowed Andal-like thinking to influence us!”
“Andal-like thinking?” Willas looked at Grandfather, confused.
Grandfather sighed and passed a hand over his lower forehead, as if wiping his anger away. “The First Men knew that the threat of the Others had never gone away, not truly. And they knew that the Drowned God’s prison, or what amounted to it, had to be guarded. They were familiar with magic, magic in root and stone, which waxes and wanes like the moon. They thought… differently, I think. They did not forget things.
“And then the Andals came, with their Gods and their fears of other gods and their gods-damned religious fervour that meant that things they did not understand had to be destroyed! They burned the weirwoods, slaughtered the Children of the Forest, killed those who dared to disagree. And the Hightowers of the time did not do enough to stop them! The Children helped to create the Gate and where are the Children now, now that we need them in our hour of need? DEAD! GONE!” Grandfather was roaring now, red-faced and furious. “How much could we have remembered if they had still been out there, waiting in their Godswoods? Ready to give advice? Able to warn us!”
Grandfather gestured at Otherbane. “The First Men made that with the help of the Children of the Forest. You are still finding out what it can do. We know-”
“Father.” Malora said the word in a dead flat voice, almost a voice of warning.
It was a word that finally made the blood drain from Grandfather’s face. He clenched his fists for a long moment and then leant against the window with a sigh. “Baelor will do what he can to quiet the city. Gods, I wish we still had Vigilance. Willas – we have found a… a treatise on Otherbane. It is in the language of the First Men and it is obscure even then. You must study it. After all, you were born to wield it.”
He looked at Grandfather and unease rippled through his skin for a moment. “Where is it?”
“Here.” Aunt Malora held a slim book out and he shuddered slightly at the look in her eyes. There was a combination of emotions there that puzzled him. Was it outrage? Anger? Some form of grief? Or was it pure and simple madness?
He took it and opened it, frowning down at the runes. Yes, this was obscure indeed. He would have to study this carefully.
“There is something else,” Grandfather said in a voice that made him look at him at once with alarm. “You should tell me at once if your dreams… darken. There might be a reason for that.”
He frowned at that. “The tale from Winterfell about the Mountain? About his possession? You think that I am in danger of that?”
Oddly enough Grandfather looked at Malora rather than him, a long glance filled with twitches of the eyebrow on both of their parts before Grandfather sighed a little. “Not… quite. It’s hard to explain. I fear that something dark is coming, something that is racing Ned Stark. What it is… is uncertain. There are many interpretations… Gods, it’s hard to even explain it.”
“Triple the guards.” Aunt Malora said the words in that same dead flat voice. Almost in resignation. “We must be sure on this.”
“Sure on what?” Willas asked the question with narrowed eyes. They were not telling him something. But what?
“The avalanche is on us, the stones can no longer vote,” Grandfather said, sounding as if he was quoting someone. And then he looked up. “The moment that Ned Stark gets here, we escort him to the Gate. Do you understand?”
After a long moment he nodded. “I do.”
Grandfather’s eyes seemed to search his face for a long moment. “Good,” he said eventually. “I’m proud of you, my boy. So proud of you.”
Renly
The best way to deal with the Gods-awful stench in the alcove of the passageway was to breath through the mouth and not through the nose, and concentrate on something, anything, that was not related to the smell, like the rope that was hanging from the trestle over the opening, the way that the shadows inside the shaft that went downwards moved as the lantern was used to inspect the grisly bottom of said shaft and the hatch that normally kept the alcove safe and the stench down, because it looked old but very well made.
After a while the light started to come up as the man in the shaft climbed out of it one-handed, using his feet as well on the knotted rope. As he reached the top he placed the lantern by the side and levered himself up and out, before wiping his forehead.
“Gods,” said Pate Waters in a tired and horrified voice. “It’s worse than we thought, my Lord.” The short servant had been acting as his permanent man in the Red Keep for some years, being very quiet and very observant.
Renly wordlessly handed over a skin of watered wine and allowed Pate the time to take a large swallow of it and then visibly compose himself.
“Worse?”
“There must be 20 to 30 of them down there my Lord. From the clothing they were servants and a few guards. Lannister guards I might add, based on the cloaks and the armour. The oldest ones are… well, there’s a lot of muck and filth and bones.”
“And the newest?”
“There were two I recognised, my Lord, barely. One was a serving girl, Ella by name. Sweet young thing, very bad at knocking on doors before opening them. I fear that’s why she’s down there with her throat cut I think. There’s a guard next to her. Timmon. She vanished ten days before his Grace took the Royal Family North to Winterfell and he disappeared two days after that.” He shook his head. “Timmon… I remember him being smug about something before he vanished. Smug for a month or two I think.”
“She used him to kill and he must have thought he’d be rewarded,” Renly surmised. “How did he die?”
“Head’s bashed in and there’s a bloodstain on the wall of the shaft. I think he was hit, fell, killed in the fall when he hit stone going down, my Lord.”
“Renly!”
The call was from far away down the passageway and Renly turned his head. “Down here!” Then he stood and helped Pate to stand. “Alright, get that rope up and move that trestle. We need to get that hatch closed before the stink spreads further.”
“Aye, my Lord.”
As pate got to it Renly stepped out into the passageway, taking a gulp of watered wine himself and then peered to see who was approaching. After a moment he blinked in surprise at the approaching shape of a tall, old man with silver hair. “Uncle Eldon?”
Lord Eldon Estermont had seen close to 70 years come and go but he was still quite hale and hearty – right up until the moment he smelled the stench and stopped dead in his tracks, one hand going over his nose. “Gods, Renly, what is that stink?”
“My unbeloved former Goodsister’s work,” Renly said bitterly as he gestured into the alcove, where Pate was now closing the hatch with some relief. His grandfather joined him to watch. “It’s a former privy – blocked off now and unused since the Dance of Dragons if I have it right.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The Kingslayer’s full confession finally came in from Winterfell. He mentioned that Cersei would have those servants who walked in on their… cavorting, ‘dealt with’. I found myself wondering how they were dealt with.” He pointed down to the end side of the passageway. “There’s a set of stairs there that go up to a good thick door that comes out near her old quarters. Unused since before Summerhall I think. Until Cersei discovered it. There’s footprints in the dust. Drag marks too.”
“By all the Gods… how many?”
“Pate?”
The servant bobbed his head at Uncle Eldon. “At least 20 my Lord. Perhaps 30. Hard to tell as it’s pretty bad at the bottom.”
Uncle Eldon pulled a face. “The murderous whore.”
“She always thought herself more important than anyone else,” Renly replied, looking at the hatch. “Well now. Pate?”
“My Lord?”
“Hire ten men in the city. Warn them ahead that this is a horrible messy job, but tell them that it’s worth a dragon each if they complete the job of emptying the shaft of bodies – they can work in shifts of two to spread the load. Get them to at least try and identify the bodies. Alert the Silent Sisters too – I want the bodies treated with respect. How ever they died they didn’t deserve this. Tell the men that we’ll replace any clothing that get ruined by what’s at the bottom of that shaft and that we’ll provide washing facilities and food. I want it done and I want it done right. Understand?”
Pate nodded and bowed, before striding off.
“How did no-one smell this place?” Uncle Eldon said in horrified amazement.
“The hatch is a snug fit and this section is unused,” Renly replied tiredly. “And what’s one more stench in a city of them? Now, Uncle Eldon – you don’t often leave Greenstone. What’s amiss?”
The old man directed a long and very level look at him, making his heart sink a little. “Renly, we need to talk somewhere private. Where I cannot be overheard.”
He took Uncle Eldon to one of the rooms that he’d identified as not being filled with odd alcoves or strange holes in the ceiling where someone could eavesdrop on whoever was inside. Even then, he still looked about carefully. Varys was still Varys. Uncle Eldon watched him with a little bemusement that ebbed after he quietly told him why he was checking.
After Renly was finished checking the room he raised an eyebrow at his uncle, who sighed and ran a hand over his forehead for a moment, before looking his nephew in the eye. “Renly, you need to marry and marry quickly.”
He didn’t groan as this was something that he had been expecting. “I know,” Uncle,” he said after a moment. “Jon Arryn has also talked to me and I know that I must marry. I have been talking to prospective matches for the past few months.”
“Months? Are you close to a choice?”
No, he was not, although he had been hawking with Lord Kellington and his daughter Bethany and he found her pleasant to talk to and remarkably proficient with the bow for a woman. But he had not taken things any further as he thought he had to search more. He had to admit, now, that he had been procrastinating. “Not yet,” he admitted. “Perhaps soon.”
Uncle Eldon scowled. “Choose quickly, wed her, bed her, get a child in her.”
He stared at his uncle. “Why the rush Uncle Eldon?”
“Boy, you should have a wife already at your age!” A gnarled fist hit the table next to him. And then he sighed. “Renly, your Stormlords are… I will not say restless. I will simply say that they are talking.”
“Talking of what?”
“Many things. Legends. The Long Night. Robert finding the Durrandon tombs and Stormbreaker – they talk a lot about that. I know, you were there for that as well, but they talk of Robert, not you. There is talk of things waking up, old things, old traditions. The Call is not questioned in the Stormlands, not with those cages going around with bits of wights in them. Your Stormlords know that we are about to fight a terrible war on the Wall. They know that after so many years of Summer an equally long Winter is to come.”
Uncle Eldon sighed. “My sons are getting Greenstone ready and Estermont as a whole. And there is a lot of talk in the Stormlands about… succession. Most houses are being sensible and settling disputes. A few are being idiots – I heard about Piglott trying to get one over Kellington and failing. But most are trying to settle their differences. And there are marriage alliances being forged all over the place. There is talk of heirs and spares. And you have no heir. There is no child in Storm’s End – and there needs to be. You need a canny wife to run Storm’s End and a child at her breast. People are talking.”
He nodded tiredly. “I will make a decision soon uncle.”
But Uncle Eldon did not seem satisfied. “Renly, I must be blunt. People are talking about many things. Some say that they wish that Robert was still at Storm’s End, as he has done so much. Others that they wish that Stannis was there, as he held it against all odds. I know, this is unfair, you have not had a chance yet to be tested in war. But you are very much in Robert’s shadow in this – Stormbreaker has gotten so many people talking.”
That stung more than a bit, but he was man enough to realise that was not the fault of his brothers. “I understand.” Then he saw the look on the face of his uncle. “What else?”
“There is talk – whispers in the wind for the most part, but as I am your uncle there are times when people see me approach and change the subject abruptly, which makes me wonder – of a loyal petition to the King to have one of his legitimised bastards, namely Edric, made your heir until you can produce one of your own.”
Bewilderment turned rapidly to rage and he bounded to his feet in a trice. “What??? NO! How dare they? That would be without precedent! That is an insult! Who says that, Uncle Eldon? Who?” His face was flushed and he could feel the famous Baratheon rage starting to overwhelm him. How dare they indeed?
“I will not tell you, as I would not condemn a man for a rumour of a whisper!” Uncle Eldon snapped back at him coldly. “Sit down boy and think!”
Trembling with rage Renly sat down after a long moment, still ready to flip the table over and break a chair against the nearest wall.
“They dare, Renly, because some doubt if you can produce an heir at all. There is talk of you and Loras Tyrell. You might have thought you were being discreet when you were… with him. You were not. People are talking. Just rumours at the moment, but those rumours are spreading. And… I must be blunt here. You are my nephew and I love you dearly, but you are also my Lord Paramount and I must provide you with the best counsel that I can give. People are wondering if, in this time, with a war against the Others coming on the Wall, with a second Long Night coming, if a sword-swallowing pillowbiter can lead the Stormlands.”
The rage vanished in the blink of an eye as the shock overtook him. Who knew? When had someone seen them? Heard them? What should he do? What could he do now?
“Your silence says volumes,” Uncle Eldon said eventually in a tired voice. “So it is true then.”
He struggled to speak for a long moment. “Uncle… I-”
“Save your words. You must act now. With every day that passes without you acting that loyal petition idea will gain strength. Put aside your position here and go home. Marry quickly. She must be a Stormlander and the marriage must be at Storm’s End. There must be a Bedding and after it you must stay in her bed enough to father the first of many children.” Uncle Eldon looked at him with understanding and sympathy in his eyes. “If you can father a bastard or two here and there even better. Yes, boy, it’s a mummer’s farce. But it will secure the loyalty of the Stormlands in the greatest storm that it has faced in thousands of years. You must be a leader now. The leader that the Stormlands needs. Put your needs aside and listen to the voice of duty. You cannot be selfish anymore. You are a Baratheon of Storm’s End and you need an heir born from your balls. And Loras Tyrell must never be seen with you again.”
Afterwards he could not say when it was that Uncle Eldon left the room. Was it a moment, or an hour? All he knew was that he sat there, in that room, staring at the wall opposite him. Thinking about so many things.
And then, after that undefined period, he stood and strode out of the room and back to his own quarters. Once he was there he closed the door and sat at his desk for a long moment, before looking at the nearby fireplace. It had the materials for a fire next to it and he knelt by it and recalled his lessons before starting to lay the kindling at the bottom and then the larger pieces of wood and then a few others. A splash of lamp oil and a stub of lighted candle got the fire started.
Only then did he sit down at his desk and pull out a pair of intricate keys. The first unlocked a secret compartment of his desk, which slid out to reveal a slim box. The second unlocked the box, which opened to reveal the letters inside.
They were letters that he could not bring himself to destroy. Letters that Loras had sent him, through various confidential ways. Letters of… intimacy, of treasured words, of love. Love. He fingered them in silence, unable to open any of them and re-read the words on the pages.
After a while he willed his hands to stop their shaking and picked the letters up, before standing and taking them to the fire, where he paused for a long moment – and then he thrust them into the flames. As the paper caught and crackled and burned he wiped the tears from his cheeks and then closed his eyes for a long and anguished moment. When he opened them again he could see the ashes dancing at the grate, almost mocking him.
And then, finally, he undid the chain at the back of his neck and let the signet ring with the worn crest tumble into his hand. It had been Father’s ring. His last – one of his very few – memory of his father had been him handing his old signet ring to him ‘for protection’ before he and Mother had left for their fruitless mission to Essos to find a bride for Rhaegar. He had another one, of course, the one that Robert had had made after their parents had died in Shipbreaker Bay, because Father’s had not fit his huge fingers, but that had never really fit Renly’s fingers.
The old one did, now.
He looked at it for a long moment. And then he went back to his desk. He needed to meet Bethany Kellington again. He did not know what was there between them. But he would make it work. The Stormlands needed an heir.
Aemon
By the time the King finally fell silent and leant back in his chair, Stormbreaker propped against the table to one side, Aemon had closed his eyes and then placed a trembling hand over them. Robert Baratheon’s tale of what he had seen, thanks to the Green Man, at the Ruby Ford so many years ago had obviously deeply affected him.
“Aemon, I don’t know what to say,” the King said eventually. “I have hated Rhaegar Targaryen for so long, for what he and his father did, that now, knowing that it was only talking to me that drove him to his death… I have no words. What can I say? It sounds like madness.”
He thought back to Egg, so many years ago, and his letters bemoaning his elevation to the Iron Throne, as well as his own sorrows from the news of the rebellion. “You have closed a circle you were not aware of, your Grace,” he said sorrowfully. “You have done what you had to. What, perhaps, you were born to. The Gods can be cruel at times, and merciful as well. Rhaegar… he thought he had interpreted prophecy correctly, when he had not. These things are difficult to interpret, hard to understand. You did the right thing.”
As he opened his eyes again he could see that the King was staring at the fire. After a long moment the younger man smiled a bitter smile. “I never thought that I’d ever say that I felt sorry for Rhaegar Targaryen. And I could not tell him what else lay ahead. That letter from his daughter. That poor little scrap. She wrote to him of her cat. And I killed him, before she was murdered by Tywin Lannister’s men. She didn’t deserve that.”
“You did what had to be done,” he replied tiredly. “And you could not have known what Tywin Lannister intended. Revenge, for him, is something… personal. And wide.”
There was a silence in the room for a long moment, before the King nodded. “Aye, you have that right.” He rubbed at his forehead for a moment and then swept that large hand across his face and sighed. “Lyanna told me, in Winterfell, that I had to set things aside to become the Storm King. Her shade, her ghost, call it what you will… gods, whoever would have thought I’d be saying such things and not being taken for a madman?”
Aemon shook his head a little. “There are forces at work here that we cannot fathom, not yet. Who knows what our ancestor Daenys the Dreamer foresaw? Two lines were combined within your blood – Durrandon and Baratheon, reinforced with more Targaryen. The Durrandon line seems to be coming to the fore, but do not forget that you too are descended from Daenys. Who knows what the blending has created? You will be a Storm King alike and yet unlike your ancestors of Storm’s End. You must not hold back. Embrace what you feel. Lead us.”
There was a long moment of silence and then Robert Baratheon, the King, nodded slowly. “You speak wisely, Great Uncle. I’ll think on what you said. I have to.” Another silence, and then: “Gods, I should have talked to you before. Asked you south or come to the North myself. Foolish of me not to. My bloody pride.”
“You were angry,” he replied with a sigh. “And anger can fester at times. Deepen. Become poisonous. And you were married then to a woman whose father… takes grudges rather seriously.”
The King laughed softly at his words. “Aye, that’s putting it lightly. Castamere.”
Someone knocked on the door and they both looked over. “Enter!” Robert barked, and the door opened to reveal Ser Barristan Selmy, who was holding a message.
“Your Grace, this has arrived from Winterfell.”
The King took the proffered message with a nod to the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard and then looked at it, his eyebrows flying up as he read it. “Oh my,” he said dryly and then passed it over to him. As he read it he could feel his own eyebrows rising as well.
The King rubbed his chin and then called: “Ser Barristan!”
The door opened again. “Your Grace?”
“Could you please send word for Lord Umber and Mance Rayder to come here at once?”
“I shall send word at once, your Grace.”
As the door closed again the King rose to his feet and strode about the room for a turn before chuckling slightly. “Gods. I wonder what Ned would say of this?”
“I think that he would say that it would strengthen the North at a time when it needs all the help it can get, your Grace.”
The younger man paused to mull that over and then grinned and nodded. “Aye, you have that right.”
After a short time they both heard boots on floorboards outside and then a loud knock. The King smiled at him and then raised his voice: “Enter!”
GreatJon Umber strode in first, followed by the former King Beyond the Wall, both of whom bowed before their King, the latter slightly more flamboyantly than the former. “Your Grace,” Rayder said formally, “You sent for us.”
The King nodded and then stood, before looking at them both with a slightly quizzical smile on his face. “Aye, I did. Word has come from Winterfell. Lord Umber, young Ned Umber has arrived there, escorted by Mors Umber.”
The GreatJon looked pleased but also a little confused by that. “Oh, aye? Good news.”
“Aye indeed, but Mors Umber was able to confirm something once he arrived there. A party of Wildlings – Free Folk – arrived. And one of them was Rowan Umber, the daughter of Mors.”
The Lord of the Last Hearth stood there, genuinely stunned. Finally he found the words to say: “Truly? Rowan?”
“Aye,” the King said with a certain something in his voice. “And he has acknowledged his granddaughters – Dalla and Val.” He looked at the equally gobsmacked Mance Rayder. “I believe that you are married to Dalla?”
The two men eyed each other and he could see that GreatJon Umber was in two minds as to if he should laugh or swear violently.
“I remember Rowan Umber well,” the Lord of the Last Hearth rumbled. “She was taken by a bloody wildling. Taken against her will. If that means that-”
“Peace!” Rayder said, throwing his hands up. “I know the tale of Rowan, although she left out the facts about her birth. The man who stole her and took her north of the Wall was not the father of Dalla or Val. The man who took her made the mistake of letting his guard down around Rowan and she castrated him and stuffed his cock and balls down his throat, killing him. The father of Dalla and Val was Gwyn, a good man who won her heart. They were married before a Heart Tree.” He winced a little. “He was killed fighting the Others. I made sure he’d never rise again afterwards.”
There was a strained silence. Then the GreatJon nodded. “Good.” He looked at Rayder. “And when you married my cousin was it before a Heart Tree?”
“It was,” Rayder said firmly. “I made sure of that. Marriage customs amidst the Free Folk vary a lot, but I knew that I had to do it right.”
The King looked at them both and then nodded sharply, before looking at the message. “Good. Robb Stark writes that he requests that I make it clear that Dalla and Val are of House Umber, further binding the North and the Free Folk together. I agree and declare it so. Anyone want to challenge that?”
The GreatJon and Rayder both hurriedly shook their heads.
“Excellent, as it looks as if Robb Stark has his eye on Val Umber. After all, they both faced that attack by The Mountain. Lord Umber – would you object to being linked by marriage to House Stark?”
“Gods, never,” Lord Umber said. “It would be a very great honour.”
“Then Maester Aemon I need to send a message to Winterfell if you please.”
“I will prepare one at once,” he smiled, wondering a little at the chain of circumstances that had come together for this.
“One moment – first you must witness something. Rayder – kneel.” The King stood, a great tall presence that seemed to fill the room with something on his face that made the former King Beyond The Wall go pale and then go down on one knee. Robert Baratheon reached out, pulled Stormbreaker from its scabbard and touched Rayder lightly on both shoulders. “Rise, Lord Rayder. You have served all of Westeros well. You have saved your people, helped the North, repaired relations between the North and the Free Folk and bloody well earned your title. Ned Stark should be the one doing this, but he’s not here and I am. He'll sort out the details when he gets back, but know this now: you have done well.”
Rayder seemed to be wrestling some great emotion as he bowed his head and then stood almost shakily. As he seemed to fight to find the words he needed to say GreatJon Umber strode to one side, poured out four goblets of wine and then handed them out, starting with the King. “This isn’t ale, but it’ll do. Welcome, good-cousin. Treat Dalla badly and I’ll have words to say.”
He chuckled, as did the others in the room, and they toasted the matter. It was not a fine wine, but it was better than he had been used to and would suffice.
But then, as he prepared to go and send that message to Winterfell there was the sound of hurried boots outside, raised voices and then a rap on the door that opened at the King’s command to reveal Ser Barristan with another man who was holding a message. There was a red thread attached to it.
“A message for his Grace the King, from the Lord Hand! Marked most urgent!”
The King waved a hand and the men bowed quickly, handed it over and then stepped back. There was a moment of silence and then the King looked up, his eyes wide and his mouth open. “Fetch the Lord Commander, Lord Lannister and his brothers, the Green Man, Ser Bryden Tully, Brienne of Tarth, Lord Tarly and Lords Royce and Redfort at once. Go man!”
The messenger bowed hastily and then ran out as the King looked about the room. “We need a map. My Lords, Maester Aemon, the Others have attacked Pyke. According to Stannis they failed – there were three of them and many wights, in an iceberg of all things. By all the Gods – has this ever happened before?”
Ice seemed to flow through his veins for a moment and then he shook his head. “I do not recall reading of such an attack of that kind,” he said in a voice like iron. “But Lady Mormont did say that something had been happening off the Frozen Shore. Freezing fog, as I believe she put it.” He walked as fast as he could over to a bookshelf, perused it briefly and then pulled out a map, which he unrolled on the table.
The others joined him there and Rayder hissed as he looked at the map. “So far south? But they failed?”
“They failed.” The King stared down at the message again. “Gods, this is strange.” And then he frowned slightly. “Wait, there’s two messages here.” The second message, again with a red thread, was pulled out and he stared at it.
Hurried boots approached again outside and then the Lannisters arrived, bowing and curious, followed by the Lord Commander and the others.
“My Lords,” the King rumbled, “Word has come from Pyke. The Others attacked there. They failed, but Balon Greyjoy is dead, him and his brother, killed by their kinslaying brother. Asha Greyjoy is now Lady of the Iron Islands, acknowledged as such by the Lord Hand and myself.”
