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South of the wall in the lands where the seven gods were kept, to be wed was to be bound. The septon would lace a bit of silk cord –or a strip of leather or a bit of twine if you were more common- around the joined hands of the bride and the groom while the words were said, a symbolic gesture of oneness.
Gendry didn’t know much about the marriage customs of the wildlings but as it turned out they believed in binding, too. He grimaced and shifted in his bonds again, the coarse rope biting into his wrists and leaving it red. Someone should tell the free folk about silk.
He should have taken the black like he had meant to when he came to the wall with his sword and his hammer and his sense of duty to poor dead Arry. He thought to serve with the brother she always talked about when she missed home; to outfit the Night’s Watch against the terrors that always came with the winter. Only Jon Snow’s name was as good as spit, as he had joined the wildlings years ago, and was only seen now when he came to raid.
Gendry had no way of knowing that until he got there, of course, and the Lord Commander was happy enough to keep him around as a smith while he decided whether or not he wished to make his vows. No one seemed to care if the blacksmith was a brother of the Night’s Watch or not so long as he kept their blades sharp and their armor mended. The smithy at Mole’s Town had long been abandoned, and though it was practically a shack, it was his for the taking if he promised to make enough blades to go around.
He had still been considering making his vows when she had come the first time. He didn’t know how she had gotten in or which of them was more surprised to find the other in the smithy, but Arya had recovered first and put her knife to his throat.
He’d thought she was dead- she was certainly alive, though how he couldn’t say. She wore so many pelts and furs and a mismatch of armor she might have been the same short and scrawny little thing he had parted ways with years ago. Her hair was longer, at least- a tangled coil of braids and dirty ribbons, black feathers, and bone beads that looked suspiciously like the joints of a finger, the childish roundess of her face gone and replaced with fierce womanly angles. Everything about her was an odd meeting of refinement and wildness.
“I hope you still make good steel, blacksmith,” she said in a low voice, “because I’ve need of some new blades.”
Under duress he’d loaded her down with so many swords and pieces of armor that he had a sick fear in his gut that there was no way she’d get back out the way she came undetected, not with the extra weight. He protested, but she pricked him with her blade and told him not to be stupid.
“What kind of a spearwife do you think I am? I take what I can carry.”
So she stole what he had.
She was pretty, he had realized, even when she was threatening to gut him where he stood if he made a sound. (“I’d normally have slit your throat already, but since we’re old friends and it’s so hard to find blacksmiths...”)
Arya knew what he could make at the anvil and wouldn’t leave with just the rough pieces he hammered out for the Night’s Watch, or the shoddy armor he had been repairing. She took the fine pieces too- finest he could make in these conditions- and weaseled out almost every hiding place he had before she had been satisfied with the plunder.
“That’ll serve us fine beyond the wall, Gendry.” That was the first time she had used his name and it was like a bell ringing for the king to hear her say it. It also meant that she was real; that he hadn’t dreamt it up after too much wine and reminiscing or imposed her face on that of some scruffy wildling that favored her a bit. This really was Arya back from the grave, or maybe come to take him with her down to hell.
“Back against the wall. Put your hands on it flat where I can see them, just like that. Keep them there, and don’t go calling the dogs and the angry mob once I leave. There’s more where I come from, and we didn’t come for blood this night.”
She backed away from him slowly, knife still in her hand. Behind her she reached for the latch, and a sliver of the night sky appeared around his stupid too-flimsy-to-keep-out-the-wildling-girl door.
“Wait,” he blurted, and his hands moved disobediently from the cold stone where she had ordered him to keep them. He shoved himself off the wall, reached behind her and pulled the door closed again with a soft scrape. Not yet.
“What—
She hadn’t finished. His body had moved without waiting for his brain, and he had kissed her red, wind chapped lips while wondering if she was going to stab him for the affront. He wasn’t sure what the etiquette was for kissing a spearwife, but he knew that kissing Arya Stark would have breached several levels of propriety.
When she hadn’t stabbed him he took it as encouragement, and let his tongue find her plump lower lip. She parted for him eagerly and with clumsy enthusiasm, coming up on the toes of her boots to reach him better. Her nose bumped his and their teeth clashed but she was wonderful anyway, the way she went all soft in his arms when he kissed her back. He wanted very badly to cup her backside in his hands and pull her against his groin so he could grind his cock against her, but it seemed unwise to push his luck while she still held that knife.
It was only when she had reached her arms around his neck and the bundle of her swords at her back clanged together that she had seemed to remember why she was there, and it wasn’t for kisses. She looked at him for a moment in a curious daze, her fingers halfway to her own lips before she forced them back to her side.
“I’ve never been kissed.” she said. Her brow furrowed, and then she seemed to regret saying that if her frown was any indication. Surely someone had to have kissed her by now- she must have been five-and-ten at least, and she had grown into a pretty woman- so pretty she made his chest hurt and didn’t need a knife to do it. Some big rough wildling man must have tried it. Maybe that’s why she needs the swords, he thought.
“You shouldn’t do that,” she told him in as firm of a whisper as she could manage. “I should have already killed you.”
She vanished into the darkness, and Gendry looked around at the now empty forge. It was a heavy loss, getting steel and iron this far north was never easy, but somehow he felt her absence more acutely. He’d only just found her again.
He poured himself a cup of wine to steady his nerves before he raised the alarm.
~
The next time she had come he might have slept through the whole thing if he hadn’t woken to her half on top of him, her small hands fitting a gag into his mouth, the leather tasting salty and smoky and dry. He’d struggled against her at first, thrashing with his fists and elbows before he realized she hadn’t come alone and he was outnumbered. In the dim moonlight he could make out at least two other people standing against the far wall, their swords gleaming at their waists. His swords, once. Everyone from the Lord Commander to the butcher had been put out with him for months after she had stolen every weapon he’d had and their orders had gone unfilled. That had been last year. Now she was going to do it again, and he’d probably get hanged over it.
He’d begged her to leave him be quite poignantly, but behind the gag it all came out as frantic moaning.
She leaned low over him, her hair brushing his forehead and the sound of the bones she wore clinking softly. “Struggle all you like, but be quiet about it.”
Her lips moved against the little tender spot below his earlobe, and he shuddered underneath her, his body twisting up to get closer to her touch or away from it. He couldn’t examine that reaction at the moment. She was sleek and deliberate when she slid down his body and hauled him to his feet, and he finally faced the other wildlings.
Women, they’re all women. His cheeks flamed as he realized he was standing in front of them in his nightclothes. They didn’t share his shyness, looking at him with intensity, scrutinizing, even. Their interest quickly turned to the items around his home, tools and weapons and provisions rapidly disappearing into sacks and under fur cloaks.
“Leave the hammer, he’ll want that. And his swordbelt.” Arya told them, and Gendry was surprised that no one offered a protest. Someone tossed his clothes at him, and Arya helped him dress, her fingers quick and agile. Once she’d stuffed his arms into his sleeves they’d bound his hands in front of him, and she did the rest. He had to look up and study the thatch roof and think about polishing the rust off of armor when she had done up the laces of his breeches.
“If there’s anything else here that’s important, say it now. They’ll only drive up the trade price if we bargain for it later.” Arya told him, kneeling as she tied his boots. He shook his head mutely. The leather roll with his tools in it was already in Arya’s pack, and his sword belt was doubled around her waist, too big for her by far. He’d lived with less before. At least if she was carrying his things with her she must not mean to kill him.
Or maybe they’re just taking your tools, stupid.
He should have put every spare scrap of iron into reinforcing that bloody door.
They were carrying more goods than a tinker’s caravan, but they moved through the village in silence, save for his occasional stumble. No one would hear them below in the tunnels of town. Arya’s blade was at the small of his back and she steered him by a series of shoves and yanks, her hands strong. When they’d reached the paltry wooden fence that served as city walls, he could see another woman waiting with the horses. He recognized the mounts from the stables, and that looked like the little nag that the tanner said wasn’t quite ready to be a hide that they were shoving him up onto, a clumsy affair with his hands unusable.
Arya tied one of his feet to the stirrup and a blonde woman took the other, her hair shining silver in the moonlight and her knot a bit tighter than Arya’s. He still had no hope of wiggling out of the rope on either side. Gendry resigned himself to the fact that he had just been kidnapped by wildlings, his fate sealed when they tied the blindfold around his eyes and they escaped into the forest.
Maybe they’d use his hide for their tents, spin his hair into cord. He’d heard stories. Maybe Arya wanted some more fingers to wear in her hair. The possibilities spun in his head, an endless whirl of unpleasantness. He hadn’t had much else to think about, as no one spoke. If he looked down he could occasionally see a bit of the ground, and he could tell the velvet dark was fading into the predawn hours, but he couldn’t say where they were headed. Except they must have been going north, of course, to the wall and what lay beyond it.