There was a moment of utter stillness and then Tywin Lannister strode forward and took the first message from the proffered hand of the King. “Gods,” he said, sounding genuinely shocked. “The Others – at Pyke?” He narrowed his eyes and stared at the message. “From the date of this… wait, no word has come yet of any other attack.”
“We had a raven from Shadow Tower this morning, saying all was well there,” the Lord Commander rumbled as he took the proffered message from the Lord of the Westerlands. “And word from Bear Island just yesterday that all was well.” He paused and his eyes seemed to go somewhere in thought. “Wait – when Maege was here, she spoke of strange mists off the Frozen Shore, mists that moved southwards… could that have been this? It must have, surely.”
“If they can outflank the Wall…” Lord Tarly sounded as if he was deep in thought. “Wait. Why Pyke? Why now? Your Grace, my Lords, this makes no sense.”
The King held out the second message. “This hints at an answer. Balon Greyjoy and his religious lunatic of a brother Damphair were killed by their own brother, Euron. He literally vanished after the attack, but Stannis writes that Euron Greyjoy’s ship was discovered and that… a thing was found on it by Asha Greyjoy and Jon Stark. Some abomination of bone and flesh and blood. Foul magic of some kind. They and others escaped it and burnt the ship down around it.”
The room was silent after he said those words. Brienne of Tarth swapped a worried gaze with the Blackfish, whilst Gerion Lannister looked absolutely horrified. And then the Green Man stepped forwards, took the second message from the hand of the King and read it in full before handing it to Tywin Lannister, who read it as if it had personally offended him.
But it was Gerion Lannister that the Green Man turned to face. “You once battled a Fleshsmith I think, from the sound of it. And as you said, if you could make it into the Smoking Sea by being careful, then so could others. Euron Greyjoy is a man of foul reputation. I wonder he might have picked up from his travels? And now, it seems, he has allied himself with the Others.”
“But why?” Gerion Lannister said, bafflement in his voice. “Why ally with the Others? All they offer is death!”
“He might seek to use them,” Tywin Lannister said softly. “The message says that he intends to kill the Drowned God. And… if he has indeed been to Valyria then, well, who is to say that what came out of that cursed place was still entirely human? There are terrible tales of that place.”
Aemon nodded. “After the Doom, many tried to go there and secure it. Few if any ever returned and those that did either spoke of madness or were unable to speak anything at all. Lord Lannister is right – we must assume that Euron Greyjoy is not as we all are. Not now.”
“Warning has gone to Oldtown.” The King said each word heavily. “Ned will be warned. He’d better be warned.” He looked at the map for a long moment and then straightened up. “The attack on Pyke might be a one-off or it might be a precursor to a general outflanking of the Wall. Warning of the western shore of the North has been sent out. Winterfell should be aware by now. The coastlines of the Riverlands and the Westerlands must also be warned. The Vale too.”
The King turned to Jeor Mormont. “Lord Commander Mormont, how goes the refurbishment of the castles on the Wall?”
“There are parties of Builders and volunteers working on all of them now. Some are approaching decent shape. Some are still needing a lot of work.”
“Create a list of what needs to be done to each castle and how urgent each one is. My Lords – we must work harder than we have ever worked before on this. We must hold the Wall and be prepared for anything from now onwards. Call on whatever you can for this. I will send ravens today calling for yet more help. The Realm stands or falls here, at the Wall. They are coming for us. We’ll spit in their face and deny them every inch of ground. So say I. What say you? So say we all?”
“SO SAY WE ALL, YOUR GRACE!” The bellow filled the room, and as it did there was the crack of lightning and thunder right above their heads, that made the room almost shake.
Stannis
He had to admit, begrudgingly, that the Ironborn could sail. They were beating down towards Great Wyk, almost in the teeth of a hard Westerly wind that some crews would have had trouble with. Not the crews of the little three-ship squadron that they were on.
He also had to think that Asha Greyjoy would make a very good ruler of the Iron Islands. She might have been a Greyjoy, but she was free of her father’s grasping malice and inability to admit when he was wrong, as well as the madness of two of her uncles and the brutal stolidity of the other.
No, she took after her mother’s family more than her father’s. Which nothing but good for the Iron Islands after all the mistakes that her father and his siblings had made. She was clever, knew when to admit that she was mistaken about something and had a voice that could out-bellow fools like Lord Dunstan Drumm, who had sailed from Old Wyk with his sons and then arrived at Pyke with a pompous speech about how the Ironborn would never follow a mere ‘slip of a girl’.
Well, that slip of a girl had stared at the pompous fool as he droned on, a stare so hard and pointed that Drumm’s sons and followers quite quickly fell silent in their support for Drumm – not that he had seemed to notice at first. When he did, he faltered – and then Asha Greyjoy had stood and proceeded to tear Drumm to verbal pieces, in the way that the Robert of a year ago might have demolished a roast boar. By the end he’d almost felt sorry for the man, who had been reduced to a red-faced state of humiliation, unable to match the power of her voice or the fact that, as she said, she was giving him one chance to be silent before she ordered his throat be cut.
Stannis had then stood, nodded at Asha Grejoy, and then simply said: “As the Hand of the King, I can say that the Iron Throne recognises Asha Greyjoy as the ruler of the Iron Islands. Her father willed it, the Reader supports her, the Iron Throne supports her, House Stark supports her and House Baratheon of Dragonstone supports her.”
Drumm had stared at him, looking like a man who had totally miscalculated everything, whilst his sons had looked as if they wanted the ground to open up and swallow them. And that had been that – they had all but slunk from the room, glaring a little at Ygritte Stark’s comment that Drumm was a ‘pompous fart, all stink and dribble’.
He’d been impressed by her then – and he’d also seen the way that Theon Greymist had watched his sister as she had gone about the work of ruling at Pyke. He had known that the boy could be prone to boastfulness and bragging and after hearing the terrible tale of the future that Robb Stark had seen he’d wondered why the Starks now trusted him, the man who had captured Winterfell in that other future and possibly killed Brandon and Rickon Stark.
But that Theon Greyjoy was gone. In his place was Theon Greymist, someone who seemed to think a great deal before he did things. There were times when he could see him opening his mouth with a sly smile to perhaps make a jape, or suggest something off the top of his head – and then pause, rethink and change direction from where he had been going. He knew that the boy had been told what he had done in that other future – and that he had been horrified by it all. Ned Stark had had a huge impact on the former heir to the Iron Islands. And now the Call and Robb Stark’s tale had also had an impact. Theon Greymist was not Theon Greyjoy, not any more.
Well now. It remained to be seen where the lad would go from here.
Someone hailed the ship from one of the other vessels and he looked over to see that The Reader was gesturing to one side. Ah. Great Wyk could be seen, a small shape on the horizon partially shrouded from view by sea mist. He had not seen it since Balon Greyjoy’s foolish rebellion, which had cost the Ironborn so dearly.
He had been surprised when Asha Greyjoy had announced that she was travelling there, but then he had heard that she had almost been summoned there by a message from the Stonebrows, the leaders of those who had hidden their worship of the Old Gods on the Iron Islands. Elys Stonebrow was apparently dying and she wanted to see Asha at once. Given the nature of the rupture that had divided the Iron Islands so badly he could see why the trip was necessary.
Orders were roared from various throats and he looked up to see that pennants were being hoisted on all three ships. All were flying the flag of the Greyjoys, but now the ship he was standing on was also flying Asha Greyjoy’s personal standard, whilst the right hand ship was flying that of The Reader.
As they tacked into the Great Bay of the island and started to approach the little harbour that he could see that they were steering towards he could also see that there was a crowd gathering there. Perhaps someone with keen eyes or a Myrish spyglass hade seen them approach, but they did not seem to be hostile.
And then as they docked and the various passengers assembled on the decks of the various ships he could almost feel the mood of the crowd shift from caution to cautious hope – and then to something else when they caught sight of first the direwolves and then the green cloak and horned hood of the Green Man who had accompanied them. Alwyn of the Isle of Faces was standing there on the deck, a silent figure with a knapsack with a pot containing a Weirwood tree sapling at his feet.
He eyed the crowd, wondering what they were thinking. The last time he had been to Great Wyk it had been to conquer it, during Balon Greyjoy’s doomed rebellion. He’d been responsible for the deaths of many on the island. But now, as he came to think about it, none of them had been Stonebrows. At the time he’d thought that parts of the island had merely acknowledged the reality of the situation, of the overwhelming power that the Iron Throne could bring to bear against the Iron Islands.
He wasn’t so sure now. What was especially interesting were the murmurs rising from the crowd – “Stark” was one of the words on many lips, “the Call” were other words and then “Green Man”. There was something in the air – not dangerous but something that he could not describe or define.
As the gangplank thumped down and Asha Greyjoy’s guards and crew flowed down it he could see her almost twitching with impatience to be ashore again – and then she was off, striding down and then looking at the crowd, before smiling slightly. “Benjen Stonebrow, Ned Stonebrow. I take it that your mother still lives?”
“She does,” the older of the men said and Stannis looked them over. They were hawk-nosed, dressed in browns and greens with a badge embroidered on their tunics of a white tree on a red background. “She has little time left though. You must see her at once. The Green Man and the others too.”
Things happened rapidly after that. Horses had been brought for them and he paused to wonder as to why there were the exactly correct number for their party. And then they rode up the long hill, banners snapping in the wind.
The Stonebrows led them to a long house made of stone and timber with a roof that seemed to have been retiled recently. There were more guards at the doorway that they strode through and he noticed their livery again. The Stonebrows seemed to be stronger in numbers and in influence than Asha Greyjoy had said and he could see the same realisation on her face.
And then they came to the room where Elys Stonebrow lay on a bed, a white-haired shrunken figure. Yes, she was dying. But as Asha Grejoy approached where she lay she opened her eyes and then smiled a smile with a remarkable number of teeth for a woman of her age.
“I knew you would come. I dreamt it.” She paused and then seemed to gather her remaining strength. “My Lord, Asha Greyjoy, ruler of the Iron Islands. Long may you rule. Long will you rule.”
Asha Greyjoy looked at her before nodding choppily, tears in her eyes, before she went over and knelt by the bed. “You told me to come. So I came. Is there nothing-”
The old woman shook her head and ran her hand down Asha Greyjoy’s face. “No… nothing. As I told you, death comes as an old friend to take the pain away. But… there are things that must be done first.” She looked at Theon Greymist, whose face was white with strain. “Theon, come here.”
The lad approached and knelt next to his sister. “Old Gram… I remember you and-”
“You have done the right thing. Never forget that. You chose the North. You were right to. You have killed wights. You saw what must be done and you have turned away from that boastful, vain, empty other self that you could have been. Never forget that! Never. It must become your strength.” A gnarled finger jabbed at his chest.
And then, as if tired, she leant back before looking at Jon Stark. “You made… a good marriage, my boy. A good woman. Your children will be strong. Remember what you are, remember your heritage. It will be important in the war on the Wall.”
“I will,” Jon Stark said, looking strained. “Thank you.”
There was a pause and then the old woman looked at the Green Man. “We have waited a long time for you.”
Alwyn nodded. “Yes. And now your wait is over.”
She shifted in her bed and looked out of the window for a moment. “There was a Heart Tree near here once. My ancestors chopped it down to appease a Drowned Man who would have killed them otherwise. I am sorry.”
“You should not be. Your ancestors did what they had to, to stay safe.”
“The Drowned God is a jealous god.”
“A dying god.”
“I know.”
Alwyn smiled a little. “The roots are still there. They have always been there, deep in the soil. They were waiting. Deep roots are not touched by the frost. They hid just as you did.”
There was a moment of stunned silence. And then Elys Stonebrow slowly and painfully sat up in bed and grasped the hand of the Green Man. “What… are you saying?”
Alwyn patted her hand for a moment and then unslung the rucksack from his back and held it in front of him so that she could, with trembling fingers, touch the red leaves and white bark of the sapling. “Give me a few minutes outside. And a spade. I know where to dig.”
“Benjen!” The old woman snapped the word with a voice of command. “Give him what he needs!”
The two men departed and as they did so Elys Stonebrow laboriously started to pull the sheets aside. “Asha, help me up. Ned, give me a knife, a sharp one.” As she stood, supported by Asha Greyjoy and dressed in her white robes, she smiled a little. “I hoped of this. I dreamt once of this.” And then she was hobbling towards the door, where she waited for a moment.
When the door opened again it was to reveal Alwyn of the Isle of Faces, who bowed to the old woman respectfully and then led her out into the sunshine. People were muttering in awe to one side and as he followed them out he realised why. The Weirwood tree had been planted in a spot well away from the building – and it seemed to have shot up in size at least six feet and grown in girth. He gaped at it – and then he heard Elys Stonebrow sigh in contentment.
“I dreamt of this once.” She knelt at the foot of the tree. “Thank you.”
“The roots were always there. Your family and others never forgot. The Old Gods remembered. As did the tree.”
“Thank you again.” She laid a hand on the trunk of the tree. “Ned.”
“Mother-”
“Give it to me.”
The man handed the knife over to his mother. And then she drew the knife over her palm without displaying any sign of pain before placing the bloodied palm over the trunk of the Weirwood tree.
“Old Gods, hear me now! We were faithful! We were true! We hid in the darkest of times. But we did not forget. We will never forget! So take what little I have left and use it to fight the Others!”
And with that Elys Stonebrow stiffened and then fell to the ground, lifeless. And as he looked at the tree it seemed to grow upwards and what might have been the beginnings of a face formed on the trunk of the tree.
Robb
He felt almost as if he was hiding here, in this passageway, sitting opposite the strange doorway that he hadn’t been able to open yet. There was so much to do, what with Father being away in The Reach and the King being at Castle Black.
He thought about Val for a moment and then closed his eyes for a long moment before forcing them open again. He had to wait until a raven came back from Castle Black, from the King and also the GreatJon. He had to plan this out and not be impulsive. He wanted her and he knew that she wanted him, but the last time he’d thought with his cock instead of his brain he’d ended up with crossbow bolts in his chest and then a knife in his heart.
So he had to be more… clinical about this? Was that the word? He’d heard Tyrion use it once. Hopefully he had that right.
He closed his eyes and warged once again into Grey Wind so that he could stare at the mysterious door in the wall opposite them both, drinking in every detail – and then he jumped back again and then sketched a few more details of the door on the piece of paper he’d pinned to the corkboard on his lap. Yes, he hadn’t imagined it. The hand prints in the middle of the door were different. They were smaller, with just three fingers and a thumb. They were for a Child of the Forest.
“It always sends a slight chill through me when you do that,” said a voice to one side and he looked up to see Tyrion and Dacey watching them both. “It’s the white eyes. Disturbing.”
He laughed softly and handed the drawing over to the pair. “Aye, Mother can’t really watch any of us warg even now, she always grimaces and puts her hand over her eyes.” He scratched Grey Wind behind the ears, making the Direwolf huff with pleasure. “But warging is the only way to see that damn doorway.”
There was a pause as Tyrion and Dacey looked at the drawing, before looking at each other. “Aye,” Tyrion said eventually. “These runes though… they are in the language of the First Men. And an archaic form at that.”
“Robb, the crypts are amongst the oldest parts of Winterfell,” Dacey said quietly. “And the runes are old as well. And we’re not entirely sure what they mean.”
“’Plain can… sing? talk? to plain, singing? freedom? in the sky-birthed.’” Tyrion said as he looked at the picture. “I know, it makes little sense. I think that the concept behind some of the words has been lost or changed over the years.”
Plain? A memory stirred for a moment in his mind, something about Father’s vision when all of this had started, but he thrust that aside. “The handprints must mean something though.”
“Yes, but what?” Dacey stood in front of the door and ran her hands over it. “I feel nothing. Not a thing, not a line and-” She froze for an instant as just for a second very faint lines appeared in the stone, as if the doorway had shimmered into partial sight for a heartbeat. “What was that?”
“That was the door!” Robb breathed as he stood hurriedly. “Do that again Dacey!”
She ran her hands over the wall again, but this time nothing happened. “I don’t understand.”
“Wait,” said Tyrion, clasping his hands together and rubbing them in a line from his chin to just under his nose. “Wait.” And then he stepped forwards and ran his hands all over the wall, watching carefully as he did so. “Robb, can you please warg into Grey Wind and then tell us – howl or something – when my hands pass over one of the handprints. Point with a paw or something.”
He sat back down, placed a hand on Grey Wind’s head and shifted again, suddenly seeing through the eyes of his direwolf. Tyrion’s hands were moving in roughly the right direction and when they finally passed over the rightmost of the three sets of handprints he wuffed with emphasis, which felt strange indeed. Tyrion froze. “Robb? My right hand? Or my left?”
He shifted back and then stood. “Left.”
Tyrion looked at the wall. “And we see nothing. Very well. Time to test a theory. “Dacey? Put your hand – either of them – where my left hand is as I remove it. Ready? Go!”
Dacey put her hand on the wall on the spot they had indicated – and then they all gasped as faint, faint lines started to appear on the wall, going upwards and outwards until the faintest of outlines could be seen of the carvings on the doorway.
“How did that…” Robb breathed and then went still. “Wait…”
“The Nightfort!” Tyrion all but crowed. “The lock on the crypts there! When others tested it was intact, but the moment that you touched it, it fell apart! Magic! Magic tied to House Stark! When I touched the handprint there was nothing there, but when Dacey – who is part Stark – touched it, it activated! We have our answer!”
“What if I touch the other set of human handprints on the left?” Robb gazed at the wall, assessing roughly where the other carvings were. “Dacey, place your other hand about two inches from the one on the wall, that should be the right place.” And then he strode over and ran his hands slowly over the place where he was sure the other carvings were.
The faint lines seemed to shimmer for a moment and then deepen and appear more distinct. They were more visible now and the carvings could be seen more clearly, but they were still tenuous in places.
“I’m not a full Stark,” Dacey whispered in disappointment. “Robb – we need your brothers and sisters!”
Tyrion smirked and then turned his head so that he faced the part of the passage that led to the outside. “BRAN!”
There was a confused noise for a moment and then a cautious tousled head hoved into view in the distance. “What?” The word was said with a combination of suspicion and annoyance that he had been discovered, and judging by the sudden muttering of others in the distance his little brother was not alone.
“Get your sisters and then come down here!” Robb roared. “Maester Luwin too!”
There was a further confused noise and then the head vanished. Robb looked at the others and rolled his eyes. “The Terrible Foursome are still convinced that Vermax’s eggs are somewhere in Winterfell. And they think that they might be behind the doors here.”
Tyrion and Dacey both rolled their eyes at this, but then looked back at the lines on the wall. “What can this be?” Dacey breathed.
It was Arya who arrived first, an Arya who had mud on her feet and a smear of either dirt or dust on her cheek and Robb smothered a smile at what Mother would say on seeing her. Arya Underfoot had obviously been exploring again. “What’s going… on?” She came to a halt in the passage and looked at the wall with wide eyes. “What’s that?”
“Magic,” the three almost chorused, before eying each other and then laughing a little.
“Something our ancestors hid, Arya,” Robb answered her. “Tied to our blood. Arya, can you go over to where Dacey is now and put your hands where hers are now?”
“Why?” Arya asked, but she still moved over to Dacey, who showed her where to place her hands. And then as she did so she froze as the lines shimmered again and then deepened. Excited, Arya looked about. “This is magic???”
“Aye,” said Robb, and then he looked around as Bran arrived with others. Sansa and of course Domeric were amongst the first, then Mother and Maester Luwin – and then the curious remainder of the Terrible Foursome and of course Shireen. All slowed and gaped at the doorway.
“It’s magic that’s linked to the Starks,” Tyrion explained with an expansive gesture at the door. “Dacey’s hands gave us the hint when she touched the right place on the wall by accident. Stark blood activates it.”
“Does it open?” Edric asked, as eager as any of them. Then he frowned. “There are no dragon eggs on the carvings.”
“Edric,” Mother said gently, “I fear that this was closed and unknown when Vermax was here. This is ancient.”
The young Baratheon frowned in confusion at that, but then looked at the door again. “But does it open?”
Everyone looked at the door – and then Tyrion walked forwards and pushed at where the doors joined. But nothing happened. “I had to push as there’s nowhere to pull,” he muttered as he stepped back and then sighed.
“It’s the third handprints, isn’t it?” It was Domeric who asked the question, or rather stated the obvious and Robb nodded thoughtfully as he looked at them.
“Three fingers and a thumb and small hands at that.” He felt as if he had dropped a Dragon and found a Stag. “The hands of the Children of the Forest.”
“Who are, sadly, anywhere but here,” Tyrion mused. “There was one North of the Wall, but she died as Mance Rayder told us. And there are, based on the Green Man’s cryptic comments, some on the Isle of Faces. Which is reassuring, because they were thought to be extinct. Perhaps a raven to House Whent at Harrenhal or another lordly house close to the Isle?”
As Mother seemed to think this over and then turn to Luwin there was a sudden interruption: “Iknowwherethere’saChildoftheForest!!”
Everyone stared at Bran, who had turned bright red and was shifting from foot to foot uneasily.
“What was that sweetling?” Mother asked uncertainly.
“I know where there’s a Child of the Forest.” Bran said the words in a less rushed manner. And they all stared at him.
“You do not!” Arya said with a combination of indignation and confusion.
“I do too!” Bran snapped.
Robb swapped a glance with Mother, who knelt by his brother’s side. “Sweetling, are you sure about this? This isn’t something you’ve… dreamt?”
But Bran shook his head vehemently, before drooping slightly as his friends all stared at him with a mix of betrayal and bafflement. “I met her more than a week ago. She’s called Quicksilver. And she told me that I had to keep her presence a secret. She said that I couldn’t tell anyone until the right time.” He looked at the doorway. “Isn’t this the right time?”
There was a moment of quiet confusion. “And this Quicksilver is… where?” Mother asked, bemusedly.
“The Godswood, Mother,” Bran said quietly. He looked deeply uneasy. “I gave my word to her that I wouldn’t tell anyone about her. I had to keep my word! But this… this is important isn’t it Robb?”
He looked at his brother and realised that he was very serious and indeed on the brink of tears. “It is, Bran. It’s alright, you did the right thing. So, you saw her there?”
Bran seemed to slump more than a little in relief. “Yes.” His brow wrinkled in confusion. “She said that we’re linked somehow. And… she kissed me. On the lips, cheeks and forehead. Like it meant something.”
Someone, perhaps Dacey, seemed to gasp at that, but he didn’t know why. He looked at his brother. “Bran, can you take me to this Quicksilver?”
Bran looked at him solemnly. And then he nodded.
Bran
He was both excited and dreading this. Keeping Quicksilver a secret had been the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life. He’d wanted to tell his friends so very badly that there was an actual Child of the Forest living in the Godswood – but he couldn’t.
And now he’d had to tell everyone and he could feel their betrayed looks on his back even as he led Robb to the Godswood, with Summer and Grey Wind flanking them and Mother and Dacey following them. They seemed to be having a strained talk about something.
But before they got to the Godswood Dacey called on them to stop for a moment. He turned and looked at her – and also at Mother, who had a peculiar look on her face.
“What’s amiss?” Robb asked with a frown.
“Firstly, we need to warn people not to hurt Quicksilver when she comes with us,” Dacey said quietly. “This is too important to risk her life. No-one has seen a Child of the Forest here in Winterfell in centuries. People will be surprised.”
“A good point,” Robb said slowly. He looked around. “JORY!!!”
The Captain of the Guard, who was walking with his uncle in the distance, strode quickly over to them. “Lord Robb?”
Robb glanced at Bran. “According to Bran there’s a Child of the Forest here in the Godswood. Warn the guards and household staff that if they see her – her name is Quicksilver – they are not to harm her in any way.”
Bran nodded firmly – and then realised that the Cassels were both gaping at Robb with astonishment. “Erm… as you say, my Lord.” And with that they strode off, talking and then splitting apart.
“There is something else,” Dacey said quietly. “Bran? Those kisses she gave you? What order were they in again?”
He frowned in puzzlement. “Um.” And then he pointed at his forehead, his left cheek, his right cheek and then, blushing, his lips.
Dacey pulled her skirts up a little and then knelt besides him. “We know very little about the Children of the Forest,” she muttered and there was regret in her voice. “But my father gathered as much as he could about them in his research. And we know that they had certain values, certain ties to the world around them.” She touched her own forehead. “Thought,” she touched her left cheek, “Eternity,” she touched her right cheek, “Dedication,” and then she touched her lips, “Heart.”
Bran stared at her. “Does that mean something?”
“It means that you two are linked. Firmly linked.” She seemed to be amused by something and then she looked at Mother. “Your good-daughters will be… interesting.”
Mother blinked at this – and then she went white. “Are you sure?” She said the words in a strangled manner that made Bran look at her worriedly.
“I am.” And then Dacey stood again. “Cat, sometimes things are the way that fate has written them. I think that this is one of those things.”
Which was confusing, but before he could ask what she meant she walked off towards the Godswood and he scurried to follow and then lead them, Summer again bounding by his side.
As they entered the Godswood he looked about worriedly even as he took a deep breath of air into his lungs. He did so love this place, the smells of grass under his feet and wood and leaves and water were all things that made him feel connected to the Old Gods. Where was Quicksilver though?
As they walked towards the Heart Tree he wondered if he should call out to her – and then he stopped dead in his tracks when she stepped out from behind the tree. She was wearing a red jerkin this time and her hair seemed to be braided slightly differently.
Robb also stopped and his eyes widened as he saw her. Mother and Dacey also came to a halt. The direwolves, oddly, did not – they strode over to Quicksilver, sniffed at her face and hands for a long moment and then sat down almost at her feet as she smiled at them. And then she looked at him. “Hello Bran.”
He strode up to her, ignoring the odd noise that came from Mother. “Hello Quicksilver. I’m sorry, I know I said I’d keep you a secret, but we found this door in the Crypts and Robb said we need a Child of the Forest to open it and… you’re not upset are you?”
“No, I’m not. It is as I had dreamt it. It’s time.” She looked at Robb and the others. “Hello. I am Quicksilver, as Bran has already told you.”
He looked back at them. Mother was pale as a ghost, Robb looked flabbergasted and Dacey had an odd smile on her face.
“I greet you with earth and water, air and stone, in the name of the Old Gods,” Dacey said suddenly in the language of the First Men. “Little sister.”
Quicksilver smiled and bowed at that. “I thank you for your greeting, your welcome and your protection.” And then she looked at Robb. “So, you are the one. When you came back the trees on the Isle of Faces spoke your name.”
He frowned in confusion. Came back? Robb had never been away!
“Much has changed,” Robb said slowly. “And much forgotten. Your pardon – I never thought I’d ever see a Child of the Forest. I thought you were all gone.”
Quicksilver smiled. “We were protected on the Isle of Faces. We… waited. And now that the Call has been sent and the true enemy identified, we can walk the land again. Through the secret places that the Green Men have tended.”
“We need your help,” Bran said. “The door?”
“Then we shall open it.” She strode up to him, took his hand and led him across the Godswood in the direction of the Crypts. The direwolves followed them at once and then the others seemed to shake themselves out of their shock and came as well.
When they walked out of the Godswood he could hear the mutter as people saw Quicksilver, but Jory and his uncle seemed to have spoken to a lot of people and no-one seemed too alarmed. He could understand if some had been, but she was not a threat to anyone as she strode next to him, her hand in his. It felt… right, her palm on his and he seemed to sense a pulse from that hand, a strong and steady one that said that she was calm.
As they entered the passageway that led to the door he could hear the muttering from Arya ahead of him, protesting at having to wait – and which suddenly stopped when they came into view. “Hello,” he said as they approached a very wide-eyed Maester Luwin, Arya, Sansa, Edric, Robert, Ned, Domeric and Tyrion. “This is Quicksilver.”
The Child of the Forest swept them all with her red eyes. “I am honoured to meet you all.” And then she turned to face the doors, which could just still be seen as Arya had one hand on the wall. “Arya, please put your other hand on the Wall. Robb, please do the same on the other side.”
Arya did as she was told – but then frowned. “How did you know my name?”
“I know many things,” Quicksilver said as she waited for Robb to move into place. “I am glad to know that you have been turned from one fate in a future that will now never be.”
“What?”
“Another time. Now…” She placed her hands on the small handprints in the middle of the door – and then Bran gasped as the door glowed brighter and brighter, as if the sun was suddenly shining from it briefly. And then Quicksilver pushed – and the door opened with a groan and a scrape of stone on stone, each part of it swinging back into the darkness beyond. There was a chamber in there, in shadow.
There was a stunned silence that was broken by Maester Luwin. “I shall fetch lanterns, my Lords and Ladies.” And then he strode off with a surprising turn of speed for man who was so old. Bran edged up to the door and glanced into it. It was dark in there. And there was a smell of… stuffy air?
“Bran, please step back,” Tyrion said softly. “We know that door hasn’t been open for some time – the air might be foul.”
“Like under the Godswood at Storm’s End?” Edric asked. “Ser Barristan Selmy warned Father against the air there.”
There was a pause as they waited – and then Edric, Robert and Ned turned to him. “Why didn’t you tell us about her?” Edric said with a flail of his hands in frustration.
“She told me not to!”
“Why?”
“She was a secret!”
“We can keep a secret!”
“Would you have believed me without seeing her?”
The other three looked at him as if they were both impressed by his point but also disgusted by it.
“They would not have,” Quicksilver said with a sigh. “You humans sometimes can only see as far as what is in front of you.”
Footsteps heralded the return of Maester Luwin and the Cassels, both of whom looked at Quicksilver as if they doubted the evidence of their own eyes and Bran found himself realising that she had a point. They all bore lanterns in both hands and they were quickly shared about.
“Right,” said Robb with a bit of a quaver in his voice, “Let’s be about this.” And then he stepped into the doorway. Bran gulped and then followed him in, with the others joining them.
The room was wide, with well-dressed stone on all sides and flagstones that looked… well, less worn than the other parts of the floors of the Crypts. Some had runes on them, like a pattern that repeated itself here and there. But there was very little dust? How could that be? And then he saw the throne. It had to be a throne, surely? It was stone, large and impressive, and it sat on the far wall opposite the doorway. And it was carved all over.
Robb and Tyrion stopped dead in their tracks as they saw it and Bran looked at them in confusion. They had almost identical looks of shock on their faces. “Robb? What’s wrong?”
“It’s like the chair at the Nightfort,” Robb muttered as he lifted his lantern and stared at it. “The… throne, if you can call it that, that only a Stark can sit in, as otherwise it sends them mad. Why would there be another one here?”
“Because they are linked,” Quicksilver said solemnly. “A Stark who sits in one can talk to a Stark that sits in the other. The Wall can talk to Winterfell and Winterfell to the Wall. And more than that. Winter fell here. Hence the name. The first King of the Others was fed to the Heart Tree here. There has always been magic here, in the very stones under Winterfell, in the warm water that pulses through it. Bran the Builder built something special that has endured. And those two thrones… they were grown out of the same stone, by a Stonesinger.”
“Stonesingers,” Dacey whispered the word, before looking at Tyrion. “Wargs are rare. Greenseers are rarer still. But Stonesingers… men and women who can shape stone with their voice and a gesture… they are so rare that few have ever been recorded.”
“Bran the Builder was one,” Quicksilver said quietly. “It’s in the blood of Starks. It has slept for a long time. It’s time for it to wake up.” And then she looked at him.
Jaime
He sighed as he saddled his horse and then cinched the various bits correctly. There had been a time when he would have had a squire or a groom to do this. These days he did it all himself – as there was no-one else. Not for the Kingslayer.
Turning from his horse he caught sight of Addam, who was leaning against a post and looking mulish.
“I still think that I should go with you.”
“No,” Jaime said, with a wry smile. “The offer is appreciated though. But you were not invited and given the nature of the man who did the inviting, that might be important.”
Addam pulled a face. “You don’t even know where you’re going – just ‘North of the Wall’.”
“I’ve always wanted to travel and see something of the world,” Jaime quipped, before sobering. “Addam, I know you. Don’t follow us. Besides, I need you to do something for me.”
His oldest friend pulled another face before sighing. “Very well. What?”
“Train Joffrey whilst I’m away.”
This bought him a stare and another sigh. “Will he listen to me?”
“He will. I’ve told him to. A command from his father.”
“You do know that I might have to kick his arse to get him to listen at times, don’t you?”
“Kick away.” He stared at his feet for a moment. “You might kick some sense into him. The boy still harbours dreams of returning to King’s Landing. I see it in his eyes at times. Cersei spoilt him too much. And now he’s here and only now starting to come to terms with it all.”
“I know. The men have been talking of him. And few like him.” Addam strode towards him and held out a hand. “Very well. I’ll keep an eye on the boy. And kick his arse about the training yard when required.”
“Good,” Jaime said as he clasped the hand of his friend. “Thank you Addam. And yes, I’ll tell you what this trip North of the Wall was all about when we get back.”
As he led his horse out into the courtyard he could see that the Green Man was already there, along with the Blackfish and Brienne of Tarth, all of whom were talking quietly with the Lord Commander and Maester Aemon. As he approached they looked at him, nodded and then the three in green cloaks mounted their horses.
As he also mounted his horse he could see that many others were watching them all in the courtyard in front of the gate, from the King, who was watching from a high balcony with Ser Barristan Selmy and Father next to him, to a group of recruits that included a pale-faced Joffrey in front of Ser Alliser Thorne.
And then, after a wave of the arm from the Green Man they were off, trotting slowly across the courtyard and then into the tunnel that led beneath the Wall. As they rode he could hear the echoes of hooves on the stones beneath them and not for the last time he wondered about the men who had first built this monstrous thing.
He shivered as they rode out of the far end of the tunnel and then faced the winds there. A cold North wind was blowing, one that seemed to promise snow and ice and he thanked Tyrion’s meticulous notes about what to wear at the Wall and in what order he should wear it. He thought about his little brother for a moment and then smiled. He hoped that he was truly as happy with his wife as his letters had said.
“Perhaps I should now tell you where we are bound, Ser Jaime?” The Green Man’s words broke into his reverie.
“Perhaps you should. Where exactly are we off to? You merely mentioned a wander North of the Wall.”
“We head towards the Fist of the First Men and then I think North-East from there. I will have a better idea once we get closer. The ties between North of the Wall and South of it are still strengthening but I should have a good idea of our destination soon.”
This made no sense and something must have been seen on his face, because the Green Man laughed softly. “Aye, I know. Sounds like madness? It’s not. We ride to a place that the Children of the Forest have known for many a year. They are not a people who use maps that we men would understand.”
More madness. “Ser Duncan – Green Man – the Children of the Forest are extinct, or so my brother told me.”
The three riders in green all laughed at that and he felt his cheeks flush in anger. “What?”
“Your pardon, Ser Jaime, but they are very much alive,” said Brienne of Tarth with a smile that made her look almost comely. “We have seen them on the Isle of Faces. Your brother merely was misinformed.” The smile faltered. “They were protected on the Isle from those who would have killed them.”
“Speaking of things that would have killed them,” The Green Man broke in, “Ser Jaime, should at any point on our trip North I tell you to get off your horse at once and hug the nearest tree – you must do so.”
“I must?”
“You must. Because if I do so, it means that an Other is approaching and that time is of the essence and that if you don’t do exactly as I order then you will die.” He said the words in a way that made Jaime look at him suddenly. He was very serious.
“Very well.” He licked his lips, which suddenly seemed to be very dry. “And what will we be doing at this place?”
The Green Man seemed to go somewhere within himself for a long moment before returning. “Tell me, Ser Jaime, have you ever heard of Lord Brynden Rivers?”
He blinked at that. Then he frowned. “Tyrion once told me of him. He was a bastard son of Aegon the Unworthy, one of those legitimised by the fat fool. Bloodraven, some called him. He was… a Hand of two kings, I think and then sent to the Wall by…” And then he blanched and eyed the Green Man. “Aegon the Unlikely.”
The old man smiled slightly at the mention of his dearest friend. “Quite right, Ser Jaime, very good.”
“Why ask of him?”
“We’re off to meet him.”
He gaped at the Green Man. “But… that’s not possible! He’d be…”
“As ancient as I am?” The Green Man looked at him with a grin and a gleam in his eye, before sighing and shaking his head a little. “I went to the Isles of Faces and learnt much there. He… did not. From what I sense from the earth, the water and the trees he extended his life in a different way. And we must talk to him.”
And then the Green Man clapped his heels to his horse and led them in a gallop north through the trees.
Robb
He sat in Father’s Solar and stared at the wall opposite with a certain sense of almost bewilderment. There was a Child of the Forest in the Godswood of Winterfell and she seemed to be linked in some fashion to his little brother. In fact, based on what had been said so far, there was an excellent chance that she would be his Goodsister.
Mother had retired to her room and was probably still recovering from the very concept of the possibility that Bran’s future wife might not be human. It was a thought that made him sigh and then shake his head a little. To one side Grey Wind whuffled in his sleep.
In the meantime, there was the reality that was the chair in the room that they had discovered – the chair that made his hackles rise just looking at it. Yes, it was almost exactly like the chair in the Nightfort, or so he thought. The chair tied specifically to his family, or perhaps it might be better to say his blood. The chair that drove anyone who was not a Stark mad if they sat in it.
It was all important, he could tell that. His ancestors wouldn’t have built them or placed them or whatever it was that they had done to create them, Bran the Builder perhaps? Was that the secret to all the things that his ancestor had built?
Knuckles rapped on the door and he looked up to see Tyrion standing there. “Robb. Do you have a moment?”
He waved a hand and the little man closed the door behind him, walked tiredly in and sat in a chair. “You seem to be as bemused as I am,” Tyrion sighed. “It’s been an… interesting day. A Child of the Forest, here in Winterfell. I thought that they were extinct. We truly live in a new age of wonders.”
“An age that our ancestors predicted would come one day,” Robb replied sombrely. “They knew it. They planned for it. And here we are, stumbling in the near-dark, wondering what they had planned, through the haze of the ages.”
“’The haze of the ages’ – you’re waxing lyrical there, Robb.” Tyrion said with a smile. Then he sobered. “There’s no reference to the chair in any records here in Winterfell, I take it?”
“Not a word.”
“Another secret that a Stark took to the grave?”
“More than likely. The door also requires a Child of the Forest. We don’t even know the last time that one was here.”
Tyrion nodded, before leaning forwards. “Then Dacey and I must go to Surestone as soon as possible. Not just to ascertain that the library there has been restored after Bootle’s thefts, but to see if the old Lord Surestone had any records of anything that might be related to this. If the Surestones were indeed the recorders of the history of the North, then there might be records that we need to know about.”
This made sense and Robb nodded thoughtfully. “I agree. When will you go?”
“In a day or so. A flying visit, as fast as we can. Not as fast as our now-legendary ride down from the Wall, but as fast as we can. I have a few Lannister guardsmen as an escort, but I’d be grateful for at handful of Stark guardsmen too, in recognition of Dacey’s own Stark blood. We’ll send them back of course and return with a few Surestone guards. Dacey has already sent word.”
“Good,” Robb said. “Agreed. A good idea.”
A silence fell and then Tyrion looked at him quizzically. “I take it that you are awaiting a raven from the Wall?”
This made him smile slightly. “Aye.”
“On if Val is an Umber or not, as declared by the King and also Lord Umber?”
“Aye.” He sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. “Tyrion-” He looked at the door to make sure it was closed. “In that… other time, I… I did not act with… wisdom in my marriage. I married from, well, what I thought was love and the right thing to do after… I-”
“Say no more,” Tyrion said with upraised hands. “A different time. A different world. The politics of this time have… changed. The North needs the Wildlings, the Free Folk, call them what you may. Your Father is right – they can grow the North in ways that few would have thought. Val is key to that. The fact that you love her and she loves you is a wondrous gift to you both. It’s both political and personal – and the latter trumps the former in a way.”
He nodded choppily. “Yes. But what if the King says no?”
“Then the King would be a fool, but the King is not of the North and is not a fool. Nor will he say ‘no’. I will wager any amount you like that he says ‘yes’. He would do anything for the son of Ned Stark.”
Taking in a long breath he looked at the ceiling. Then he looked back at Tyrion. “I’ll have a word with the Cassels. The guards you take to Surestone will be good men.”
“Thank you, Robb.” Tyrion smiled, got down from the chair and walked out.
Robb sat there for a while longer, before shaking his head and standing. Enough. Enough wool-gathering. And then he heard the sound of hurried boots in the corridor and looked at the door as Maester Luwin arrived there, puffing more than a bit as he held out a curl of paper that was obviously a raven message. “Lord… Robb… from his Grace… the King. From a… fast raven.”
With a hand that he commanded to stop shaking he took the message. It was from the King. He read it and all of a sudden he stilled. He looked at Luwin and nodded. “Thank you. Where-”
“Outside… the Great Hall.”
He nodded, clicked his tongue at Grey Wind, who had already woken up and was looking at him and then strode out, feeling almost dazed.
He found Val indeed outside the Great Hall, talking quietly with her mother, grandfather and very pregnant sister. As he approached they all looked at him – and then Val seemed to read something in his face and paled. “Robb? I mean, Lord Robb? What’s amiss?”
“Nothing’s amiss,” he said thickly, before looking at the message, swallowing and then clearing his throat. “I have a message from his Grace the King, Robert Baratheon, the First of His Name. He has conferred with Lord Umber. Given the circumstances of your birth, but also what has happened since…” He straightened up and looked her in the eye. “You are Val Umber. Your sister is also an Umber. She is also Lady Rayder, after the ennoblement of her husband.”
Dalla and her mother both gasped and then looked at each other, whilst Mors Umber nodded and grunted happily. Val, however, seemed to draw herself up almost regally and then looked at him.
“Thank you, Lord Rob,” Val said after a moment.
“Lady Val,” he replied. All of a sudden he seemed to be unable to speak properly – and then he swallowed and stepped forwards and caught her hands in his own. “I would be honoured beyond words if you would consider me as a suitor for your hand in marriage.”
She just looked at him for a long moment. “Robb Stark,” she said eventually, “You are a formal idiot. And I love you for it. You saved my life at least once. Yes.” And then she kissed him, hungrily.
Ned
He had to admit to feeling a growing sense of unease as the ship he was on beat its way into the great harbour of Oldtown as the sun rose in the East. Just looking at the Hightower made the unease grow. There was something about the place that made him feel… odd. Strange. As if there was something in the huge structure that was looking at him.
Whatever he was feeling, Frostfyre felt it too. The moment that he had laid eyes on the Hightower she had been there by his side, growling in a low rolling tone that seemed to shake the deck under her feet. He could sense the message she was giving off in an instant: Danger.
“What does she sense?” Paxter Redwyne looked a worried man, his balding head creased with a frown.
“Danger,” Ned muttered. “Just that – danger. And I feel it too. There’s something there.”
“The Drowned bloody God,” Paxter spat bitterly. “Gods. Bloody Ironborn.”
Ned nodded and then looked out at the wharves and docks of Oldtown as they passed them. Crowds were growing there, silent and tense. Word had obviously passed of their arrival and he wondered who was in that crowd. Were there members of the Faith Militant watching the ship? Ironborn? He was a worshipper of the Old Gods, did anyone resent that? What was the word on the street about why he was here? Would anyone want to stop him, because they wanted a Septon to try and cleanse the Gate?
He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. He just wanted to get this over and done with and then go home, but the more he thought about it the more he almost despaired of the task ahead of him. He was going to confront a God. A weakened, insane God, but still a God. It was like something out of the Age of Legends and he was no Bran the Builder or Garth Greenhand. He was just Ned Stark. Frostfyre turned to look at him and let out a whuffing noise that sounded like admonishment and he smiled slightly. Alright, he was just Ned Stark, near-warg with a direwolf that made grown go pale and tremble when it growled at them.
“Where to Ned?” Paxter Redwyne asked. “Lord Tyrell will be at the Hightower I think.”
“The Hightower,” Ned said with a nod. “Let’s be about this. There are a lot of eyes on us.”
“The direwolf makes it obvious that you’re here, Ned,” Paxter said with a slight smile. Then the smile vanished. “The blight is making a lot of people very worried.”
“As it should,” Ned sighed.
Paxter nodded and then bellowed a string of nautical orders that made the ship heel slightly as it set a course right for the docks by the Hightower itself.
“You need not worry about Willas Tyrell – he’s not his father,” Paxter said as he looked at Ned again. “He’s young but he’s got a head on his shoulders. That said, his father could have hidden depths at times.”
Ned nodded. “Aye, his father always made me wonder if he was a fool or not. The siege of Storm’s End, the manner in which it was done, with no men being sent to help Rhaegar at the Trident… well, I wondered.”
Paxter tilted his head to one side. “We all wondered. When word came of Aerys burning people in court for the slightest of reasons and then your victory at the Stony Sept, Mace Tyrell went very quiet on everyone. There were rumours that orders had come from King’s Landing to send men to aid Rhaegar at the Trident, but if they were true or not, I could not say.
“I did hear the men mutter that he had become Lord Turtle though – he had drawn his head and limbs in and was looking at Storm’s End as if it was the only thing in the world. I don’t know if he was undecided or just realised that staying before the walls of Storm’s End and besieging it was the only thing to do, but… well, I’ll tell you this in confidence Ned. I was at sea, on patrol, the night that the Onion Knight sailed in to deliver his cargo. And when a seaman told me that he’d seen a sail by the shore, slipping in between it and us, I told him that he was seeing things, that it was naught but a shadow. And after we heard that Storm’s End had be resupplied, Mace Tyrell didn’t say a damn word to me in censure. When your banners were seen after King’s Landing fell, I know that he looked as if he’d been reprieved from the gallows.”
Which was all news to him, but Ned just nodded. “A difficult man to understand.”
Paxter inclined his head and then they both waited as the ship sailed on into the great harbour of Oldtown, heading straight towards the vast bulk of the Hightower. As they approached the docks there he could see men assembling by the wharf that they were headed for, with banners flying from standards. He could see the white tower with red flames on a grey background of House Hightower and of course the golden rose on a green field of House Tyrell.
The ship slowed as the captain bellowed orders under the critical eye of Paxter Redwyne and as it approached the wharf he looked at the party assembled there. Willas Tyrell was obviously the man standing at the head of the group, with a short spear of ancient appearance strapped to his back. Next to him stood Leyton Hightower and behind them both was a young man who looked as if he’d lost quite a bit of weight but who was still, well, pudgy. Familiar too – it could only be Samwell Tarly.
As the ship was moored he placed a hand on Frostfyre’s head and looked at her. She was still staring at the Hightower itself and still tense and growling. “You feel it too, don’t you?”
She looked at him briefly and he could see something in her eyes that made him sense that there was a very real danger there – and that something was coming. Danger. Danger comes. Beware.
By now the gangplank had been rigged and Ned walked to it, Frostfyre behind him and then his guards. He strode down to the jetty briskly, before striding over to the approaching welcome party.
“Lord Stark, let me be first to welcome you to The Reach,” said Willas Tyrell as he stepped forwards and held out a hand. “I am Lord Tyrell.”
“Thank you for your welcome,” Ned replied as he shook hands with the Lord of the Reach. “I have answered your call for help.”