Dawn was breaking when they finally stopped, his frisky little nag dancing underneath him while Arya’s horse came close to sniff it while she undid his blindfold and ungagged him. He squinted at her, the undefined grey blob offering him water from the skin she kept under her cloak to wet his dry mouth.
When he blinked the color back to his vision she was smiling at him with a twinkle in her eye. She looked like she meant to bed him or fight him, and he suspected she could best him at either game. There was a red-brown smear on her cheek, and he realized with a start that he must have bloodied her nose when she had first woken him. He felt a bit sorry for that. Only a little, though.
When he’d worked the stiffness out his jaw he pleaded with her.
“Arya, you know I can’t be a blacksmith for them. I need a forge, I need an anvil, and I need tools. They’ll kill me when I say I can’t make swords for them.” He felt a little frantic. Wildling war lords had no use for a blacksmith. That’s all he was, just a man who knew steel. He wasn’t even all that good with a blade in a fight, not like a real warrior.
“We didn’t take you to make swords, though I’m sure we can find what you need if you’re worried about it.”
Gendry stared at her in stunned silence. “Why else would they want me?” He was going to be a tent or a necklace, he knew it.
“They don’t. I do. You’re my man now.” Arya said slowly, cautiously letting the words hang between them like the fog of their breath.
He would have thought it a jest except for the way she looked down shyly when she said it, betraying the fact that somewhere, this wildling woman had once had a lady mother to teach her her graces, and stealing a man out of his bed for a husband had not been a lesson learned there.
“I thought it was the men who took the women?” was the only thing he could manage to say to her.
“I didn’t think it likely you were going to come climb the wall and steal me,” she answered with a crimson flush. “and the first thing you need to know about the free folk is the rules aren’t very specific. I wanted you, I took you, and you’re mine.” The raw possession in her voice made an anxious flutter start up deep in the forgotten part of his chest, where he’d locked it away long ago with memories of acorns and peaches and needles.
Wanted him. He’d hardly begun to process the implications of that when the redheaded woman rode up next to them and the moment of Arya’s shy, sweet unguardedness was gone, and she instead straightened proudly in the saddle, suddenly all confidence again.
“My, if I had known how handsome this one was in the daylight I might have taken him for myself.” said their companion with a low whistle of appreciation. She stopped to think for a second. “I did help you get him on the horse, so by rights I stole him too. I suppose we could share him.”
Arya considered for a moment. “I guess it’s true, I never would have gotten the big lug up on that horse by myself. I owe you a share.”
Gendry’s heart dropped somewhere down by his numb toes. He supposed Arya wouldn’t hurt him, but who knew what this other woman might do?
“You’re a hard bargainer, Ygritte.”
“Aye, if he’s hard I’ll make m’self a bargain.” chuckled the stranger.
“You’ll have to be the one to tell Jon, of course.” said Arya smooth as ice. Ygritte guffawed heartily and he realized that the women had been teasing one another. He felt the tension melt out of his chest, and he took his first breath in what felt like years.
“Oh well,” she said, waving her hand. “He didn’t struggle much. Maybe he’s not as strong as he looks. But those arms on him... Though the men never do put up much fight once they realize there’s a woman trying to take them from their beds. I miss a good fight. I keep saying we ought to take wives instead of husbands but no one ever does. I don’t wonder why.” she finished, her blue eyes dropping to his lap.
Gendry wanted to say something in defense of his virility, but they were moving again and Ygritte trotted off to the front. Arya rode next to him, leading his mount.
“When do we reach the wall?” he asked after a moment, curiosity getting the better of him now that he wasn’t immediately in mortal danger. He’d seen the great ice fortification many times now, but he’d never been at the top. He wondered if they’d be climbing it.
“Reach it? It’s already behind us.” she informed him with amusement. He tried to recount when they possibly could have gotten through it, around it, over it. He only remembered the hoof beats of his horse on the snowy forest floor. He hadn’t ever left the saddle, and unless he had dozed off and missed something they had taken neither tunnel nor boat and he certainly would have remembered going over the towering ice. He wanted to ask how, but that would be a stupid thing for her to tell her captive.