Willas Tyrell gestured to a servant, who stepped forwards with bread and salt, and Ned nodded and partook of the traditional gesture of hospitality.
“Let me introduce you my grandfather, Lord Leyton Hightower, and also to Lord Samwell Tarly, heir to Horn Hill and the man who has done much to decipher the language of the runes on the Gate under the Hightower.”
Leyton Hightower had a grip of iron and a look of utter determination on his face. And then he surprised Ned by saying in the language of the First Men: “Be welcome to the Hightower, Lord Stark of Winterfell. There is much to do.”
Ned blinked at that and then replied in the same language: “My thanks, Lord Hightower. The Hightower called – the North has answered.” And then he turned to Samwell Tarly. “I met your father in the North, Lord Samwell. He was well. Asked me to send his regards.”
An odd expression crossed the young lord’s face, as if he was unsure what to say. “My thanks, Lord Stark,” he said eventually. “And thank you for coming. As Lord of Winterfell you’re, well, the First of the First Men. And they were here long ago, to build this.”
He looked at the bulk of the Hightower. “Aye, Bran the Builder. I’ve met his ghost.” He looked at the incredulous looks of those in front of him and then inclined his head. “And this is Frostfyre, my Direwolf. I’d be obliged if word passes that she’s not to be harmed in any way.”
There was a moment of quiet eyeing of the Direwolf, but word had obviously passed of her coming and Lord Tyrell nodded sharply. “Agreed, Lord Stark. Now – perhaps we should move to my grandfather’s Solar? There’s much to talk about there. Normally I would welcome you with a feast, but-”
“But we need to be about this. What’s behind that gate must be stopped. Lead on, Lord Tyrell. We must indeed talk.”
The walk up to the Solar was a long one and Ned found himself a little achy in the legs by the time that he got there, but he was interested to see how easily Lord Tyrell matched his stride. The tales were true, the man’s leg was fully healed again and he told the tale with little enough prompting from Ned, his voice shaking a little as he spoke of the brief glimpses he had been shown from the Field of Fire.
Ned had countered it with the tale of what he had seen at Barrowtown and as he spoke he could see Samwell Tarly’s eyes bulge a bit and then scribble notes in a book of foolscrap as he somehow wrote and climbed the stairs at the same time.
Lord Hightower had listened to the whole thing with a strange abstracted look to his face that had almost made him look gaunt at times. And when they finally reached the solar he saw at once that there was a woman there, daughter of Lord Hightower by the look of her. She curtsied at the sight of him and then spoke the same greeting as Lord Hightower, in the language of the First Men.
“My daughter Malora,” Lord Hightower said quietly. “She has been assisting in the consulting of these books on the history of the Hightower.”
Ned nodded and then noted with dry amusement at the start she gave when she laid eyes on Frostfyre. Or… was it surprise or something else?
He pulled the Fist of Winter out of his beltloop and placed it on a table to one side as he sat down.
“The Fist of Winter?” Lord Tyrell said as he seated himself and placed the half-spear he had been holding to one side himself. “Aye, and this is Otherbane. A weapon of the First Men, like yours. And it helped me to save my father, at least for a while.”
And then he told the full tale, a tale every bit as unsettling as his own take of Barrowtown must have been to the Reachmen. The tale of the Gate, with the face appearing in the stonework of the entrance, was chilling.
“I know that the thing behind the Gate is the Drowned God,” he said heavily after a long moment. “Have there been any further developments?”
“The blight,” said Willas Tyrell heavily. “It continues to spread. Oldtown is a tinderbox, Lord Stark, one more spark will set it alight, such is the state of fear and dread.”
“I take it that there have been no further attempts by the Starry Sept to ‘cleanse’ the Gate?”
“No,” said Lord Tyrell in a voice like iron. “And no such help – if it can be called that – would be accepted. The Septons have no idea what the Gate is, or how to deal with it. How could they? Some of them deny that the other gods even exist!”
Ned thought about what had happened over the past months. “Oh, they exist,” he said dryly. “You can be very sure of that.”
“You have heard about what happened at Pyke, I take it?” Lord Hightower asked in a low voice.
“Word reached me. Fearful news. And word about Euron Greyjoy’s ship. I know not what do say about anything about that. Madness.”
There was a long and bitter moment of silence. And then Lord Tyrell sighed. “Lord Stark, I am afraid that I must ask if you can-”
“Go to the Gate at once?” Ned grasped the Fist and stood up. “Aye, let’s be about this. And-”
But he never finished his words, because all of a sudden he felt a deep and terrible wrench in his chest and head, as if the world was spinning for a long moment. Frostfyre stiffened as weel and shook her head – and then Lord Hightower staggered as well – and then the entire Hightower seemed to shake and then chime, as if a bell somewhere deep inside it had been rung.
It was a warning chime not a celebration chime. He felt it all the way through him, as if something had rung within himself.
“Grandfather – what’s wrong?” Lord Tyrell asked wildly, coming to his feet as well and grabbing Otherbane. “Lord Stark?”
“Something’s terribly wrong,” Lord Hightower said thickly. “The Hightower itself cries out in warning!”
The chiming came again and this time Willas Tyrell looked wildly about the rom. “I felt that! As if it was below me though!”
“The Gate,” Ned said through gritted teeth. “We must get there at once.”
“Father!” The word came from Malora, who looked terrified all of a sudden and Lord Hightower turned to her and smiled a strained and terrible smile, before gesturing at her to stay.
They took the stairs down two at a time, with Frostfyre bounding grimly next to him. The feeling of terrible unease was still there, roiling through him and he could feel the Hightower still shivering, as if it was a fearful beast.
“I think…” he panted, “That Bran the Builder did indeed build a part of… this place. I feel it.”
“You feel… the Hightower?” Samwell Tarly puffed, looking as if he was surprised at being able to keep pace with Ned’s long legs.
“I feel it,” Ned admitted, looking at the walls. He felt – no. knew – that something was trying to warn him that something terrible was coming or was perhaps already here. Was the Drowned God suddenly trying to escape? Was it some new devilry by the Others? Or was it Euron Greyjoy?
As they reached the level of the main hall he could hear the cries of alarm from the garrison and servants of the Hightower, who could obviously feel that something was going on and it was only Lord Hightowers roars to keep the way ahead clear that stopped a panic-stricken mob from forming.
Down they went again, down yet more endless stairs and then Ned made himself pause and take smaller strides as the stone steps beneath his feet changed to a black stone of smaller size. He knew then that they were approaching the lower part of the Hightower.
There were guards there at the lower hall and the corridor that was there, men who had a look of panic in their eyes. But they were still true to their guard posts and only stood aside as they approached, their eyes on Ned and Frostfyre. He could see relief in those eyes, hope that he could do something and he prayed to the Old Gods that he wouldn’t let them down. Too much depended on this.
As they strode quickly down the corridor to a large set of doors and the sweaty-faced men that guarded them Lord Tyrell barked out orders to open them. They rushed to do so – and as they opened Ned would see a strange and terrible green light in the room that lay on the other side.
“By the Old Gods and the New!” Lord Tyrell muttered. “The Gate!”
As they entered he could see the Gate for the first time. It was just as had been described in the letters, but it was glowing, shining with a green, glowing light that spoke of rot and decay. He could almost see faint green flames coming from the gateposts and the lintel, but there was no heat whatsoever – the flames were sickly and cold.
It was like nothing he had ever seen before in his life and his heart almost stopped in his chest for a moment as he beheld it. This was a danger of an unknown kind, but something that he had to confront. He hefted the Fist of Winter in one hand and then placed a hand on the neck of Frostfyre, who was at his side, growling in defiance of the dreadful thing in the room.
“Gods,” he said thickly. “Where do I start with that?”
There was no warning whatsoever, just a sudden and terrible stench of stagnant water that had something rotting in it. And then there was a strange sound as a black-cloaked and one-eyed man emerged out of a cloud of stinking black air next to him.
“You die,” the man rasped as a knife flashed through the air and Ned had just enough time to twist slightly to avoid the worst of the blow but not enough to avoid it completely and agony flared at his side as the blade bit deep. “You die, Stark.” And then a fist met his head and he knew no more.
Chapter Text
Samwell
He had to admit that he… disliked the Gate under the Hightower. There was something about it that just made him want to walk away from the damn thing, the moment he laid eyes on it again. He knew what it was now, he knew what was behind it, but he still hated the fact that the moment he approached it he felt the kind of fear that would make even Father piss himself.
Which was something that always made him pause. Bravery… could it only be shown on the battlefield, as Father said? Or were there other ways of measuring it? It was hard to tell these days. At least in these past months he’d been finally free of Father’s endless bloody moans about how fat he was, how unmartial, not a warrior, too fond of books.
Finding Otherbane had shut him up. And researching the Gate and the language of the Children of the Forest had gained him the respect of Lords Tyrell and Hightower. So Father could bugger off if he came back from the Wall and started to drop unsubtle hints about joining the Night’s Watch.
All of which was a welcome distraction as they hared down the stairs towards the sodding Gate. He could tell that Lord Stark was worried, that Lord Hightower was frantic and that – worryingly enough – Lord Tyrell was holding Otherbane in one hand as they hurtled down the stairs.
But then even he could tell that something was horribly, horribly wrong. He could feel something in the air, something in his feet, about the way that the Hightower was… reacting? That made no bloody sense whatsoever. How could a building react?
Ah. Ah… but then Bran the Builder was supposed to have built at least part of the Hightower. A Stark had had a hand in it. The same Stark who had built Storm’s End and Winterfell and the Wall. Who had probably known that the Others would return someday, who had probably used magic regularly.
The Starks had to be linked to the Hightower. Lord Stark’s reaction, and that of his Direwolf, was therefore understandable. It was a natural conclusion that he couldn’t say because he was running too hard by now.
As they reached the doors to the room with the Gate he gasped. Gods – the Gate was horribly different and he could see flames. The hammering had at least stopped and he wondered why, as he heard Lord Stark mutter about how he could start with the Gate-
And then a cloud of black and stinking air seemed to appear to one side of Lord Stark and a black-cloaked man emerged from it, holding a knife. “You die,” he snarled. “You die, Stark.” And then he stabbed at Lord Stark, who twisted somehow just before the blow fell, but who was still hit by it, along with the punch to the head that the man added.
“NO!” Lord Tyrell bellowed, and then everything went sideways. As the Lord of the Reach pulled Otherbane free of its holder and hefted it in his hand the black-clad stranger whirled to face him with a snarl. He had dark hair, a patch over one eye, blue lips for some reason and there was something odd about his face that made Sam instantly uneasy. And then the man pulled a black blade made of shadow out of nothing and swung it at Lord Tyrell, who countered it with Otherbane and then – there was a flash of bright light and black shadow and Sam found himself flying backwards, hitting the floor on his back with a thud that made his head swim.
He shook his head, desperate to stop the room from swimming, to get back on his feet, what in the name of all the Gods was going on. He flipped himself over and levered himself up.
What he saw made his mouth drop open in horror. The stranger was standing to one side, hunched over and groaning, shaking his head as if to clear it. Lord Tyrell was prone on the floor, also groaning, Otherbane not far from him. Lord Hightower was also on his back not too far from Lord Stark, who seemed to have been flipped over by the flash of whatever the Hells that had been. And here was where was it all got strange, because his giant direwolf was standing by the prone Lord of the North – and her eyes were filled with burning red fire as she growled and snarled at the stranger.
And to make everything even worse the doorway from the room was filled with some kind of black-tinted fire, stopping the horrified guards beyond it from entering, and the Gate was shaking again, as something howled on the other side, a howl that made every hair on the back of his neck stand on end in sheer terror.
“Filthy, fucking, stinking Hightowers!” The stranger finally screamed as he scrubbed at his forehead for a long moment. “And Starks! Scum and vermin! Tyrells too! And Gardeners! HAH! But I made it! I’m in! So much for your wards! So much for your spells! I am EURON FUCKING GREYJOY! And I SPIT on your wards! Getting through was painful, but I’m here! I’m here!” He turned and faced the Gate. “I’m HERE!”
The Gate shuddered again and dust cascaded down from the ceiling. Sam stared at it in horror and then looked around quickly. Lord Stark looked as if he was dying, his chest barely rising and falling, Lord Hightower was trying to pull himself up and Lord Tyrell was also groaning and trying to sit up.
It was up to him.
Oh Gods.
Sam stood with a shiver and a shudder and then scrabbled over to grab Otherbane. And then he stood and shambled over, chest heaving, to face the mad Greyjoy as he cackled in front of the gate, waving that unsettling and bizarre sword in the air.
It was the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life and he issued a silent prayer to the Old Gods who had tossed the Drowned God through this bloody thing and asked for their help from this madman.
For a long moment Euron Greyjoy didn’t seem to even notice him, so caught up was he in his cackling madness – and then he blinked and frowned at him. “You. Boy. Get out of my way. I have a destiny to fulfil. I will become a God here today.”
“No, you will not,” he said, trying to stop his teeth from chattering with terror. “I am Samwell bloody Tarly and I’ll… fight you if I have to. You… you’ll not get past me.”
This seemed to amuse the Ironborn madman immensely, because he laughed and laughed – and as he did Sam stared at him. There was something strange about the man’s face, as if the skin was too loose in places. The one eye he could see was almost bulging in its socket and the cheekbones looked a bit odd.
“You?” Greyjoy finally said. “You’re a Tarly? Randall Tarly’s whelp? I heard his heir was fat as butter and a craven! Is it you? There’s more meat on you than there should be, surely?” The cackling came again – and then stopped. “Go away boy.”
“No.” He hefted Otherbane again and then noted how the lunatic blinked and looked warily at it. “Oh – are you afraid of this? Otherbane?”
“I fear nothing, boy,” Greyjoy snarled. “And I have won. Stark’s dying or dead, Tyrell’s over there, you are in my way and I will achieve my destiny. I will kill the Drowned God! And I will absorb his power! I will wax and others will wane and I will be a GOD!”
The noise from the Gate stopped suddenly and Sam knew in his heart that whatever the thing was that remained on the other side of the Gate, it was terrified.
And then there was a sound like something like a keen, or a wail, or a shriek from Otherbane. It shook in his hands as if it was alive and Sam blinked as it seemed to glow with red light.
Euron Greyjoy seemed to flinch slightly – and then he looked about the room wildly, before staring at Frostfyre as if he had only just noticed her. “YOU!” He shrieked the word. “How did you – No. No. NO! Stark’s dead! I killed him!”
Frostfyre howled at the Ironborn madman and Sam would see that the eyes of the Lord of the North were barely open – but totally white.
“Greyjoy!” Sam said thickly as the black-clad took a step towards the prone lord and the Direwolf. “GREYJOY!”
Euron Greyjoy whirled on him and he swallowed and clenched Otherbane in both hands.
“Fight me.” They were words that almost made him want to piss himself. But he meant it. “FIGHT. ME.”
There was a long and singing moment of silence as the mad Ironborn seemed to debate what to do in his head – and then he raised the black shadow sword in his one hand and strode towards Sam.
Fuck, he thought in desperation, I’m going to bloody die. But I’ll die like a Tarly. And he hefted Otherbane and prepared to meet that blow from Euron Greyjoy with all he had and – and then everything went sideways again.
Something shook the room with a massive thud, something froze him in place, Euron Greyjoy too, the latter trying to look in all directions with his one eyeball.
“Thank you, Sam.” The speaker was Lord Leyton Hightower. He was upright again and red and green fire burned in his eyes. “You’ll never be forgotten for your bravery. Give me Otherbane now.” The Lord of the Hightower gestured and then Otherbane was ripped out of his hands and flew through the air towards Lord Hightower. As it smacked into his hands he strode, shakily, towards Ned Stark.
Euron Greyjoy groaned and then shook in place as he seemed to try and break free of whatever had been done to him, but it was too late, Sam knew it, as Lord Hightower placed Otherbane gently onto the chest of the Lord of the North.
“OLD GODS!” Lord Hightower shouted and the room seemed to shrink for a long moment as everyone, including the now crouching Lord Tyrell whose eyes were widening as he realised what was going on, looked at him. “Old. Gods.” He looked at the Gate and then at the mad Ironborn – and then at the Direwolf. “A life for a life.” And then he placed a hand on the head of Frostfyre.
Red light exploded into the room, red light that came from the hand of Lord Hightower, tinged with green. The Direwolf froze in place – and then howled again.
“NO!” Euron Greyjoy finally bellowed, “NO!”
But it was too late. Ned Stark suddenly sat upright, his face smeared in blood, his hand grasping for and finding the Fist of Winter.
And then, as Lord Hightower slumped, bonelessly, down, Lord Stark stood up and hefted the Fist of Winter.
Ned
Until his dying day he never understood just what it had been that tugged him… sideways. He remembered a vague feeling of dizziness, of touching Frostfyre’s side as he fell, as the darkness took him and then… it was as if he had jumped sideways. Perspective flickered, he was suddenly a slightly different height and he had too many legs.
But he couldn’t move. It was as if he knew that he shouldn’t move as well. He had to be by… himself? He could sense that he was dying, or rather his body was getting weaker and weaker, what had the man who had attacked him had on that blade?
It was then that he caught sight of the man and he suddenly really couldn’t move, because there was something else there, inside that man, he could sense it, smell it, see it. There was a blackness about him, like an aura or a shadow. Evil. He was seeing a man who was drenched with evil.
And then the man identified himself as Euron Greyjoy, in a cackling rant that made his fur raise with fury and horror. This was the kinslayer Greyjoy, the man who had murdered his own crew to create something beyond horror.
The Gate was making horrible noises, some too high-pitched to almost hear, there was something on the other side of it that was terrified – and then he watched as Samwell Tarly confronted Greyjoy. He could tell that the lad was terrified, he could see it in his face – but he still did it anyway. He stood in front of the Gate, Otherbane in hand, and he stopped the man in his tracks. Because Ned could tell that he was afraid of Otherbane.
And then something ran through him, the knowledge, no, the absolute certainty, that the Old Gods were here, in this room, at this time. He could feel it. The room seemed to shake – and then he felt something else wax in the room. Someone was performing magic, an old and deep magic that came from the heart.
It was Leyton Hightower. He could feel it in the air and he wondered at how he could do so, if this was how Frostfyre could normally see the world, sense the magic, be aware of such threats.
He could sense the moment that Euron Greyjoy seemed to notice him again, that unsettling eye looked at him as the Ironborn kinslayer ranted at him – and then Otherbane was almost ripped out of young Sam’s hands and flew towards Lord Hightower, who took it and then placed it onto the chest of the… body to one side that was his real body? Was he dead?
“OLD GODS!” Hightower cried and Ned felt his body – both bodies? – quiver. “Old. Gods. A life for a life.”
Red fire exploded everywhere and as Leyton Hightower placed a hand on his head he felt himself suddenly fall through a sudden and unimaginable distance. Suddenly there was a need to breath, to take a gulp of air into his lungs and he sat up, Otherbane clattering on the floor to one side as he clenched his hand around the Fist of Winter. Strength suddenly flowed through him, the pain at his side receding and then vanishing completely.
He stood and flexed his muscles – and glared at Greyjoy. His mouth was dry, he could feel dried blood on his forehead and he was angry. Very fucking angry. And by the way that Greyjoy paled – even further – he could tell that the bastard was afraid.
“Euron Greyjoy,” he said, through a dry mouth. “It’s past time for you to die.”
Samwell Tarly had run to Lord Hightower’s body and was shaking his head over it and Greyjoy stepped back, before casting a quick look at the Gate behind him. Frostfyre was growling ferociously at him and at a gesture from Ned started to pace off to one side, flanking him. The Ironborn bared his teeth as he hefted the black and cursed blade in his hand – and then he squinted and pulled a face as he pulled another one out of the air into his free hand.
“I think not Stark,” Greyjoy growled through lips that seemed wrong somehow. “I have a destiny to fulfil! I will be a god!”
“No, you’re destined to die and become a corpse” Ned replied and then quickly bent down and picked up Otherbane is his own free hand. He could feel the weapon warm slightly to his touch and then, to his surprise the head of the spear lightened and then erupted into red flame that let off no heat. “Winterfell!”
He lunged with the Fist and Greyjoy parried the blow with a grimace, dark sparks sparking off the black blade, before ducking under Ned’s second lunge with Otherbane and then making Frostfyre dart back just before she could hamstring him.
“Damn you!” Greyjoy howled, taking another glance back at the Gate. His face looked wrong, the skin slack again, there was something dark under his one eye.
“Ned!” The word came from Willas Tyrell, who was at last upright and off to one side, looking angry and pugilistic. “Throw me Otherbane!”
Ned smiled a savage grin and then toss the weapon to the younger man, who hefted it with a smile as his face was lit up with the red flames from the tip of the spear. “Grandfather died to stop you, you son of a whore Euron Greyjoy. And we will end you.”
Greyjoy licked what seemed to be very slack and dry lips with a grey-purple tongue that again looked wrong – and then Ned swung the Fist, Greyjoy parried in a shower of black sparks, the other black sword came around but then met Otherbane as Willas Tyrell attacked on the other side. More black sparks and something in the room seemed to squeal and gibber as Greyjoy danced backwards, his chest heaving from the effort of the fight.
Ned took a step forwards. He was tired but this was a fight for his life and the lives of so many others and he lashed forwards again, joined by Willas in another dual attack that had Greyjoy again pushed back, black sparks showering onto the floor from the parries that he was delivering with those black blades made of something evil.
And then he attacked, slashing against the pair of them, forcing to step backwards themselves as they parried his assault. More black sparks – what were his blades made of.
But he had pushed too far. Frostfyre went in low as he passed her, those great jaws flashing out and then suddenly Greyjoy screamed as the Direwolf ripped out a part of the pack of his leg. She darted back quickly, shaking her head and spitting out what she had savaged from him and Ned could see that the flesh she was almost retching on was red and black.
Greyjoy went down on one knee for a moment and then staggered upwards, before the Fist hammered into his shoulder and something crunched, making him scream again. As he staggered back, almost hopping on his good leg, his lips peeled back and his teeth seemed pointed almost as he snarled at them all.
And then he dropped to one knee and thrust the swords into the floor in front of him. Ned blinked – and then a crack of lightning seemed to boom from the swords and something seemed to flash from them. Ned didn’t even hesitate, he darted forwards and somehow parried the flash with the Fist, directing it away from them and somehow into the far wall, which was scorched from the blow. The impact almost drove Ned to his knees – but then he came fully upright again.
“You die now, Greyjoy.”
The Ironborn bared his teeth again, looked at the approaching Willas Tyrell, glanced at the snarling Frostfyre, shot another desperate look at the Gate – and then he screamed in pain and frustration. “I WILL KILL YOU ALL!” And then he raised a hand and conjured a portal of black and stinking air, before passing into it slowly.
Ned started forwards, meaning to kill the wretched man, but then the room shook again and Greyjoy screamed again in agony. His face was distorted as he passed into the portal, horribly so and Ned paled as he saw it ripple in a way that nothing human ever should. “WARDS! BUT! I! AM! STRONGER!!!” Another scream rent the air – and suddenly he was gone, leaving his robes, which slithered wetly to the ground with an unpleasant noise.
Ned stood there panting for a long moment and then he looked at Willas Tyrell, who looked as exhausted as he felt. The black fire at the door to the Hightower was gone and the guards who had been on the other side took hesitant steps into the chamber, their eyes wide as they looked at him and the others.
“Be careful,” Ned panted as he looked about warily. “He came from nowhere, although… I think that getting here hurt him.”
“Getting out too,” Willas said. “Left his robes.”
“Not just robes,” Sam Tarly said, and there was horror in his voice. “That’s his skin.”