He couldn’t say for how long or how far they rode. It felt like forever but it must have only been a day because they hadn’t stopped to camp. He would have gone right past the little settlement if not for Arya leading his horse and the faint smoke rising from the snow covered mounds that apparently housed the rabble of dogs and people that started pouring out to meet them. They were a press of furs and noise and curious hands, inspecting him and the horse with equal enthusiasm. He was glad not all of what they were saying was in the common tongue. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
When Arya dismounted and came to help him down they parted and made way for her. “It’s all right, they aren’t going to hurt you.” she said softly, freeing his legs and helping him slide down from the saddle. His body protested at the motion, and they both almost landed in a heap in the fresh snow. A gloved hand shot out to steady them.
“Easy, sister. Are you sure this one isn’t too big for you to handle?” teased the man. His tone was jovial but Gendry found the emotions in those grey eyes inscrutable. He knew from that familiar grey gaze and the faded blacks that this must be Jon Snow, who Gendry had once thought to serve with. Now he was, he supposed, in a fashion. Just on the wrong side of the wall.
“I think she’ll handle him just fine,” said Ygritte, sidling up against Jon with a kiss to his bearded cheek. “Men are easy to handle, even the big ones.”
“We’ll see,” Jon said doubtfully, and Arya punched him in the arm though Gendry doubted he even felt the blow under all the furs. “There’s food waiting inside. Any trouble?” Jon and Ygritte walked ahead with their discussion while Gendry was left limping on stiff legs, trying not to lean on Arya for support. She’d always been the better rider.
“What is this place?”
“Just a temporary encampment for the raiding parties. We’re the Frost Fangs band, and the raiding party is called the She Wolves. Jon’s only here because me and Ygritte came. He worries like a nursing mother.” she said with a roll of her eyes.
“Are those the Frost Fangs?” asked Gendry, pointing to the nearest rise. He’d at least heard of the mountain range. Arya laughed.
“That? That’s just a hill. We’re leagues from the Frost Fangs.”
He supposed it didn’t matter anyway. He had no idea where any of this would have been on a map. Even if he had a map. He didn’t.
Inside the bowl-shaped hut it was pleasantly and mercifully warm, and he was seated on a pile of comfortable furs and fed some sort of hot bowl of meat and broth, given tea and milk- hopefully goat, maybe horse. Even among the excited foreign sounding chatter of the women around him he began to drowse, and Arya eventually noticed and took him to a sleeping platform that was more welcoming than that featherbed he’d slept in once.
Gendry must have fallen asleep in the warmth of the little hide dwelling even with his hands bound to the bed. His belly had been full and he had been bone weary after riding all night and day, and Arya had left him alone without saying when she’d come back for him.
He stirred when she pulled back the hide flap. There had been a chorus of giggling behind her, and she had stopped for a moment to shoo away her companions.
“Hello,” she was staring at the furs on the floor when she said it, and as an afterthought she peeled off her snowy hide boots before she stepped onto the plush carpet. Her hair looked different. The feathers and bone and odd bits of metal were gone, the braids undone and her hair falling loose and wavy around her shoulders. She looked less a wildling and more Arya this way, somehow, but when she finally looked at him he realized she was a bit of both. Even scrubbed clean and pink there was something in the way she moved, a freedom that hadn’t been there before. Like a weight had been taken from her and a loose-limbed easy confidence had been the outcome, though she didn’t look any more confident than he felt at the moment.
“Sorry about the rope. I thought you’d rather have it than some strange woman watching you sleep while I was gone.”
“Yeah,” he rasped in agreement, the cold air and bitter winds leaving his throat dry. Or might be she took his breath away, he thought wryly. If he said that to her she’d probably put him back on his horse and return him where she got him.
“Do you want water? Tea? Wine? Jon sent us some wine, but I don’t really feel like drinking it. If you’d like some though, I think I can get the cask open.” she said in a rush. It sounded like a bit of wine might have done her good.
“Water is fine.”
She reached him the cup, and then remembered he was still tied and set it down to undo the ropes, her long hair falling around them like a curtain. She swept it back impatiently, the brown strands turning fiery when the light caught them. His fingers tangled in the soft mass as soon as his wrists were free, and she sucked in an unsteady breath when he reached her scalp.
“Here’s your water,” she said, shoving the cup at him defensively, and he reluctantly let go of her hair and drank, the water cold and sweet from the glacial melt that fed the streams here.