Ned frowned and then walked over to it. And then he paled. Yes. Euron Greyjoy’s skin was puddled on the flagstones, turning grey and then blackening as it seemed to sizzle in the air.
“He must be dead,” Willas muttered as young Tarly threw up to one side. “Who could survive that?”
“Someone no longer human,” Ned replied. “He’s… beyond wrong. Evil. Mad.”
And then the Gate shook again and then flared with a terrible, unnatural light as it pulsed. The Drowned God was coming through.
Garlan
The screams from the direction of the harbour and the Hightower told him that something was horribly wrong, but it wasn’t until he looked up and saw that the fire at the spire of the building was burning red-green that he realised what the screams were about. And he felt something, a feeling that something somewhere was very wrong, as if he could feel the tower itself screaming.
And then he clapped his heels to the sides of his horse and urged her into a gallop as he called out to his men to join him, which they did after various shocked and muttered oaths. As they thundered down the hill to the harbour he could see more riders and then he recognised Uncle Baelor and his own men in the colours of House Hightower.
“Uncle!” he shouted. “What’s amiss with the Hightower!”
His Uncle shot a strange look in his direction. “Do you feel it?”
“Feel what?” he asked, confused.
Uncle Baelor bared his teeth as they galloped down towards the harbour, horseshoes striking sparks off the cobblestones as they went. “The Hightower itself keens,” his Uncle told him in a rough aside. “Do you feel it?”
This sounded like madness, but then, after a long moment, he blinked. “How can the Hightower keen?”
“The wards,” his Uncle barked. “The wards. Father told me about them, but I scarce believed him.” His bared his teeth. “I do now.”
By the time they got to the harbour he could see Loras standing at the quay by a large skiff with a group of rowers in the colours of House Hightower, all looking at the tower in horror. “Garlan!” his brother cried out as he turned at the sound and sight of the horsemen approaching. “The Hightower! Look!”
“I know,” Garlan ground out, before pointing at the skiff. “Men! To the Hightower! At once!”
The men looked doubtful for a moment, but then Uncle Baelor strode up and looked at them in a way that Garlan vowed that he would use himself one day, if he could get that glare right.
They manned the skiff at once, tumbling into the seats and grabbing the oars as Garlan, Baelor and Loras jumped into the back of the boat and once it was cast off they put their backs into it and stretched out for the docks of the Hightower, with the helmsman barking out the timing of the stroke. They made good time, fuelled by fear and urgency, and as they rowed Garlan looked up at the Hightower and marvelled at the colour of the flame at its peak. What in the name of all the Gods was going on?
As they reached the wharf and threw a rope to a servant in the colours of the Hightower, Garlan sprang out first as soon as he could, followed by Loras and Baelor. Across the stone flagstones they ran, towards the base of the Hightower and as they did he could see Grandfather’s Steward standing at the main doors, looking uncharacteristically alarmed.
“Sers!”
“Wyman, what in the name of all the hells is going on?”
“Lords Hightower, Stark and Tyrell have all gone down to the Gate, Sers. Lord Hightower said that he could feel that the wards had been breached, that something was terribly wrong at the Gate!”
Garlan felt the blood drain from his own face and given the wan look on that of his uncle’s, he knew that he felt the same fear that he did. “To the Gate!”
They ran again, in a rush that was fuelled by terror. The Hightower itself felt wrong, as if the stones were screaming and as they hurtled down the stairs he barely remembered to start taking smaller steps once the stone became black and the stairs changed. Someone behind him cursed as he slipped but caught himself on the wall and on then plunged downwards.
When they reached the doors to the room that housed the Gate they found a mob of men in the colours of various houses, Hightower, Tyrell and Stark predominantly, milling about the doors, which looked… wrong. Black but also almost transparent. Wait, were those flames? The doorway was blocked with black flames, or something that looked like them?
“Make way!” Garlan roared and the crowd parted for them, until they reached the strange new doors. Ser Hugh Beesbury was standing before a slumped figure at the based of the doors, uncertainty and terror written on his face. “Ser Hugh, what is happening, why are those doors not open and what ails that man?”
Ser Hugh stepped to one side and Garlan looked at the figure – and he took a step back in horror. The figure was that of a slumped man in Hightower colours, or rather someone who had once been a man and who was now a decaying body that was rotting to pieces before their very eyes.
“Young Rodrik touched the flame gate, Ser Garlan,” Beesbury said with terror in his voice. “It… it did that to him.”
“What happened?” Garlan asked after a moment of horrible incomprehension.
“The Lords went into the room to attend to the Gate, Ser Garlan, and then… well, I was approaching the doorway when I saw a man appear out of a swirl of darkness within the room. I swear that’s what I saw, Sers, I will swear it on anything you like – one moment he was not there and the next he was! He stabbed Lord Stark and then he did something and the doorway was blocked with these fell black flames and…”
“Can anyone see into the room?” Uncle Baelor barked, “What in the name of the Seven Hells is happening in there?”
Beesbury winced. “I… I think that Lord Hightower did something, because Lord Stark and Lord Tyrell are fighting the man in black with that Direwolf of Lord Stark – and we all heard voices, Sers, a cry to the Old Gods that came through the flames and-”
The black flames suddenly faltered as they heard another voice boom from the room: “I WILL KILL YOU ALL!” And then there was a scream of agony – and as it ended the black flames were snuffed out.
They stared at the doorway and then Garlan, greatly daring, strode hesitantly through the entrance – and into a scene of madness. Lord Stark, bloodstained and grim, was standing there next to his Direwolf, holding what could only be the Fist of Winter. Willas was next to him, also bearing the signs of battle and blood, and both were staring at the Gate. Samwell Tarly was standing there as well, looking at something black at his feet – and then there was Grandfather, who was lying there on the ground.
As others also entered the room through the doorway Garlan ran to his grandfather, Baelor and Loras at his side, but as they reached Grandfather he could tell at a glance that he was dead. The Lord of the Hightower lay there, chest unmoving, eyes closed, his face set in an expression of concentration.
“No!” he cried out. “Grandfather!” But then he heard the sound of voices to one side as Lord Stark and Willas spoke with each other – and then he felt the room shake and then be filled with a terrible light. He turned his head to see that the Gate was glowing in a terrible way, with a light that was sickly and unnatural.
“The Drowned God is coming through!” Lord Stark cried in a great voice. “Get out, now, all of you!”
But he could not move, he was fixed in place with both terror and determination, and none of the others in the room seemed to be able to leave either. Willas bared his teeth at the gate whilst he hefted Otherbane, Sam Tarly looked as determined as he had ever seen him, Uncle Baelor stood up from his father’s corpse, tears running down his face as he drew his sword and Loras joined him.
The Gate flared with light, dimmed and then flared again, like a heartbeat – and then the stone inside it seemed to vanish to reveal a black void of nothingness. Wait… there were hands there, at the base of the far side of the Gate, huge and gnarled, bony and white – the white of a dead thing that had been left underwater.
And then those fingers seemed to flex – and then an arm appeared, withered and thin, but powerful enough to get a better purchase on the Gate – and then a face appeared out of the darkness. Lank white hair framed a thin, skeletal face, a face from his darkest nightmares. Sunken eyes over a nose like the fin of a shark, a thin-lipped mouth and a chin that seemed to have withered tentacles that writhed weakly. Then shoulders covered with what looked like a rotten material, and then the whole horrible thing heaved and threw itself through the Gate, landing on its skeletal knees as it shook its head and clawed at the flagstones.
He stared at it in horror. The Drowned God was there, a creature of horror and terror. Its fingers tensed and shattered a flagstone or three as it seemed to hunch there, unable to stand – and then it looked up. There was a madness in its eyes, he could tell that at a glance, madness and more than that. Madness and desperation and something else, perhaps the knowledge that it was dying. And then it opened its mouth and let out a moan that made him flinch, a sound of emptiness and despairing agony – and oh so loud.
It was Lord Stark who answered it. “Go back to the shadow you came from,” he snarled. “Go back to the abyss that was made for you. The land of the living is denied to you. Go, back to the grave that was prepared for you. YOU SHALL NOT PASS!”
The great chamber fell silent – and then the Drowned God looked at Lord Stark, its face rippling with many emotions, anger and desperation and, yes, fear. And then, in that midst of tumbling changing expressions, a look of hunger. The Drowned God lifted itself onto one hand – and then its arm shot out at a surprising speed and grabbed a trembling guard in the colours of the Hightower and pulled him back to its face. The wailing man had just enough time to scream and then the tentacles grabbed his head and guided it straight into the gaping maw with its rotted and black teeth, which crunched down. The man’s body flailed for an instant and then went limp.
There was a moment of utter horror in the room – and then Ned Stark raised his voice again. “Get out of here, you fools! NOW!”
“OUT!” Willas roared. “This is between Lord Stark and the Drowned God, now! OUT!”
They ran. Garlan knew in that instant that it was the right thing to do, that they didn’t stand a chance against the thing that was now in the base of the Hightower, chewing on the body of a man that it had so casually killed right in front of them all. And as they ran he heard the Drowned God groan something in a hollow, dry voice, something that he couldn’t understand.
Someone did understand though – Samwell Tarly went white as a sheet and almost stumbled over his feet. “Oh Gods,” he choked, “He’s hungry and we’re prey.”
They reached the doorway and passed through it and as they did there was another groaning howl of noise from the Drowned God. He looked back and to his terror he could see the thing by the Gate starting to reach for them again, its arm snaking out with a horrible speed that made his mouth go dry. Gods, was it reaching for him?
But then there was a howl from the direwolf and a hoarse cry from Lord Stark and the arm of the Drowned God was struck with a blow from the Fist of Winter and a bite from the Direwolf that made it recoil with a snarl. Garlan looked at the pair and then gasped. There was red fire in the eyes of the pair from the North and they seemed to be taller or larger than then had been before.
The Drowned God gaped at them for a long moment and then it scrunched up its face in hatred and screamed something then, at a volume that made him clutch at his ears to protect them.
“The Old Gods,” Samwell Tarly gasped, “The Old Gods are in the room. He sees them in Lord Stark and Frostfyre. And he hates them for what they did to him, throwing him through the Gate.”
“And we can’t help,” Willas ground out in anguish as he hefted Otherbane in his hands. “Grandfather died to defeat Euron Greyjoy, but I don’t know a fraction of what he knew, so I can’t help Ned now. Gods, what have we forgotten?”
The Drowned God snarled at Lord Stark again and then reached for the doorway again, slower than before and once again the Fist of Winter smashed into it – and then Garlan gasped as the arm of the Drowned God clearly broke, blackened bone piercing the white skin with a spray of blood that seemed almost red-blue. The Drowned God howled in pain, a noise that shook them all and made dust descend from the ceiling like a fine white mist.
“GO BACK TO THE SHADOW!” Lord Stark boomed. “INTO THE ABYSS OF DEATH!” He was taller than before, with red fire now playing on the head of the Fist, and Frostfyre was as big as he was.
The Drowned God snarled at him – and then the other arm swept out, broken nails at the tip of the hand as it clawed at Ned Stark.
The hand never reached its target, Lord Stark twisted to one side and again the Fist of Winter whirred through the air as it struck the grasping limb. There was another crack as at least one finger broke and again the Drowned God screamed in pain and anger, a noise that drove all in the passageway to their knees as they covered their ears.
Frostfyre howled again, a noise that made the ring in his ears cease at once, and then she darted forwards and snapped at the hand as it was withdrawn – there was a snap and a crack and then the Direwolf was retreating, worrying at something and then spitting it out. A whole finger, black bone encased in what looked like rotting white flesh.
The Drowned God screamed again, forcing yet more dust to rain down from the ceiling – and then it forced itself up onto trembling legs, one ruined arm held close to its body and the other trembling in the air as it looked down at Lord Stark and Frostfyre. Its head brushed the ceiling and there was a look of such utter rage and hatred on its face that made Garlan and the others flinch backwards from the doorway. All but Willas, who bared his teeth at the horrible spectre in the room as he held Otherbane in both hands.
But Ned Stark looked unimpressed. He hefted the Fist of Winter in both hands. There was red fire all around him now, the Direwolf too, but he was untouched by it and he realised that Samwell Tarly was right, that the Old Gods were protecting them both – and by extension them too in the doorway.
There was another scream of defiance from the Drowned God and then it strode forwards, its arms reaching for Lord Stark with a terrible intent, desperation written on the face of the god.
The Fist smashed into one of the hands and then the other as the jaws of the Direwolf added their own slashing attacks and again fingers were severed and what looked like ichor flowed. Some of it spattered against Ned Stark’s face and he flinched for a moment as it steamed and bubbled – and then he struck again. The Fist hammered down again against the elbow of the Drowned God and once again bone splintered and cracked.
The Drowned God recoiled with a roar of agony – and then Ned Stark struck again. He leapt forwards and the Fist was raised over his head and then with a great blow smashed into the right knee of the Drowned God. The impact was a crunching one that obviously broke bone and snapped tendon – and then the Drowned God fell, descending onto its broken knee with a scream of pain, before rolling onto its side. As one arm flailed around Ned Stark struck again, this time hitting its wrist and pulverising various bones.
There was a long and shuddering moment as the Drowned God seemed to hunch in within itself, drawing brown limbs up to its body, keening in pain and panic, its eyes clenched closed. And then it opened its eyes and looked at Ned Stark with a glance of such utter hatred that Garlan was amazed that the man didn’t vanish in a puff of smoke. From the way that the red fire around the Lord of the North and his Direwolf seemed to pulse, Garlan realised later that the Old Gods had protected them both from whatever curse the Drowned God had directed at them.
“YOU DIE NOW.” Ned Stark said the words with almost sadness – and then he strode forwards with deadly intent written on his face. The Drowned God raised a shaking, shattered, hand to fend him off, but it was battered to one side with almost contemptuous ease with the Fist.
And then the Fist came up swiftly and then hammered down against the right temple of the sprawling god. There was a horrible crack and black light poured out from the dreadful wound as the Drowned God slumped to one side and then keened in agony. Its arms flailed again, to be met with blows from the Fist and snaps of the jaw from the Direwolf – and then the Fist struck again in the same place on its head.
The black light seemed to intensify and then a wind seemed to start to blow from nowhere through the chamber, blowing towards the Gate. The Drowned God screamed something unintelligible, its head tilting at an almost impossible angle as the light seemed to dwindle and die in its eyes.
The Fist came up and then down again and again, crunching into the head of the dying creature that was now huddled before the Gate. One more time it went up and descended down to hammer into the head of the Drowned God, which shuddered and then went still.
And then, as Ned Stark stood there panting next to his Direwolf, the wind became a gale, blowing into the Gate. It did not touch Grandfather’s corpse, or anything else but the body of the Drowned God, which seemed to be sinking into itself as it almost appeared to be rotting to pieces.
The wind intensified – and then the body was hurled into the Gate, getting briefly caught as one leg hooked around it, before the whole thing was sucked into it. Garlan caught sight of a howling void on the other side of the portal before it closed and became nothing more than stone.
As he stared, stunned, into the room, the red fire surrounding Ned Stark and his Direwolf diminished as they seemed to shrink back to normal size. And then the Lord of the North grinned at his companion – and then sank to his knees with weariness.
“Gods, I need some ale,” panted the Lord of the North. Aye. He deserved it.
Chapter 55: Chapter 55
Chapter Text
Theon
As he knelt before the Heart Tree he squinted at it. It was not his imagination – it had grown a little overnight. The Stonebrows and the Green Man had been tending to it, the tree that had reconnected with such ancient roots literally beneath his feet.
As he prayed to the Old Gods he thought, once again, what his idiot father would have said if he had seen him doing this. What his brothers Rodrik and Maron would have said. And how much he didn’t give a damn what they would have thought. This was the right thing to do. No obeisance to a mad creature on the isle of bones he had seen in his dreams, or the insane god that he knew was clinging to the gate at the base of the Hightower. Just him before a Heart Tree, praying to the Old Gods, hoping that he would see Ros again soon and ask her to be his wife.
He'd seen too much death and madness over the past days. Far too much. He had a keep to build, a Northern house to found, a family to make. And an enemy to kill. The Others had to be beaten. Had to be.
He heard footsteps to one side and then looked over to see Jon and Ygritte approaching. They were hand in hand and he smiled slightly. They were obviously devoted to each other and he’d be unsurprised if she wasn’t on the way to being pregnant already. Noisy pair.
“Before you ask – yes, I think it’s grown again. Just a bit. But it grows every day. The roots, I think.”
They looked at him and then at the tree and then nodded at the words, before kneeling to pray. He bowed his head – and then blinked in shock as he felt the weirwood pendant quiver on his chest, gently at first and then more violently.
“What in the name of-” He was interrupted by the sensation of something somewhere shaking the ground, or a sensation that felt like that, because not a leaf moved on the Heart Tree, or anything else around. And then the pendant floated in their air, moving up from his chest, glowing with a faint red light.
Jon and Ygritte were both staring at him, or rather at the pendant, in shock – and then the Heart Tree seemed to glow as well, red light with a hint of green.
Someone, somewhere was screaming in the far distance and Theon had a sudden feeling that something was under attack far away, as for a moment he seemed to feel a great weight on his mind. For a moment there was a foul smell under his nose, as if he was near something that had died.
He reeled for a moment, remembering that island of bones from his dream and that mad thing that had chased him – and then he realised that Jon and Ygritte were at his side holding him up.
“Theon,” Jon said urgently, “What’s wrong? Your pendent and the tree? What’s happening?”
“And who’s that mad screaming bastard?” Ygritte asked.
The pendent jerked wildly at the end of its tether for a moment – and then Theon suddenly felt a shock that battered against him for an instant, as if something had flailed against his mind for an instant, but been repelled by something. And then he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that the Drowned God was dead – utterly dead in fact, gone from this world.
“The Drowned God has been defeated,” he gasped out after a long moment. “He’s dead. I felt it. Gods, why? Why should I feel it?”
“We’re Greyjoys,” said a shaking voice to one side and he looked over to see Asha standing there, white-faced, barely upright and next to a worried Uncle Rodrik. “We’re… tied to him, I think. We rule the Ironborn. It’s… belief? I felt it too, Theon. The Drowned God is dead. I… I don’t know what Father would have felt, if he was still alive. Damphair too.”
“Lady Greyjoy!” The call came from a Stonebrow, who was running towards them. “The screaming…” He shook his head, panting. “It’s from a Drowned Man. He says he can’t hear him anymore. The Drowned God, I mean. And he’s mad. The Drowned Man that is. Keeps screaming about how empty his head is now.”
Theon exchanged a baffled glance with them all. “Gods… what will this do to the Iron Islands?”
“Every Drowned Man will go mad?” It was Ygritte who said the words, looking horrified. “If they are the ones who heard that mad thing… won’t they all go mad?”
Asha went somehow even paler. “We have to get back to Pyke!”
But it was Jon who said something far more important. “Oh gods – Father! Is he alright?”
Jaime
The land beyond the Wall was like nothing that he had ever known. Or had ever suspected could exist. The cold that he had known at the Wall seemed to increase a fraction with every mile that they rode North from the Wall.
And there was something else that increased as well. Unease. The further they rode North the more he felt as if there was something terrible ahead, that there was danger before them.
He was used to chatter, or at least some measure of banter, around him as he rode. Not on this trip. They rode in silence, apart from the occasional muttered words from the Green Man, or the Blackfish, or Brienne of Tarth.
There was something about the last two that puzzled him greatly. They were not bedding each other – there was no privacy for that and not really the warmth. They had somehow found a deeply wooded dell for their first night, at the middle of which had been a depression where they had built a good fire.
And the Green Man had done something, he knew it, the old man had gone to sleep without a care in the world, leaving the Blackfish to take the first watch. Jaime had taken the second, rousing quickly when the older man had shaken his shoulder and then noting how the horses were all asleep as well. It was almost warm in that dell that night, not the bone-chilling cold that he was now getting used to – and yet the snow to one side was still there.
For so much of his life he’d wondered what had happened to Ser Duncan the Tall, the man whose life had been a legend from beginning to what he had thought was its end. And now here he was, alive and even more mysterious because of his ties to the Old Gods, who had extended his life.
The second day his unease had deepened further when they had sighted an abandoned wildling encampment. There had been a barrier of trees all around it – and he could see through the snow the char marks from where they had ignited it to fend off the Others and their wights. Some of the latter were still visible, like hummocks in the snow, with the odd charred limb jutting out.
He wasn’t sure, but perhaps some of those hummocks were quivering slightly, something that made him want to shiver until his bones snapped.
“There.” It was the first word he’d heard in an hour or so as they rode North and he looked to see the Green Man pointing at a small rise and an outcrop of rocks. “We’ll shelter there.”
He frowned, puzzled. “Shelter from what, Ser, erm, Green Man?”
The old man shook his head as if he was amused or exasperated. “There is a storm coming, lad. Can you not smell it in the air?”
He sniffed the air and then realised that the Blackfish and Brienne were eyeing each other as if both amused and… something else, something he could not put words to.
And then, suddenly, the other three pulled on the reins of their horses and halted them as their eyes widened. Jaime followed suit, a hand going to the hilt of his sword as he looked about. “What’s wrong? Danger?”
The Green Man turned and looked South for a long moment, before shaking his head. “Gods,” he said after a long moment. “Something has happened to the South of us.”
“A… a stink rose from the air?” Brienne of Tarth sounded as if she was struggling for words. “There was foulness – and then it was gone. What was that?”
The Green Man took a deep breath of air into his lungs. “The Drowned God is dead,” he said eventually. “A God has died. Even though a mad one, the Old Gods will mourn him. Ned Stark has succeeded. I hope he survived the battle.” He eyed the horizon and for the first time Jaime could see the black line of clouds coming from the North. “Ride for the ridge! Now! There’s a cave there to shelter in!”
And so they rode.
Catelyn
She sat at her desk and stared down at the parchment in front of her. The empty parchment. The empty parchment that was supposed to be the letter to Father. She sighed yet again and ran her hand over her bulging midriff. The baby wasn’t helping – he or she was active today.
“Cat?”
She looked up to see Dacey standing there in the doorway, looking a bit worried.
“Are you alright Cat?”
She smiled slightly. “Dacey, I’m trying to write a letter to my father about Robb’s wedding.”
Her cousin by marriage frowned slightly and then closed the door behind her and strode over to the nearest chair to the desk, where she seated herself. “Ah.”
“Ah, indeed.”
“Val’s parentage, or part of that at least?”
“Yes.” She paused and then took a deep breath. “My father is… well, he’s always been concerned, shall we say, about the importance of marriage and family. House Tully is not as, well, well-established as other houses like House Stark. That’s why Father insisted on my marriage to Ned after Brandon’s death. Although we Tullys go back further than the Conquest and the burning of Harrenhall, Father has always been… keen to foster marriage alliances and deepen our control over the Riverlands.”
Dacey nodded. “And now Robb is marrying Val. Who is half of House Umber but also half of…” She paused, visibly searching for the right words.
“Half Wildling, or Free Folk as they call themselves,” Cat pointed out. “Hardly illustrious, at least in the eyes of Father. So, I must write to him and stress the importance of the marriage – and House Umber.”
Another nod greeted this. “On the matter of Robb’s wedding, will Lord Tully be, ah, attending?”
Cat sighed. “Robb and Val wish for a quick wedding, but with Ned still in the South, we will have to wait for him I think.” She felt her voice wobble for a moment. There was still no word from Ned or anyone at Oldtown and whilst she knew that her Ned was brave and strong and had the Fist of Winter, she also knew that when Ned had gone South in Robb’s memories he had been betrayed – and had died. Starks do not prosper South of the Neck, was the saying, and whilst she did not want to believe that it was true, she feared that it was.
Dacey looked at her and then sighed herself. “Tyrion and I can put off our trip to Surestone for as long as you like, Cat. We-”
She cut her good-cousin off with a strained smile. “Dacey, no. You need to go home and set matters right there. Yes, Bootle’s loot has been returned to Surestone, but you need to make sure that all is well there. Surestone is your home, Dacey, you need to return there and set everything in order. Your father’s books alone would make it worth the visit.”
“Thank you, Cat,” Dacey said, looking strained. “But with no news yet of Ned and his battle with the Drowned God… and this talk of someone trying to kill a Stark, perhaps Ned…”
She closed her eyes for a long and strained moment – and then she heard the sound of hesitant knuckles on the door, which then creaked open to reveal a worried-looking Bran. “Mother?”
“What is it, Bran?” she asked with a warm smile that was a bit forced.
Her son seemed to sense that she was worried, but stepped into the room – and then turned to reveal Quicksilver, who was dressed in a black garment and looked very solemn. After a moment the Child of the Forest bowed formally and then took a measured step forward. “Lady Stark, I bring word from Oldtown.”
She stood abruptly, her hands going instinctively to her swollen stomach. “You have word of Ned? How?”
Quicksilver smiled thinly. “The Old Gods speak freely to our people.” The smile vanished. “The Drowned God is dead. The Stark – Ned Stark as you know him – killed him.”
She felt light-headed for an instant and then girded herself. “Is… Ned… I mean, did he-”
“The Stark lives, fear not.” Quicksilver smiled again.
Cat suppressed the need to burst into tears with relief, and instead inspected the bottom of her skirt as some inconvenient tears fell from her eyes. “Ned is alright?” She eventually choked the words out.
Quicksilver’s eyes flickered a little. “He has killed a god. The Old Gods helped him, but… he has been marked. He will bear a scar. And what that scar will mean I cannot say because I do not know. But I will say this: he bears the favour of the Old Gods. And he will return to Winterfell.”
And then Cat wept.
Ned
When he woke up he lay there for a long moment, staring at the ceiling in some puzzlement. This was not a familiar ceiling. And then the memories crashed home, almost like bludgeons. The fights before the Gate. Him… dying? Had he really been dead in that first battle, seeing things from the eyes of Frostfyre, before Leyton Hightower had sacrificed his life for that his?
And then the fight against the Drowned God. Who he had almost felt sorry for at times.
Which was a peculiar thing. The creature had been trying to kill him. Whence had the sorrow come from? Had the Old Gods influenced him? Had it been their sorrowful but determined support that had helped him to survive that fight? He’d felt… something around him and in him as he and Frostfyre had battled the huge but pitiable creature. And they’d won.
He closed his eyes for a long moment as he luxuriated in the feeling of being in clean sheets. He had dreamt hard when he had been asleep, he knew that, but remembering the dreams was like trying to hold smoke in his hands. He remembered one dream – being in the arms of his mother, whilst Father held them both. But their eyes… their eyes had been filled with red fire tinged with green. He remembered feeling utterly safe as he was held. What had that been? Just a dream… or something else?
Feeling the touch of the sheets on his body he lifted them. Ah. He was naked. He had a vague memory of quaffing a few mugs of ale whilst a Maester examined himself and Willas Tyrell, remembered devouring a honeycake and then dunking himself in a bath and then… nothing. Just sleep.
He swung himself mostly out of bed and then groaned as a large number of aches and pains made their presence known. Gods, but he ached in places he’d barely suspected even existed. Not since the ride after the Battle of the Ruby Ford had he felt this way.
He sensed something to one side and turned to see Frostfyre sitting there, watching him. There was something in her eyes that made him pause, an understanding and a knowledge.
They had both killed a god. A mad god, a desperate thing of impulses and desires, a starving creature of darkness and night. But still a god. He looked at the huge direwolf and she looked back at him. And then they both nodded at each other.
“Life is for the living,” he said quietly, before standing with a groan.
There was a mirror on one wall, quite a fine one, by a table that had a bowl of water on it. He plunged his face into the water for a long moment, before straightening up and running his wet fingers through his hair and then looking at his reflection, before wincing slightly. There was a pale line, a scar, on his face, that ran from his right forehead, across the bridge of his nose and over his upper left cheek. That was from the blood of the Drowned God. He was marked by the blood of a god.
And then there was the pale line on the side of his torso that had been left by the blade borne by Euron Greyjoy. That should have been a fatal blow – until Lord Hightower had sacrificed himself for him.
He took a deep breath – and then he looked about for a shirt and breeches. They were off to one side, Southern-style but finely made. As he dressed himself he cleared his throat and looked at the door. “Attendants? Guards?”
There was a confused noise outside the door and then there was a brief knock on it, before it opened cautiously and a hesitant head poked through. It was one of his guards, Will by name. “My Lord? Are you well?”
“ We are well,” Ned nodded at Frostfyre, who was watching them both. “A leg of lamb for Frostfyre please, not too well done. And I need to break my fast.” He stamped into a pair of boots – and his stomach took that moment to rumble loudly.
“Aye, as I heard my Lord,” Will grinned. He turned to the door. “Arry! Lord Stark is awake! A leg o’ lamb for the Lady Frostfyre!” He turned back. “Lords Tyrell an’ Hightower sent word that when you did awake, to meet them in the old lord’s solar. I can send food there, my Lord. And the leg o’ lamb.”
He repressed a sigh. “Very well. Send word that I’m on my way.” He paused as his stomach complained again. “And can someone get me a honeycake to eat on the way?”
There were indeed three honeycakes that he ate on the way, Frostfyre padding behind him with his guards and as they passed along the halls of the Hightower he was aware of the way that those servants and others in the colours of House Hightower bowed as he passed.
“Will?” he asked quietly as they strode up the stairs to what had been Leyton Hightower’s solar.
“Aye, my Lord?”
“What word have you heard?”
The guard tilted his head to one side and then licked his lips. “Word is spreading of what you did, my Lord. Killed a god, I mean. Erm, well… Godslayer, some are calling you now. In the city… well, they call you the saviour of Oldtown.”
Godslayer. It made his bloody skin crawl. “I did what had to be done, Will. Nothing more. I did my duty.”
Frostfyre made a huffing noise to one side and Will looked at him oddly. “As you say, my Lord. As you say.”
When they made it to the closed door of the solar he could see by the way that the two guards in the tabards of House Hightower’s eyes widened almost comically that they were surprised by his arrival. Then he paused. “Will?”
“My Lord?”
“How long was I asleep for?”
“Almost two days my Lord.”
Gods. No wonder he was hungry. He looked at the guards at the door. “Lords Hightower and Tyrell bade me come.”
The taller one to the right nodded hurriedly. “Aye, my Lord.” He knocked on the door and then opened it. “Lord Stark, my Lords!”
“Thank you Will, stay here,” Ned muttered, before pausing slightly. “And get that food, I beg of you, before my stomach meets my spine?”
“I will my Lord!”
He stepped through into the bright and airy room that had been Leyton Hightower’s solar. In it sat Baelor Hightower, now Lord Hightower, Willas Tyrell, who looked weary, and Samwell Tarly around a table, all looking up at him. And by the window stood Malora Hightower, her face drawn with sorrow.
He blinked at that and then nodded sombrely. “Let me first say that I owe the late Lord Hightower a great debt. He saved my life. And I-”
“Ned, if I may call you Ned, let me stop you there,” Willas interjected with an upraised hand. He took a deep breath. “Yes, Grandfather gave his life to save you. But then you defeated Euron Greyjoy and saved my own life, which repaid any debt. And then… and then your battle with and defeat of the Drowned God left us deeply in your debt, Ned.”
There was a moment of silence. It was broken by Malora Hightower. “He knew.”
“What?” Baelor Hightower asked, looking confused.
“I said that he knew.” She passed a shaking hand over her forehead. “There was… there was a prophecy, if it can be called that.”
Ned felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. “What prophecy?”
“An inscription,” Malora replied, picking up a piece of parchment and handing it over to Samwell Tarly, who looked at it and then tilted his head in puzzlement for a moment, before blinking hard and handing it over to him.
He looked down at it. It was written in an archaic version of the language of the First Men. A very archaic version. “When the gate to the dark opens,” he read out loud, “And the plain-talking one comes to fight the dying one, watch for the greedy one who desires to drink from the pool.”
There was another moment of silence. “Plain-talking means Stark,” he said eventually. “And the greedy one was Euron Greyjoy. He wanted to kill the Drowned God, but… pool?”
“Who knows what could be left behind by a dead god?” Malora said in a quiet and bitter voice. “Greyjoy must have thought, from what Willas has told us, that he could become a god himself by… feeding on the corpse of the Drowned God?”
“The man was mad,” Willas spat, his nostrils flared. “Mad and raving. And dangerous. He broke though ancient wards made by our ancestors as if they were kindling.”
“Getting out hurt him though,” Sam Tarly muttered. Then he pulled a face. “He left his skin behind when he fled.”
“Then he’s dead ,” Baelor Hightower insisted roughly, his fist beating on the table. “No man can survive that!”
Ned sat down at the table and then looked at them all bleakly. “Was he a man though? The way that he looked, the loose skin on his face, the things we know that he did to his crew… what is he now? Is he still a man? He said he’d been to Valyria – what happened to him there? Almost everyone that goes there dies or, in the rarest of cases like Aerea Targaryen, comes back infected with something – or somethings. And there were the tales of those that marched in and never came back. Demons were mentioned by some. Who knows what’s there?”
Yet another silence fell, one that was punctuated with uneasy glances. Willas Tyrell broke it: “The word of the death of the Drowned God is only slowly spreading, but we already have a few messages from those areas afflicted by the blight – it is lifting, Ned. We await more news from the places that were afflicted, but the first word is good, of dried grapes that are refilling and grain that stands tall again.”
He let out a long sigh of part relief. “Confirmation would be welcome of that. Welcome tidings at least.”
There was a knock at the door, which opened to reveal a number of servants in the livery of House Hightower all bearing food on platters that made his mouth water and his stomach rumble.
“I see that lunch has arrived, Ned,” Willas said with a smile. “It sounds like you are hungry.”
He was indeed, but he made sure that the leg of lamb went to Frostfyre first. Then he took a massive bite of the chicken leg on the platter before him, before pausing and swallowing. “Samwell Tarly.”
The young man looked at him. “Lord Stark?”
“You saved my life and that of Lord Tyrell. You stood between the Gate and Euron Greyjoy.”
The heir to Horn Hill looked intensely conflicted. “I… I did my Lord. I was… I was terrified at the time, so I don’t-”
“Only fools or madmen are never afraid when they go into battle. Kneel.”
Sam Tarly stood, his eyes very wide – and then he knelt.
“The North does not have knights the way that the South does. But I, as Lord Stark, do declare you as a knight now. Rise, Ser Samwell. You have done well.”
Brynden
He’d wondered, as they rode for that crag, if the Green Man knew something about the place they were headed for that wasn’t immediately apparent. And he was right. There was a path there, which led to a gulley, which lead to a dark cavern entrance that was big enough to ride into. From the rushes all over the cavern floor and the debris that had been piled outside the entrance, he could see that horses had been stabled in the cavern in the past.
‘Refuge Crag’ was the name of the place – there were runes carved by the entrance – and as he got down off Wanderer and looked around he could see that the place was larger than he had thought. The entrance faced South, which allowed light, even with the rocks in the gulley outside, and he could see stacked firewood and more rushes off to one side.
“There’s a cleft in the wall over there that can be used as a fireplace,” The Green Man said as he dismounted. “Ser Jaime, please light a fire. There’s kindling and wood in here. The place has been used by both the Night’s Watch and the Free Folk, sometimes even at the same time. I was told about it at Castle Black. It’s a refuge.”
“It’s warm,” said Brienne as she looked about the place, looking surprised. “The air’s warm in here.”
“Warm springs, further down. We’ll need light though. Brynden, help me with the doors once the boy has got the fire going. And Brienne, light a lantern or two please.”
“I’m not a bloody boy,” the Kingslayer muttered as he knelt by the cleft and peered at it. “Ah. It’s a hearth indeed.” And then he started to lay a fire, somewhat clumsily, but with reasonably competent hands.
As the Kingslayer used a flint and steel to light the kindling and then blew on it carefully, Brynden looked at the entranceway and then realised that there were indeed doors – two wooden frames on either side that could be moved into place, with what looked like wool held in place with wicker lattices.
With the cavern starting to be lit by the fire and the lanterns he joined the Green Man in shifting the ‘doors’ to block the entrance – and just in time, based on the snowflakes that were pouring down outside and the howl of the wind.
“Will we be safe in here?” Brynden asked quietly. “This place is known to so many. But – the Others?”
The Green Man closed his eyes for a moment, before moving to one side and running his hand over some worn carvings on the left hand side of the entrance. “This place is warded. It was fading before we came here. It’s reinforced now.”
The hairs on the back of neck stood on end for an instant and then he eyed the older man. “You just reinforced it?”
“I did. You felt it?”
“I felt… something.”
“As did I,” Brienne said as she approached them, lantern in one hand as she rubbed the back of her neck with the other.”
The Green Man smiled at them both. “You’ll both do,” he said. “Now – unsaddle the horses and get them fed and bedded down.”
“Where will we rest?” the Kingslayer asked, looking confused.
“Horses first,” the Green Man admonished. “We can take care of ourselves. They can’t.”
The Kingslayer blushed a bit at this, but then unsaddled his own horse, rubbed her down and then fed her, as they each did the same to their own.
“We’ll need to keep the fire tended to,” The Green Man rumbled as he eventually led them down along the corridor that led away from the cavern entrance. The rock walls were smooth, as if thousands of hands over the years had worked on them, and the path went down and opened up into a larger cavern. More rushes had been piled here and there and by the light of the lanterns they could see that there was a great blackened cleft in one wall that had what looked like an unlit fire in it. There was a small pool to one side that was fed by a steadily dripping hole in the rock as well.
Brynden lit it this time, using his own flint and steel. It was warmer in here, he could feel it, and the kindling was dry and went up without much effort. He could see logs pilled off to one side, dry ones, and he reminded himself to replace what they used. Yes, the Wildl- ah, Free Folk, were all to the South, beyond the Wall, but that did not mean that this place might not be used again soon.
There was even a pair of upwards-angled metal rods that had been hammered into the rock on either side of the hearth, perfect to hang a chain for a cooking pot from – which was what he wanted to do.
“I’ll need water for the pot,” he said as he unpacked a few things from his saddlebags. Then he paused. “Where’s the warm springs? Further down?”
“Further down,” said the Green Man as he unrolled a sleeping mat. “Over there.”
He followed the jerk of the thumb and soon discovered two things. The first was a carved set of holes in a horizontal slab that could only be a privy. The second was a path that led to the hot springs themselves. The air grew warm as he approached and he undid his coat and them pulled it off entirely, before looking about. There were stalactites above him, about 20 feet or so, and a pool of water that must have been almost 50 or 60 feet across. There was steam rising from it in places and he dipped one finger carefully in the water before sighing. Oh, that was warm, deliciously warm in fact. He filled the cooking pot half-full and then walked back with thoughts of bathing in his mind.
Supper was some dried beef that had been softened in the pot, along with carrots, potatoes and turnips and some bread rolls that they dunked in the broth from the cooking to soften them up.
There was little if any talking. The Green Man seemed to have his mind elsewhere and the Kingslayer was either sulking or was thinking about something that demanded his complete attention. And as for Brienne… she kept stealing little glances at him. That was possibly because he was doing the same with her.
There was something there, a feeling, a… he couldn’t put words to it. It was aggravating, something that gnawed at him at times. He could almost sense where she was at times.
After they finished eating and cleaned their bowls in the pool, the Green Man sighed a little and then stood. “I’ll check on the horses and then take the first watch.”
Brynden watched him go with a slight frown. And then he sighed a little himself. “And I,” he said as he stood, “Will take the second watch, but only after I have bathed. The warm springs beckon to me.”
The Kingslayer just nodded tiredly and kept staring into the fire, but Brienne tilted her head in a number of directions and then blinked at him. “A warm bath is always good.”
There was something in her voice that sent a shiver down his spine but he had no idea why. So he stood, grabbed a small bag from his saddlebag and strode off down the path that led down to the springs, lit by his lantern.
He placed the lantern by the side of the cavern, stripped off and then strode into the pool, sighing as he felt the sensation of the warm water on his body. Before he’d entered the water he’d grabbed the lump of soap that he’d been able to access at Castle Black and now he scrubbed himself as he bobbed up and down in the water. By the Old Gods, it felt good. The water was warm and it tasted clean. He didn’t know where it left the caverns, but it must vent out somewhere. As he floated on his back and gazed up at the ceiling he pondered on where the hot water came from. Was this a former fire-mountain, like Dragonstone? A smaller one perhaps? How many more of them were there?
“The water looks warm.”
The voice startled him. He didn’t flounder – he was a Tully! – but he brought his feet down and peered around. Brienne was standing there on the stone path. She was wearing a shirt and breeches and her feet were bare.
“It’s warm indeed,” he said in a low voice. She was looking at him and he met that gaze. There was something challenging in it and he suppressed a swallow as he felt his heart beat a bit faster. “You want a bath as well?” The words seemed clumsy, and he cursed mentally.
A smile flickered across her face and then she started to undo her shirt. But as he gallantly started to turn away she stopped him with a single word: “Don’t.”
He turned back and then watched as she stripped out of her clothes. Her breasts were pert and her thatch close-cropped and as blonde as her hair. But he wasn’t looking at that as he felt himself stir under the water. It was her face. Others might not call her beautiful, but he would. There was a flame inside her that he could almost sense. Once she was naked she strode into the pool and then made her way towards him.
Something seemed to have happened to his breath and he could tell that she felt the same by the way that she licked her lips as she approached him. “I thought that I would come to you, as you had not come to me,” she said eventually.
“I… I am older than you.”
“The grey in your hair is gone now.”
“I know, but I do not know why.”
“I think that the path we are on has done that.”
“Where does the path lead to?”
And with that she smiled. “I do not know. But let us walk it together.” And with that they both reached for each other and her mouth was on his, and as he pulled her against him he made a note that the next day they’d find a Heart Tree somewhere and ask her great-grandfather to bloody well wed her.
Edmure
He rode through the gateway of Riverrun with something of a song in his heart and a feeling that he hadn’t felt in some time. He had a feeling that he was in love. It was a heady feeling. And a bittersweet one, in a way.
Dismounting he stroked the nose of Wanderer and then handed the reins to a groom, before looking around the courtyard. It was as busy as ever, perhaps a little busier and he smiled slightly and then strode off to Father’s solar.
Father was looking into a cup of something that seemed to displease him when he rapped on the door and then walked into the room, but still smiled and waved him to a chair. As he sat Edmure paused for a moment. Father looked tired.
“A new tincture, from the Maester,” Father said after a moment as he looked back at the cup. “Something to help.”
He tensed a little. “To help?”
“With the pain.” A strained smile crossed Father’s face. “The bad days are increasing, Edmure. There will come a day when they will outnumber the good days. And then... there will be the days when I cannot get out of bed.”
“Father-”
“No. Don’t say it, Edmure. We need to acknowledge facts. I cannot honeycoat this. We know what’s coming, this war on the Wall, this war against the Others and the dead. There’s a winter coming of many years. And I am ill and you must – must – be ready to succeed me. And... House Tully has grown thin, at least in those bearing that name.
“You are my heir, with Cat or one of her sons after you if the worst happens. We can’t rely on Brynden marrying any time soon, your uncle has ever been a man of... whims. Although that might have changed now, with his association with the Green Men and this girl of Tarth.” Father sighed and passed a hand over his brow.
“I’ve met her, Father.”
Father looked up at him. “Roslin Frey?”
“Aye. Are you sure she’s a Frey? And his daughter?”
Father laughed at this, a booming laugh that gave him a sliver of hope against the knowledge that Father was ill. “Oh, aye. Takes more after that Rosby mother of hers. You like her then?”
He sat there for a moment, feeling the emotion within him at the memories of their meeting. “I do. Very much.”
“Good. Good.” Father sat back and then sipped at the cup and then made a face. “Ah, that’s foul in taste.” He looked at him. “You wish to wed her?”
“I do, Father. Strange, to want to wed a Frey. But she doesn’t look like a Frey.”
“Which is a blessing.” Father leant back in his chair and smiled. “Then we have a wedding to arrange, and right soon. I don’t know how long I have left, but there must be more Tullys in Riverrun. There must. Winter is coming and there is so much to do.”
“I know Father.” He stood and strode to the window to look out. “It’s going to be bad, isn’t it?”
Father threw the rest of the cup down his throat and then grunted as he levered himself out of the chair to join him. “Aye, it is. The Wall must stand. If the North falls then we are next.”
He placed a hand on Father’s shoulder. “Then I will tell Lord Frey that I will marry his sister and that we have a marriage to arrange. The Lords of the Riverlands can assemble to celebrate it and make ready for what is to come.”
Father grasped his hand. “And I’ll try to live to see the birth of your heir. Send the ravens now.”
Shella
There were times when she could sense that Harrenhall was... restless. And if it seemed odd that anyone could describe a vast castle, parts of which could be said to be half-melted from dragonfire, as restless, well, you had to have an ear out for the way it sounded at times. The sound of the wind in the corridors – or were those moans?
So many had died in the castle, during its building and on that terrible day, when Balerion the Black Dread had burnt it on the direction of Aegon the Conqueror.
She looked at the fire in the fireplace of her room and shivered a little. Kingspyre Tower was a place that she always avoided on certain days, such as the anniversary of the day that Harren the Black and his sons had died on that wretched tower. There was something about the place that more than put her teeth on edge – it frightened her at times. The place could be cold, eerie, echoing with odd sounds at times when there should be silence.
And there was too much silence. She was the last of House Whent. Her husband, Walter was long dead, as were her four sons and one daughter. Or as good as dead. She sighed and forced her thoughts away from that subject. No word had or would ever come, unless that tiny, slender, hope faded and died before she did.
House Whent was the sixth House to have held Harrenhall since the death of Harren the Black. House after House had guttered and died in these halls. There was a curse, she was sure of it and she had written to Cat, who would inherit after she died, to urge her never to set foot in the great castle, lest the curse touch House Stark as well. Perhaps the Old Gods would protect young Robb or Sansa or Bran if they were gifted it. Or perhaps not.
She shivered again. There was something in the air tonight, something that was prickling at the edge of her senses, a ghostly touch of the skin, the sense that something was just beyond her vision, that if she turned her head fast enough she might see it – but never could. She could not try. She was tired, deeply, almost deathly tired .
Sighing deeply she closed her eyes for a long moment and listened to the fire crackle. When she opened her eyes again Walter was standing there in front of her, dressed in armour, a sword at his hip, grey in his hair as he had been in his last days. And he was looking at her with fondness and love in his eyes.
“Shella, my wife and love.”
“Walter.” She looked at him with tears in her eyes. “Is this a dream, or has my time come?”
Walter went down on one knee in front of her. There was something in his expression that made her blink. There was regret there, but also fierceness. “No, your time has not yet come. And I will be fighting for that. And this is almost a dream, or close to it. Like Winterfell, Harrenhall is a place where the living and the dead are not far apart. In Winterfell it’s because of great and wonderful magics. Here – here it’s the opposite. Something terrible happened here. And tonight it ends.”
She shook her head in confusion. “I... I don’t understand.”
He reached out as if to take her hand for a moment, but then drew it back. “You were right, the curse is real. Very real. You were right to do what you did. Harren the Black... he’s still here, in a way. The mortar used in the building of Harrenhall has the blood of thousands in it. That was deliberate. Harren was steeped in foul and black magics, he wanted to build something that would last the ages and continue his line. He was a necromancer – he used the dead for his own ends.