When he’d set it aside and stretched out his back and arms she had crawled up the bed toward him on her knees. She still wore the damp bearskin cloak she’d had on when she came in, and she untied it at the neck and pushed it off her shoulders. The soft leather tunic she’d had on underneath didn’t look very warm for this climate, but how would he know?
“I stole you but if you don’t want to stay, I won’t make you. Jon wouldn’t either.” She offered, her eyes flicking to his lips when she spoke, even as she worried her own lower lip with her teeth. It was quite red and biteable. “Or you can stay and just be a free man. You don’t have to… be mine.” she ground out.
It was that Stark honor that they were known for creeping in. And he knew that the offer was sincere, and not without cost. The spearwives he had seen so far would look down on her for letting him go, especially after the unusual amount of trouble she had went to just to steal him. But he didn’t know if he knew how to be a wildling, any more than he knew how to be a knight of the Brotherhood or a man of the Night’s Watch or anything else he had tried being.
He decided he might give it an honest effort if she kept looking at him like that.
“I don’t think I mind,” he finally answered, and she smiled in relief. “Why did you come all that way to steal me, though?”
“Do you remember when you kissed me?”
“You mean when you robbed me?” he corrected. “Yes.” Only every second he’d drawn a breath between then and now.
“I’ve wanted you since that night,” she said in a low timbre, the confession setting his blood to stirring. “And it made me ache. I thought maybe our kiss had…well. Maybe you wanted me too. I hoped you did.”
Gendry reached for her then. His hands found the small of her back and tugged her off balance, and she half fell on top of him, his lips seeking hers in a fury. Gods help him, he had wanted her. He wasn’t even sure what gods there were here beyond the wall, but he supposed he ought to thank them for making her a thief, too.
He’d thought he’d locked the memory of that stolen kiss in the forge in his mind forever, but he was certain all of his memories hadn’t done kissing Arya any justice at all. Gendry couldn’t say which of them had done it but her tunic had been rucked up and then come off and landed on the fur rug. There was a definite rhythm in the way their hips were rocking into one another, almost an unconscious mimicry of the push and pull of their lips.
His hands skidded up over her shoulders, down the line of her spine and found her hips, gripped them tight and guided her movements against his cock. Her impatient fingers tugged at the laces of his breeches until he was laid as bare as she, and he forgot to feel self-conscious with her naked on top of him, riding him into the bed. When their skin finally met it wrenched a groan from somewhere deep in his chest and she slicked his fingers when he reached between them to touch her. Her hips jerked and shuddered unsteadily against him.
“Right there,” she gasped.
She looked down at him with heavily lidded eyes, arching her back so he could run his tongue over her nipples. “Will you stay with me?” she asked breathlessly, rubbing her wet center against him in a maddeningly slow grind.
“Yes. Yes.” he moaned. He would have lived on the moon with her if it’s where she wanted to be.
“Oh good,” she breathed heavily, reaching to brush his hands away and slide him between her folds, the blunt head of his cock meeting the slick warmth of her cunt. Her eyes were shut in concentration, and he watched the flicker of emotions on her face as she sank down onto his length. The scowl relaxed and she reached up to brace herself on his shoulders, her fingers curling into the muscle as she came down the last little bit.
She felt like pleated silk but more luxurious, better than even his dreams. When he’d locked his arms around her hips to switch places she’d sunk her claws into his shoulders and come undone before she even made it onto her back. Her gasps and her legs gripping his middle had him spending only a handful of strokes later, lost in her tight heat.
They lay in their pile of furs afterwards, staring up at the smoke hole above them and the pink streaked night sky.
“Will you promise not to skin me for a tent or stitch your clothes with my sinew?”
“Do I look like a Bolton? Or someone who can sew?” she asked, half offended.
“No. You look like a fearsome wildling woman who’s just had her way with her…” he struggled for a term. “Are you my wife now?”
Arya pushed herself up on her elbow and heaved the sigh of someone who had just been asked a very stupid question. “I’m a spearwife, not a… wifewife.”
“But I’m yours?” he asked.
She snorted with laughter. “My wife?”
He made a vague sort of gesture and tried to explain what he meant. “No, yours.”
She looked down at him in feigned consideration. “If you’d like. And I suppose I could be yours, too. Until we’re tired of each other.” she amended with a smile.
He knew if he hadn’t ‘tired’ of her after she’d stolen him out of his bed and dragged him beyond the wall he wasn’t likely to ever get tired of her, but she’d learn that quick enough. They didn’t call him stubborn for nothing.