“Aegon the Conqueror was right to end him and his sons the way that he did, in fire. Harren would have cursed him and his family if he had had time. But he didn’t. Instead, in those last moments of his life he cursed the castle. His body died but part of him remained. He leaches life from the families that own this castle. He’s there, like a leech, always draining from the living. Draining us .”
She stared at him, horrified. “Then... how is it that you can now appear before me and tell me this?” Something moaned just out of sight and she looked about the room.
Walter pulled a slight face. “I’ve always been here,” he said eventually. “The spirits of the dead that Harren drained of life to keep that sliver of him alive are always here. Helpless. Silent. Impotent. Prisoners of that cackling madman.”
“But how-”
“Because he anchored his spells with the help of his mad, sick, dying god. The Drowned God was a part of his power. And thanks to Ned Stark the Drowned God is dead.”
“Dead?” The word seemed to echo oddly in the room for a moment. “The Drowned God is no more?”
“He’s dead. The curse is unravelling, like a thread being pulled that destroys a dark and terrible tapestry. I – no, we – are free again.”
Her heart lurched within her – and then a shape wavered out of nothingness and she gasped at the sight of Osric, her eldest son, also in armour but with his sword in his hand. “Father, we must strike now, he weakens.” He looked at her and smiled a strained and mournful smile. “Hello Mother. I’ve missed you so much. But it’s time to go, Father. We have a battle to fight. And I want to sleep after.”
“Oh, Osric,” she said, tears in her eyes. And then she looked at Walter, who was drawing his own sword. “If you win I’ll never see you again, will I?”
“No,” her husband replied with the same smile as their son. “But we will be at rest. And Harren will be dead at last and the curse broken into pieces.”
More figures shimmered into view, all in armour and bearing sigils of houses that had all held Harrenhall after the death of Harren the Black.
Walter looked at the grim-faced figures and then nodded to them. After they nodded back to him he looked at her. “I love you, my wife, always know that. Always. And now this ends, here and now. Harren finally dies tonight! ”
The figures cheered at the final four words and with that the host turned and walked through the walls and out of sight, in the direction of the Kingspyre Tower. Just before Walter vanished from sight he turned and blew her a kiss, which she returned, the tears running down her face.
Perhaps there was hope left. Perhaps someone might return from his exile on the Isle of Faces. She believed in Walter.
She sat there for a long time, sensing... something, the trembling in the air, the sounds just out of reach of her ears, the clash of swords that she could only sense and not hear. There were screams, so many screams, of fury and pain and fear.
And then...
Someone close screamed. She could not tell who – was it her? Was it someone else? Who was it? A flickering form appeared in front of her, a burning shell of a man, half fire and half darkness, a creature that crawled on the floor and left smoking slime in his wake. There was a single eye in the ruined burnt face that looked at her, as shattered teeth gnashed at the air. She flinched back in her seat at it crawled its way towards her – and then Walter flickered into view. His face was bloodied, his armour rent and torn, his sword was notched but his stride was sure.
“No!” Walter bellowed as he raised his sword over the thing on the floor in front of him. “You will not have her! Or us! Or anyone, ever again! DIE!”
The sword slashed down, deep into the back of the burning creature, which screamed in anguish. Walter pulled it out, panting – and then drove it home again. Other figures flickered into view around the screaming creature and more blades rose and fell, hacking at the thing on the floor that was almost at her feet.
She stood abruptly and pulled out her own belt knife, before looking at the thing before her. It was almost oozing away into the floor, but there was still that eye that looked at her. So she knelt – and then she looked at the thing. “This is for my family.” And then she stabbed the eye.
A wind rose in the room, something that brought the smell of burning into her nostrils at first, before it faded into emptiness. And just before she fell to her knees and fell asleep she could see Walter and Osric behind him smiling at her and then vanishing into the light.
Chapter Text
Kevan
He stood at the railing and looked down into the courtyard. Members of the Night’s Watch were being drilled by Thorne, but off to one side he could see Gerion instructing his son through some quite advanced sword drills. Allarion was skilled, he could see that at a glance. The young man – he was no boy – seldom made the same mistake twice. His face was intent, his concentration exact, he was a Lannister to his fingertips – and something more.
He looked at the sky for a moment, sighed and then looked at Joffrey. Jaime’s son was standing off to one side, watching Gerion and Allarion, a look of deep and abiding conflict on his face.
No, the boy did not understand. Would he ever?
He sensed movement to one side and looked to see Addam Marbrand approaching him. As the heir to Ashemark joined him at the rail he nodded down at the yard. “What do you think of Allarion?”
Marbrand pursed his lips in thought for a moment. “Quick. Clever. He’ll be good, one day.” He looked at him for a moment. “If he survives the war here that is.”
“I hope that we have time,” Kevan said quietly. “I know that they’re coming. But I hope that we have time.”
They stood there, for a time, waiting and watching as Gerion continued his lesson with his son and then finally finished it, before walking off with his hand on Allarion’s shoulder, visibly proud of the lad.
And then, finally, he asked: “I know that it’s been but a few days. But what do you think of Joffrey?”
Addam Marbrand visibly tried not to pull a face. “The boy is... well, he is... I mean that...”
“Speak plainly, please. I am not my elder brother.”
There was a pause. “I think it might be too early to tell. The boy is poor at learning, at least so far. He seems to have learnt nothing from the Hound, even though I know that he was taught much.” Marbrand paused and sighed deeply. “He’s still arrogant, at heart. Cersei poured a lot of her poison into him. I don’t know how long it will take to get it out of him. He’s still used to being a Prince of the Realm and the heir to the Iron Throne. Being a bastard on the Wall with the Night’s Watch... the wound caused by his downfall is still raw. Still bleeding. But he must learn to live here or he will die.”
Kevan nodded. “That fits with what I have seen. Keep teaching him, Ser Addam. Keep teaching him, until Jaime comes back from this mission of his with the Green Man.”
“I will.” Marbrand nodded formally and then took his leave. As he left Kevan stared up at the sky for a long moment. Slate-gray clouds were scudding East and a little South and the wind was chilly. He wondered when there would be another Summer snow up here. Gods, true Winter here must be terrible – and yet they’d have to witness it, when the Others came.
“Ser Kevan?” He looked to one side, where a servant in Baratheon colours stood. “His Grace the King has called on you and others to attend him at once in the main hall. Word has come from Winterfell.”
He nodded and strode off, wrapping his cloak around him and making a mental note to order something with a lot of fur on it whenever he was at the Wall. Mere cloth, no matter how thick, would not be enough.
When he reached the hall he could see Tywin already standing by the King, who was holding a message in one hand and gesturing at it with the other. The two had their eyebrows raised and would occasionally bring in the Lord Commander, who was looking at a number of papers.
Tarly walked in with Gerion, with Thorne following and Benjen Stark and Maester Aemon, along with Royce and Redfort whereupon the King looked up. “My Lords, Sers, news from Winterfell. Two messages, both surprising. Firstly, there is a Child of the Forest in Winterfell who says that Ned - Lord Stark – has killed the Drowned God.”
He felt his eyebrows almost disappear into his hairline. Ned Stark had killed a God? Then he blinked. Wait – a Child of the Forest? Were they not extinct?
“Aye,” the King rumbled, “I know, ‘tis sounds insane. But Catelyn Stark and Robb Stark have both signed this message. And there is more. A room has been found in Winterfell, a room with a chair that matches the one that was discovered in the Nightfort. Apparently when a Stark at the Nightfort sits in one that the same time that a Stark sits in the one at Winterfell, they can talk to each other. It’s a magic of the First Men, the rarest of magics, made by ‘Stonesingers.’ If it’s true then it’s valuable.”
“Stonesingers, your Grace?” Royce asked, looking stunned. “Stone singers are said to be rarer than wargs or Greenseers. So rare that none have been seen in many a long year. Centuries, if not thousands of years.”
The King’s eyebrows beetled up and down at this. “Robb Stark wishes to test the chairs. He will sit in it in three days time, at noon. Benjen Stark, as the only Stark on the Wall, we’ll need you to be at the Nightfort at the same time to sit in the chair there. Lord Commander, how does the work at that castle progress?”
“It’s the biggest of the castles on the Wall and as such has needed the most resources,” Mormont said. “Much has been done, but it’s not yet rebuilt. Not just yet. That said, it’s been repaired enough that there’s a garrison there. And we must consider moving the leadership of the Night’s Watch there at some point, once it is repaired in full.”
“Then I will travel there tomorrow, with Benjen Stark, and whoever wishes to travel with me, to see this. My Lords, this could be vital to our communications with the lands to our South. What we might learn here could important beyond words.”
There was a rumble of words in support of the King’s words. And then the King nodded at all of them and strode off, the Lord Commander, Maester Aemon and Benjen Stark at his heels.
Tywin strode towards him. “Well, now. I’ll go with them. He’s right, this could be vital and a Lannister should be there to witness it.” A wintery smile crossed his face and Tywin grasped his arm and pulled him closer for a moment. “Ned Stark might have killed a God. A GOD. If we win this war, if we prevail, and the Game of Thrones ever re-asserts itself, do you have any idea how powerful and influential the Starks will be? We must be mindful of this. We must ally with them. Start thinking how to, brother. Start thinking.”
Jon Stark
The voyage back to Pyke was a strained one. For much of it he could see Asha Greyjoy at the prow of the ship, her eyes on the horizon, her face set in lines that spoke of uncertainty and tension. He knew why. The bedrock of so many of her people was suddenly gone, thanks to Father.
And the Iron Islands were in flux, dancing about like fireflies in the wind.
After the lookout finally called out that Pyke was in sight he shook his head a little and then walked over to where Ygritte was standing. She was a bit pale but she seemed to have more sealegs than before.
“You alright?”
“Thinkin’ about too much to think about the sea.” She smiled a strained smile at him. “I’ll be happy to get back to the North. Where things make sense.”
He smiled back at her and took her hand. “There’s a lot to do there. I need to find us a holdfast. A place to live. Father promised me good land, so that I can be a bannerman to Robb. Found a cadet branch.”
“What does that even mean – cadet?”
He looked at her. “A junior branch of Starks. Like... the Karstarks. They were Starks once. Cousins to the Starks of Winterfell now.” he widened the smile into a grin. “You’ve got a lot of Kneeler ways to learn, as my wife.”
She returned his gaze – and there was a challenge in that look. “Oh and you’ve got a lot to learn yourself, Jon Stark. How to do a lot of things. Lead people. You’re not bad. You need to get better.” Her face went bleak for a moment. “The Wall had better hold.”
“It’ll hold,” he told her. “It has to.” And then he walked behind her and wrapped her up in a hug that she returned, holding his arms as the sea rushed past them on either side. “I just hope that Father’s alright.”
“You’re worried about The Stark? He killed-” She dropped her voice as she eyed the solemn-faced Ironborn as they went about their tasks about the ship. “Him.”
“I’m worried,” he replied. “We don’t know if he was injured in it. And if there’s one thing I’ve learnt recently, it’s that all things come with a cost somewhere. There’s always a price to pay.”
“Then you do know something then, Jon Stark. Husband.” She twisted slightly in his arms to look at him and he kissed her quickly.
When the harbour near Pyke came into view there was more shouting and signalling and pulling on ropes and all the things that slightly bewildered him, before they finally started to approach the quay where they could moor. There was a crowd gathering there and he eyed it worriedly, before seeing two familiar faces. The first was Asha and Theon’s mother, who was still wearing black but who looked much more composed than she had before. The second was also dressed in black and leaning on a crutch. He’s seen him briefly before on Harlaw. Victarion Greyjoy.
The Reader had come on deck now, having sent his own ship on to Harlaw, and Stannis Baratheon was next to him. The two seemed to have forged an understanding – not a friendship, he doubted that the Hand of the King was capable of making friends – and they seemed to understand each other.
As the ship moored at the dock he watched as Asha Greyjoy waited by the gangway, visibly calm – but he could see the small visual clues that showed that she was boiling under the surface. When the gangway was ready she strode down it. “Mother. Nuncle Victarion.”
Both bowed to her, Victarion awkwardly due to his obviously injured knee. “Pyke is yours,” Victarion boomed, before looking deeply uneasy. “We must speak in private, niece. Things have happened that-”
“The Drowned Men have lost their god,” Asha’s mother said firmly. “Some are quite mad. Others are just... unsettled. All say the same thing – that the voice in their head is gone.”
“The Drowned God is dead!” Someone howled it from the crowd before them. “What shall we do now?”
Asha Greyjoy’s face turned to stone for a moment. “WE WILL CONTINUE!” She shouted the words as she looked around at the crowd. “We are Ironborn. Of these Islands. Of this blood. Yes, the Drowned God is dead.” If anything her face turned harder. “We have more to think of. The Others come. We KNOW this. They came here, to Pyke. How many here lost kin when they attacked? How many? We are at WAR! There is a fight to come that we all heard of. The Stark calls for aid. At the Wall. We fight there and we watch the seas for any other attack on us or any other shore! Who else can guard and fight and watch like we can? WHO ELSE???”
The crowd stirred and muttered and then cheered at Asha as she grimly pulled her sword out of its scabbard and then lifted it over her head. “We are IRONBORN!”
“Ironborn!” The crowd replied. “IRONBORN!!”
Stannis Baratheon swapped a glance with the Reader and then at Theon and himself. “Aye. She’ll do.”
Sandor
He was thoughtful as he sat there and looked about the courtyard. It wasn’t the main one of Winterfell, it was one of the few small ones, but that fitted his mood. The little paper message from the raven that had come from the Westerlands was in his hand and he looked at it once again and then sighed.
Clegane Keep was his. He was the lord of it, or the Ser of it, or whatever the fuck the right empty title was. The Monster had ruined whatever status the title ‘Ser’ had in his mind.
What to do now? What could he do now? Go home? Where was home? Home hadn’t been Clegane Keep for a long time now. A very long time indeed. Not since he was burnt really.
And now he was healed. But he knew that some scars would not – could not – go away.
A mug of ale was set in front of him and he looked up to see Beth in front of him. She looked worried. “Are you alright, Sandor?”
He flipped the message in his hand lightly. “I... I have a keep. Clegane Keep. With him dead, I inherit.”
Beth sat down next to him and gazed at him with concern. “And... is that not good?”
A bitter laugh ripped its way out of him. “I don’t want it. I’ve got no happy memories of it, not after the Monster burnt my face for daring to take his toy. My father didn’t punish him, my mother was afraid of him, my sister...” That old hatred burned again in the depth of his mind. “She died,” he said eventually. “And I think he killed her. Clegane Keep is not ‘home’. I never knew a home. So I don’t want it, even though it’s mine now.”
They sat there for a long moment as she looked at him with a furrowed brow and something in her eyes that made him try but fail to look away.
“He’s dead,” she said eventually. “You and Lord Robb killed him. He was possessed - and evil even before that. We were all warned about him, all of us servants. Lord and Lady Stark told us that the man was to be avoided. Run from if need be.”
“I know what he was like,” he said and the hate was black and poisonous on his tongue. He sipped the ale but it did not take the taste away. “And that’s the other thing. To some in Clegane Keep I’m a kinslayer. I killed my brother.”
“You and Lord Robb killed him as he tried to kill Lord Robb and the Lady Val,” Beth told him urgently. “You did the right thing. You’re a good man, Sandor Clegane. A good man. And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
He hung his head in shame at her words. “Good? For years I was just The Hound. I was the Golden Brat’s sworn sword. When he gave me orders... I had to obey. I’ve done things, Beth. Terrible things. I’m not a good man. I don’t know what I am.”
There was a strained silence and then her grip on his hand tightened. “I know what you are. The Green Man wouldn’t have healed you unless you were a good man. Mayhaps you’ve just been on the wrong path until now. But you’re here now, with me now and I say that you’re a good man. The Call has gone out and you are here. The Others come. Lord Stark’s called for aid. You’re needed. And... and I need you. I love you, Sandor Clegane. You’re not a hound anymore. You’re a free man.”
He scrubbed at his eyes for a moment, cursing at himself – and then he raised his head and looked at her. Her gaze... gods, her gaze. She trusted him. He smiled a strained smile at her. “A free man. Thank you Beth. And I love you too. But I still don’t know what to fucking do.”
“Can’t you talk to Lord Tyrion about the Keep?”
He frowned. “What - about what?”
“Swapping it or something. A keep in the North for a keep in the Westerlands?”
“A keep in the North?”
“You helped Lord Robb. The Starks owe you a debt. And you’re here. In the North. I don’t know how lords manage these things, but...” She shrugged her shoulders. Then she took a deep breath. “I mean, you don’t see Clegane Keep as home. Why not make a real home? Here, in the North? You’ve said so often how much you like it here. We call a spade a bloody shovel here. Why not?”
There was, again, something in her eyes. And she made sense. He mulled it over as he sat there and sipped on his ale.
“You’re wiser than I am, Beth. I can ask. I can try. I... never thought about it much. I always that the Monster and I would fight one day and I’d hopefully kill him and probably die in the doing of it. More than that...”
She smiled at him again. “You didn’t dream of more? A wife? A family?”
He brought a hand up and ran it over the flesh and hair of his restored face. “I... I didn’t dare ever hope. I just... existed. And then the Green Man changed me and the Monster died.”
“Then hope,” she said urgently. “Hope here. In the North. With me. Build something here, Sandor. Build a home with me.”
She was flushed with emotion and he felt something shift inside him, something he hadn’t felt in a very long time. And then he grinned at her and pulled her close and kissed her.
Gendry
He looked down at the glowing runes on the breastplate and sighed a little. He’d done a good job on it, or at least he was sure he’d done a good job – and that was what worried him. He was relying on runes from a book. Yes, the Royces had preserved much… what was the word? Runecraft? Runelore? But no-one had used runed armour against the Others in thousands of years.
And that was what worried him.
Yes, the Thenns had assured him that the runes made sense, that the Royces had remembered truly, that the runes made sense… but he was still fearful that somewhere along the way he’d made a mistake, that something might go awry at some point.
He wiped his hands almost absent-mindedly on a piece of cloth and then frowned down at the breastplate. It was good work, he could see that at a glance. But… the runes still worried him.
And so he put it to one side, banked his tools carefully against the wall, checked that all was put away as it should be in the forge and then nodded to the others and walked out into the courtyard. A thin snow was falling, not hard, but enough to dust everything with white. He still marvelled a little at the tiny feathers of cold that fell from the sky. He could barely remember the last winter, not that it had truly had King’s Landing in its grip, not like here. No, never like here.
The North was huge and bare and cold. And beyond the Wall was colder still – and had evil creatures born of the cold and something greater and nastier, or so he’d been told.
He stood there for a moment, irresolute – and then he sighed and walked towards the Maester’s Quarters. Along the way he could see Joffrey Hill training with Ser Addam again, the lad sweating and scowling and… gods he was useless. He kept making the same mistakes and Ser Addam was quiet but pointed in his criticism, not that the little brat seemed to be listening.
Gendry shook his head for a moment. Gods. They were close enough in age, and here he was calling Joffrey Hill a ‘brat’. Frankly he couldn’t think of another word for him. Well, not a polite one, anyway.
The Maester’s door loomed and he drew himself up and knocked on it as politely as he could. After a moment the Maester’s assistant, Jenn the Wildling opened it and squinted at him suspiciously. “And what do you want, Gendry Strongarm?”
“A word with the Maester, if you please Jenn,” he said politely. “Tell him I need to talk of runes.”
Jenn’s eyes widened for a long moment – and then she nodded. “A moment.” She closed the door and he could hear voices in the room beyond, before the door opened and she gestured him in.
Maester Aemon was sitting at a large table, surrounded with books and papers around him. For such an old man, he looked remarkably active and vigorous. “Ah, young Gendry! What can I do for you, young man, about runes?”
He nodded formally and then hesitantly approached, pulling the book out as he did. “Maester Aemon…” He paused and tried to gather his scattered thoughts. “I mean, I want…”
The old Maester eyed him kindly and then gestured for him to sit. “Now. Marshall your thoughts. I see that you have a book there?”
He answered with a nod and handed it over. “Lord Royce gave it to me. It’s from Runestone. And it’s about runes. But… I’m worried.”
The purple eyes of the Maester looked at him. “About what?”
“Making a mistake.” He took a deep breath. “They call me Runesmith,” he all but gabbled, “But although I can carve the runes and make them glow – what if they’re wrong somehow? What if I make a mistake in this? Runes to battle the Others haven’t been carved in… hundreds of years? Thousands? I know that I have the book, which says I’m getting them right, but… is the book right?”
He closed his eyes for a long and anguished moment. “His Grace the King is my father… and I’ve been scribing runes on his armour. And he’s the Storm King, or he’s fated to be, I don’t know. He’ll battle the Others. And I don’t want the runes to fail him. How can I be sure that they won’t?”
Maester Aemon looked at the book for a long moment and then looked at him – and there was an assessing look to his gaze that made Gendry straighten in his seat as if at attention.
“My boy,” the Maester said eventually, before pausing. “No – Great-great-grand nephew, for that is what you are. We are related, you know. There is much of your father in you, but I see a few touches of your great grandmother in you. And she would have approved mightily of what you have just said.” He smiled a tiny, almost bitter, smile. “She valued knowledge and how to use it.”
The thought of the fact that they were related left him gobsmacked for a long moment. “I’m just a bastard,” he said eventually.
“No, you are not,” the Maester said with a sharp look. “You are a Baratheon. And your fears are valid and should be addressed.” He looked at him and then sighed slightly. “Runes have not been carved for many years, not the true runes that should be used to fight the Others, so you are quite right in that. However, the Royces have remembered much and this book is founded on that. So, I shall consult my books and what we have here. Have you asked the Thenns about this?”
“I have,” he admitted. “They think that I’m worrying over nothing. But… I want to be sure.”
This seemed to almost amuse the old man. “There are so very few sureties in life,” he said wryly after a moment. “There are times when what we are sure of is built on stone and other times built on sand. It is not until the storm comes that we know the truth.”
“The storm’s what worries me,” Gendry admitted. “And I don’t want anyone to be swept away because of me getting a rune wrong.”
“Then we will study together,” Maester Aemon said with a smile. “Now – tell me what runes you are most worried about. If things need to be corrected, then we should correct them now, before this war on the Wall starts in earnest.”
Jaime
He could never have thought, or guessed, or even japed, that he would have attended a wedding North of the Wall. And yet that was what he had done not long after dawn that day. And the couple had been the oddest one, in thought at least, that he could have thought. The Blackfish and Brienne of Tarth.
What a noisy pair they had been, in that cave. Tch. Echoes.
The moment that they’d left the crag, the location of which he’d tried to memorise, they had ridden hard in one direction, led by the Green Man. He’d taken them straight to a Heart Tree and there – with the occasional glare at the Blackfish and mutter that he had better treat his great-grand daughter properly – he’d married the pair of them.
It had all been most… well, as Tyrion would say, singular. Especially when the two of them had kissed. It gave him the oddest feeling that for the first time in his life the Blackfish was complete.
And then they had started to ride North again. He couldn’t help but reflect bitterly as they rode about the cruelties of life and of love. The Blackfish and Brienne had found each other. Tyrion had found his Dacey. And he… would never have anyone. Save, perhaps, a whore in Moletown who had some affection for him, or his own hand.
There were a long list of people to blame for all of this, starting with Aerys fucking Targaryen, who had hated Father so much that he’d appointed him to the Kingsguard, despite him being a green youth. But the beginning and end, properly speaking, of blame all came down to him. Himself. He had bent the knee to the Mad King. Yes, he’d killed the insane murdering lunatic, but then he hadn’t told anyone why, even though people had been put at risk. And then he’d betrayed a second King by bedding that King’s wife and putting three babes in her belly. His own sister.
Madness. Simple madness. And all the time, every step of the way along that path of madness, he’d done what he did because… because of what? Because parts were easy? Because he’d been scared of what might happen if he spoke out against it? Because… he had no words.
They crested a rise and looked out at a shallow valley beyond, with a scattering of trees here and there and what looked like the remains of a village in the middle. The wall around the settlement looked hasty and slipshod and much of it was fallen, parts burned, as much as he could see through the layer of snow and ice. Had the wind uncovered parts of it? That wind was cold and harsh and he shivered a little and thanked the Gods that he had followed Tyrion’s instructions to the letter in the layering of his clothes.
“I like not the look of that,” the Blackfish said grimly after a moment. “Abandoned by Wildings, yes?”
“Yes,” said the Green Man in a voice as grim. “And I can smell a bad end to many down there. We’ll ride around it. Upwind where we can.” He looked about and almost seemed to sniff the air as if to sense something. “Ride swiftly, we must get North now!”
As they skirted the village and then rode hard for the next ridge he looked at the remains of the settlement and narrowed his eyes. Were some of the snow-covered lumps and bumps shivering or moving? A trick of the light perhaps? Then he looked over to the Green Man, who was also looking in the same direction.
“Wights,” the former Kingsguard snarled. “Sleeping uneasily, or the nearest thing to it for their kind. We have no time to end them. Coming back – perhaps. But not now. And there might be an Other nearby.”
Once they reached the other rise they slowed and then rode on, the Green Man standing up at times in his stirrups to look ahead, before relaxing a little. “On, North!”
They rode, and with every mile that passed he wondered at what they were doing here and what the others were sensing. There was one moment when all three of them stopped and looked to the East, before swapping glances and then riding on. “Uneasy feelings,” Brienne of Tarth said reluctantly when they stopped at noon to eat and to rest the horses. “Something happened.” She seemed to struggle for a long moment to find the words. “Something bad happened there, not too long ago. It’s like… something walked over many graves there. People died.”
He watched her face work and then saw the way that the Blackfish reached out to hold her hand and then lean over to rest his forehead against hers for a long moment and once again he felt a stab of envy at what they had.
And then, about an hour or so after that, they came across what he would later always call a boneyard, or what remained of one. There was a great burned circle of trees around a large clearing that had what looked like some snow-covered barricades around it. And in that burned circle were burned bones and other bones. Skulls. Teeth.
“The Wildlings fought here, against the Others and their wights,” the Green Man said quietly. “And perhaps won here, for a while. Until they fled South again. Be watchful.”
He swallowed thickly, sniffing at the old and too-familiar stench of human ash and fat, before nodding and riding on.
Gods. It was all true. Every bit of it. He’d had that lingering worm of doubt in him, that last fragment of uncertainty… which was now gone. They were all in mortal danger, he knew that, he really believed that, it was… real.
He had the oddest need to talk to – well, rant at – Tyrion. So many pieces had, so to speak, fallen into place in his head. So many thoughts. The Others were not a mad figment of someone’s imagination. He’d really known that, the first time that he’d seen a snarling head in a cage, but belief?
Belief was something else. And now he believed. And shivered. What else was out there?
And what should he be afraid of? Truly afraid?
Ned
With every report, every despatch, every whisper, of how the region around Oldtown was recovering, he felt a lifting in his heart. The blight was vanishing from the Reach, there could not be the slightest doubt of that now. Wheat was standing taller, apples were ripening, grapes were plumper than before.
The prospect of famine in the Reach, something that had terrified him, was vanishing. And with it the fears of the Realm. The blight had been tied indeed to the Drowned God, who had somehow been driven into a frenzy to escape his prison by the Call, or so their theory ran.
And the death of the Drowned God was echoing in all kinds of places. According to Lord Hightower at least three innkeepers and four ships chandlers in Oldtown had been reported as having gone raving mad, screaming about the silence. Two had killed themselves, one by pounding his head against a stone wall and the other by calmly tying a sword to a door frame and then frantically running onto it to impale himself.
“Ironborn,” Lord Hightower had said grimly, “Some pretending to be Reachmen. And devout enough in their belief in the Drowned God to be effectively Drowned Men. Father always wondered if the Ironborn had eyes in Oldtown. I would say yes, they had. No longer though.”
Maybe. Perhaps not. Oldtown was a huge city and he wondered how many other inhabitants of the docks would turn out to have ties to the Iron Islands.
He sighed and looked down at the map he had been studying for some time now. He wanted to be away from the South as soon as he could arrange it. Starks did not prosper in the South and he would not feel safe until he was home in the North. ‘Safe.’ That was a relative word was it not, with the Others marching on the Wall, with war looming over them all.
But he could not go, not yet. He had a promise to keep. He needed to go into Dorne and bring back Willam Dustin’s bones. He’d promised Barbery Dustin that he’d do so and he could not go back on his word. He had to do it, he had to go there, he couldn’t send someone to do it.
Too many eyes were on him now and he felt… uneasy about it all. He didn’t want to go to that accursed place, but he had to. He sighed again and rubbed a hand over his face. Well. Perhaps a quick visit to Highgarden, to discuss supplies for the North and then a quick and quiet – if that could be arranged – ride to the Princes Pass and the place where the Tower of Joy had once stood.
If he could curse Rhaegar Targaryen for nothing else, it would be for that utterly cruel name. The Tower of Joy. The place where his sister was raped repeatedly and finally died. He had pulled most of the place down to make the cairns for the dead, even Hightower, Whent and poor anguished Arthur Dayne.
Would the cairns still be there? If he brought back Willam’s bones, should he also retrieve the other bones, sending them back to the North, to Oldtown, Harrenhall and Starfall? Well… the bones would be light.
But he also didn’t want the attention. Too many eyes on the past. Too many eyes on the secret of Jon’s true parentage.
Perhaps a short, quick visit. He’d take just his guards, men who wouldn’t talk or speculate about why Rhaegar had left Lyanna there with members of the Kingsguard. They’d just go for the bones.
Knuckles rapped on the door to one side and he turned to look at it. “Enter.”
A man in Tyrell colours walked in, watched by his guards. “Lord Stark, Lords Tyrell and Hightower send their compliments and ask that you join them at the main gate of the Hightower.” The man eyed the direwolf that was watching him. “The Lady Frostfyre as well. A… situation has developed there.”
Ned frowned a little as he rolled up the map and placed it to one side, before picking up the Fist of Winter and placed it in its leather sheath at his side. “What kind of situation?”
The Tyrell man stood there irresolute there for a moment and then his lip curled a little. “There is a delegation from the Starry Sept here, my Lord. They claim to be here to ‘seal and cleanse and finally close’ the Gate under the Hightower.” He quivered for a moment. “My Lord, I was there in the tunnel when you fought the Drowned God. I have no words for their demands. I…” And then he clamped his mouth shut and nodded sombrely.
Ned eyed him for a moment and then nodded back at him. “I understand. I’ll come now.” He looked at Frostfyre, who came to her feet and shook herself before padding almost silently over to him. “Let’s meet some fools,” he told her quietly, acknowledging her snort of wolfish derision, and then they strode off.
When they arrived at the gate he could see that things were tense. There was a knot of Septons in fine clothing, richly dyed garments that must have cost a lot. The leading one was even clutching a sceptre with a sparkling crystal on top. In front of them were Willas Tyrell, Lord Hightower and Norry, the Septon of the Hightower and a good and decent man.
He had arrived towards the back of the Septons and he quirked his lips, gestured to his guards to stay back and then walked quietly to the rear of the group, listening carefully. As he approached he could see Willas notice him and then raise an eyebrow, but he shook his head, which allowed him to hear the blustered nonsense from the leading Septon. “Lord Tyrell, Lord Hightower, as I said I – we – are here to finally close and cleanse the dread Gate below our feet. What it was that tried to escape through it, it must be finally repelled by the power of the Seven and the Gate shut, also by the power of the Seven.”
Lord Hightower’s nostrils flared. “The Drowned God is dead, he was flung through the Gate and the Gate is quiet again – Lord Stark defeated the Drowned God with the aid of the Old Gods, so your presence here is meaningless mummery!”
The Septons collectively scowled, with the exception of Norry, who looked as if he was looking at a group of fools.
“Lord Hightower,” the Septon with the sceptre said, “The Old Gods are no more than shadows and myths compared to the Seven-Who-Are-One. The creature that was at the Gate was no god either. Whatever it was, the Seven pushed it back, as everything that happens is as to their plan. And we must now complete the work with a ceremony at the Gate that shall sanctify it.”
“I was at the Gate when Lord Stark battled the Drowned God,” said Norry in a loud voice. “I was a part of the crowd, along with Lords Tyrell and Hightower. I saw what that terrible thing was. It was the Drowned God, a thing of madness and wrath, the thing that killed Septon Alyston. I was there when he died as well. I know of what I speak. You? Were you there? No, you were not. You know not of what you speak, Septon Choras!”
The Septon went red in the face with fury. “You are close to heresy Norry!”
“And you are a fool Choras! I was there! I saw Lord Stark and Lady Frostfyre fight the Drowned God! I saw them grow in size with the blessing of the Old Gods! Did you? No!”
“What you saw-”
“WAS WHAT HAPPENED,” Ned bellowed and the group of Septons jerked and scattered at the sound, looking over their shoulders and blanching as he strode through them with Frostfyre.
Choras went white as he approached, but then seemed to rally as Ned stood with Willas and the others. “Lord Stark.”
Ned looked him up and down before tilting his head. “Septon. You must be from the Starry Sept, yes?”
The Septon lifted his chin a little and nodded, hefting the sceptre with its crystal a little. Now that he could see it more closely he could see that it had been gilded, and not by a skilful hand, whilst the crystal looked more high-quality. “Yes, Lord Stark. We are from the Starry Sept. We… thank you for your efforts, but we are clear in our view that we must now seal the Gate under the Hightower.”
“The Gate is already closed,” Ned said coldly. “You seek to do something that is no longer required. The Drowned God is dead.”
“Heresy!” The word was hissed by a Septon in the crowd and Ned swept them all with a black look that made them all take a slight step back.
“I was there. I fought the Drowned God. And, with the aid of the Old Gods, I slew the Drowned God. And that is the end of it. Are you seeking to claim my victory?” And to one side Frostfyre growled, a long low sound of warning that made the Septons step even further back.
“My… my Lord Stark,” Choras said in what was almost a snarl. “The Gate is a heathen, blasphemous, creation of the-” And then went as white as a sheet, almost biting the words he had been about to say back into his mouth.
“You were about to say ‘The First Men’, weren’t you, Septon?” Ned said coldly. “My ancestors – and the ancestors of many of the men here. How many of you heard the Call?”
From the various uneasy looks and shuffling of feet, the answer must have been almost all of them. However, Choras made an attempt to rally them. “With a simple ceremony the blessings of the Seven will-”
“Will what?” Ned almost bit the words off. “Allow you to claim that the Drowned God is truly gone now, with the aid of your sparkling bit of glass on a stick? He’s dead, he’s gone, I killed him, the end.” And then he leant forwards until he was almost nose to nose with the irritating little streak of piss. “And the Old Gods helped me.”
Choras jerked back, his eyes wide and his mouth agape, and his sceptre fell from his hands and fell to the floor, where it shattered. Not that the Septon seemed to care, because he was gaping at Ned. “His eyes…” And then they all fled for the doors that led outside, not quite at a run but certainly at a fast trot, with the occasional stumble as one shot a fearful look at him.
Ned watched them go with a scornful look, folding his arms and shaking his head in disgust, before looking back at the others. “Why do men like them always scurry across the floor after a victory, desperate to take the credit?”
“Because they think that they can,” Willas replied. “And they forgot that you were still here and that I am not my father. And they’re worried – the Call awakened a lot of things. Weakened the Starry Sept as well, especially after that fool Alyston tried and died at the foot of the Gate.”
The Lord of the Reach shuddered. “When his body stood – well, I think I have seen a kind of wight. I have seen the undead.” And then he looked at Ned. “And I have seen you touched by the Old Gods again now.”
Ned stared at him. “Again?”
“The reason they fled? Your eyes were red.” He nodded. “I think that that is a tale that must be spread about the city. I doubt that Choras will be back. And if he tries… he’ll regret it.”
Robert
They rode from Castle Black not long after dawn, a cavalcade of cloaked men, the crowned stag banner at the forefront, others following. It wasn’t as large a group as he might have expected in previous years, but he was happy with their numbers, their destination was still being rebuilt and he couldn’t take that many. There were enough of them. The Lord Commander at his side, the First Ranger behind, Lords Lannister and Tarly, Redfort and Royce, Rayder as well and others, including the frail but determined figure of Maester Aemon and his wildling assistant.
He had to smother a bitter smile at the absence of the usual bootlickers and dregs of the Court. Life here on the Wall was too hard for some. Good. Useless cunts, the lot of them, all talk and no balls. Good at lofty phrases, all wind and words. Here at the Wall, though, life was harder than they could take. Few had come with the Court to Winterfell, fewer still had made it to Castle Black.
No, those who were there with him were there for a reason. The war on the Wall. Oh, he wasn’t a fool. Men like Tarly were there because they loved war and flocked to the horns of war. Others were like Tywin Lannister, who was there because his children had found new and different ways to fuck up and was there to retain his standing in the Court and the Kingdom.
The road along the base of the Wall was good, well-maintained now and better than it had been in many decades, as Mormont had told them, so their progress was good. There was a lot of traffic along it, volunteers, Night’s Watch, others from the Seven Kingdoms. Rallying to the Wall. Thanks the Gods for all of them, they’d need them all to repair centuries of neglect at the castles.
His mood always darkened as he thought about that. The Targaryens yet again. Tywin Lannister had told him quietly that the Tower of the Hand contained written records of previous Hands of the King, with Targaryen comments about the Night’s Watch always straying into fears that the organisation was the private army of the Starks. He had to admit that his Father had commented that they might be such a group, but he long remembered the quizzical horror on Ned’s face when he’d asked him bluntly at the Eyrie if the Night’s Watch obeyed the orders of Ned’s own father.
He shook his darkened mood off and paid more attention to the road ahead. He had better things to do than curse over foolish Targaryens and their misunderstandings about the way that the North worked.
They made good progress, galloping at times around blockages on the road. They reached Queensgate, which was almost restored, by mid-morning and then they paused at Deep Lake two hours after Noon to eat. That castle was well under repair as well, fresh tiles on the roofs and new buildings amidst the repaired older ones. Mormont looked at the place, grunted and nodded, which was the equivalent of a score of flowerier words.
They ate in the hall, a simple meal but enough for the trip ahead of them, washed down with watered wine. That was something about the North that he liked – the water there was cleaner there. Bloody cold in places though. And afterwards as they started to prepare to head on for the Nightfort he looked the place over, trying to look for weaknesses. The gate through the Wall was already being blocked up and iced over. No, this place would stand.
And then he heard the sound of voices off to one side. Three men were at the southern gate, three dressed in the black of the Night’s Watch and another who wore the tabard of House Greyjoy, something that made his skin crawl at once. After a long moment the guards let them through after beckoning for other guards to escort them – and they made straight for him, before bending the knee before him.
“Your Grace,” the leading man of the Night’s Watch said, “We are from Westwatch-By-The-Bridge, which is being restored. We are here with despatches that arrived there from the Iron Islands brought by this messenger from Asha Greyjoy.”
The Greyjoy messenger dipped his head in acknowledgement and then held a large oilskin-covered pouch out to him. He took it and undid the stitching with his belt knife and then looked at the thick wedge of papers within. “My thanks to you all and also to Lord Greyjoy. I’ll draw up a response – we ride for the Nightfort this afternoon. You can eat and rest here and then join us there, the response will be ready in a day or so.”
They nodded, looking pleased, and walked off after bowing a little awkwardly and he pulled out the message within. It was written in two hands, one of Lord Harlaw and the other being the new Lord Greyjoy, and the tale was one of death, betrayal and madness.
He looked up and gestured to a Baratheon guardsman. “Fetch Lord Commander Mormont and Maester Aemon, at once.”
“Aye, your Grace!” The guard nodded and took off at a run.
He kept reading the messages, his heart twisting in his chest as he read and reread it. After a while he heard the sound of footsteps and looked up to see the arrival of the two man he had summoned. “From Pyke,” he said bleakly. “You both need to read this – the others too. Gods, what a tale.”
He passed the papers over and then ran his hands through his hair. Magic. Others. And whatever the fuck Euron Greyjoy had become, what he was doing. Gods. At least they knew that Ned was alive and had triumphed, but… should he have gone with Ned? They still didn’t know exactly what had happened at the Hightower – had there been a cost to Ned in his victory? He wanted to fly into a thousand pieces in all kinds of different directions – and then he caught himself and clenched his fists and took a deep breath. Focus, man, focus.
For a moment he could feel something jolt deep inside him – and then Maester Aemon raised his voice. “Euron Greyjoy, it seems, is a fleshsmith. My Gods. I had hoped that such knowledge had died from this world of ours.”
He looked at the man – and then hurried over and guided the white-faced old man to a bench, looking around for some wine. There was a flagon to one side and a cup and he poured a drink for the Maester of Castle Black and gave it to him. “Here, Aemon, drink this.”
Aemon Targaryen took the cup with trembling hands and drank from it. “My thanks, your Grace. What a tale within these words. What a terrible, terrible tale. What Euron Greyjoy’s crew much have endured, to be… twisted in such a way.”
“Word has already gone out about his crimes, but to read this full tale…” Mormont shivered. “Kinslaying, alliance with the Others, and this? None of this makes any sense.”
“To a normal man, no,” Aemon said, sounding stronger already. “But to someone who has accessed the darkest of Valyria’s secrets? Then it is not a question of sense but of power – power over others. Power over those he sees as being lesser than he. This Euron Greyjoy doubtless places himself above we mere men. His purpose, his task, makes sense to him, and him alone. We must be very wary of him now. He views us all as puppets – and he is, in his eyes, the puppet master.”
A grim silence fell. “Warnings must be sent – again,” Robert said with a sigh. “You’re right, he cannot be underestimated. More ravens must be sent to warn again of him. We’d best tell the others here, before we ride again for the Nightfort.”
They did so, to be met with horrified mutterings and even a look of deep, profound, unease on the face of Tywin Lannister when he read what had happened on the Silence, something that unnerved Robert more than he cared to admit to.
Not long after that they rode on down the road, a more silent group than had started. They hadn’t exactly been jovial before, but the tale from the Iron Islands had cast a pall over all of them.
When he first saw the great bulk of a castle on the horizon by the Wall he realised at a glance why the Nightfort had been abandoned as the Night’s Watch had started to fail. It was the biggest of the castle on the Wall and had must have been such a drain on its resources just to keep it operational that of course they had abandoned it for Castle Black.
He could hear horrified mutterings from the men around him as they approached it and noted how run-down it was, but Mormont and Benjen Stark seemed almost cheerful as they looked at it.
“They’ve done well,” Benjen called out to the Lord Commander. “The repairs are starting to really show now.”
“You mean it was worse than this?” Ser Kevan Lannister spluttered.
“It was worse,” his brother Gerion said grimly. “There were trees growing in the main courtyard and all the roofs had holes in them – or were sagging.”
There were work teams all over the castle as they approached, some in black cloaks and others in different colours, showing the mix of people at work on the Nightfort. The man in charge was a grizzled old Black Brother who had a Stormlander accent and who he vaguely remembered had been a third or fourth son of a very small house near the Dornish border.
The Great Hall of the Nightfort was habitable, along with the stables and a few other buildings in the castle, and after they had stabled their steeds and settled into their quarters – which must have been below the high standards of some, not that he gave a damn – he gathered them all in the Great Hall.
“We need to see this chair – and then this magic Gate that’s here.”
Benjen Stark led them the chair at once, down under the Great Hall, walking down stairs that took them past the tombs of long-dead Lord Commanders of the Night’s Watch. When they reached the room that contained the chair he felt his skin crawl just looking at the thing. There was something about it that left him with the oddest feeling that something was… somehow looking back at him? That made no sense, but he took his time in inspecting it, walking around it and eyeing it carefully. “So that’s the chair.”
“Aye,” said Benjen Stark with a sigh. “Now that I look at it – it’s a part of the ground is it not? It looks as if was not hewn out of the stone but… moulded? Why did I not see that before?”
“Why would you have, First Ranger?” Aemon said thoughtfully as he looked at it carefully. “There is something about this chair that tries to raise hairs on my head that no longer exist. Something… fey, for want of a better word.”
“Speak plainly, Maester Aemon,” said Tywin Lannister in a low voice. “You mean magic.”
There was a long moment of silence. “Yes,” Aemon said quietly. “Magic.”
Robert nodded slowly and then shivered a little as he looked around the room – and at the repaired corner of the ceiling that had once had a hole in it. A hole through which men had entered the room and sat upon the chair and… gone raving mad by the sound of it.
“Looks more comfortable than the Iron Throne,” he muttered after a moment. “But I’m not risking my wits sitting in it.” He peered more closely at it. “What are those carvings at the back of it? And what’s that alcove in the arm for?”
“They look almost like flying creatures of some kind,” Benjen Stark replied. “And I’ll be the one risking my wits, your Grace, if you please.”
“To the Gate then, now,” Robert rumbled. And so Benjen Stark led them again, out of the chamber with the chair and then to another tunnel that had wooden planks that crossed a well that led to the strangest gate he had ever seen. A gate made of weirwood, that face sent a chill up his spine.
That was as nothing to what he felt when the First Ranger stepped forwards and the eyes on that face opened, eyes that were blind and sightless. And then it spoke: “Who are you?”
“I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers. I am the shield that guards the realms of men.” Benjen Stark said in a steady voice.
“Then pass.” And the fucking thing’s mouth opened and expanded until that was all it was. He stood there, irresolute for a long moment, and then he followed Benjen Stark down the passage that had appeared. Magic. Fucking magic. A magic portal. He knew it existed but it was still something that was just… stunning.
And the more he thought about it the more he wondered about what they were facing. How he needed to get a grip on all of this. Cope with this. No - understand this.
As they emerged into the open air on the north side of the Wall he heard thunder crack overhead and he looked up at the clouds. Was there a storm coming? Perhaps not.
“It was here that we faced them,” Benjen said as he gestured at the area. “The wights came from over there. The Others too. The bodies were burned over there. As for the bodies of the Others… they turned to ice and snow.”
They all stood there for that long moment, looking North. There was a keen wind blowing, one that made all of them wrap their cloaks about their bodies, and he wondered what a true winter wind would be like.
“The Black Gate – it can only be used by living man of the Night’s Watch, yes?”
“Aye your Grace,” Aemon said firmly. “The Histories are clear on that fact.”
“Does any man here doubt what we face now? That magic exists and is something that we must factor into our plans?”
There was a collective shaking of heads and mutterings of ‘no’.
“Then head on back. Maester Aemon, might I have a word about what we might face?”
As the other lords departed through the Black Gate the old Maester approached. “Your Grace?”
“Your pardon – did you read the last part of the message from Pyke, about Jon Stark?”
A small smile crossed the face of the ancient Maester. “I did. He is married now.”
“To a Wildling. Ygritte. I remember her – what a mouth on that girl!”
“Oh yes.” Aemon sighed after a moment. “I hope that they are happy.”
Robert looked at the closing maw of the Black Gate. “What do you think that his paternal grandfather is screaming now in the depths of whatever hell he’s in?”
Aemon smiled a very thin smile indeed. “Nothing worth a damn thing.”
He smiled and laid a hand on the shoulder of the old man. “Quite right – now, lead me through the Black Gate. There’s much to do before tomorrow.”