Windsong - A Tale of The Sword and the Spear

(Trench of Fairmarket – Lord Goldenstar’s Army – Northeast of Craster’s Keep)
Trench had few skills to which he considered of note. He didn’t read. He’d never been taught. His mother had fucked the local drunk and then they’d married and in the years of ensuing misery he’d found himself born and eventually raised. There was never a time for books and in the end there’d only ever been the sword. It’d started with hold ups along the road and ended with forced conscription to which the greater bulk of his modest success could be attributed. The Seven had seen fit to grant him life without the means by which to live it. He’d carved from the army of the Lord Goldenstar a small niche to which his eventual freedom was won and a career born. Mercenary. He even enjoyed the name of it as he turned it over.

“Where’d ‘e go, Trench?” Said Poke, his eyes wild. The wilds of the hills stretched on as dark shadows in all directions and to their back lay the massive, ebon ridge of the short mountains from whence they’d come.

Trench shrugged and looked out amidst the cold woods and narrow road. They’d seen the figure and road and at the Ser Benjamin Grot’s signal moved to ride it down. This had been their missive. A promise for pay. A patrol of the road, if you could call this narrow path a road, with the good Ser where all plunder was theirs and the silver for their trouble was kind. They had been butchering Wildlings left and right and Crows alike, mayhem incarnate. This was their charge. Anything to distract the Stark bastard from turning his eye southward. Still, the figure had vanished and they’d not seen another, and all Trench could think about was a fire and how nice it would be to escape the bite of the northern’s air. It seemed mad to be North of the wall, harassing the crows and inciting the Wildling hordes. But still, so it was, and while Ser Benjamin Grot was little more than a hedge knight, without lands or honors, he was a capable killer and he’d been paid a great deal for this mad endeavor north of the Wall and he paid well in kind.

“Dunno,” he answered. “Prolly saw us and ran off.”

He looked sidelong and saw Poke lift a hand, narrow fingers covered in dried blood and earth that had managed to end up deep beneath his nails. Poke was missing three teeth on the bottom. Trench could not understand bad teeth. He’d always been certain to brush them.

“Just a farmer, yuh?” said Poke.

“Maybe.”

“No,” said the Knight. The man had come with the Lord Goldenstar’s retinue and wore a cloak that hung from his broad and armored shoulders. The sigil was a golden sun on a green field and when he saw it all that Trench could think about was money. Ser Grot was raising himself nicely as of yet and the rest of them would benefit from it. “He carried a shield.”

Trench pawed a grimy hand across his brow and considered the Knight’s words. He hadn’t seen a shield. And, all the same, thought a man would be mad to set upon them by himself. They were ten and although the hours before had been thick with plunder – the battle at the Barrows had been considerably shorter and less difficult than he’s suspected. The Wildlings, when caught unawares, were a disorganized and poorly armed lot.

“After we kill ‘em, Ser, might we ‘ead back to the camp? They might ‘ave some girls left.” Poke inquired.

The knight said nothing so Trench did.

“Ain’t no girls goin’ to be left, Poke.” Trench felt himself shaking his head subtly. “King wanted all the Forgotten to be kill’t. ‘e only let us bed them first ‘cause we’d done so well.”

“That girl was pretty, Trench. They might ‘ave left her alive.” Poke said, his eyes hopeful.

“Slit ‘er throat just after one of the boys after you’d gotten done with her. She was too small and too young, Poke. Ain’t goin’ to keep a runt like that about. Besides, ‘ow many ‘ad a slice of ‘er? Twenty? She weren’t goin’ to be no fun ‘gain anyway.”

Poke didn’t answer and Trench looked away from the road to the trees. They stood, cold iron and oak, looming high above the road with stiff needles and a host of shadows. Above him the moon played hide ‘n see through drifting clouds. They were lit briefly in pale and brilliant light when they drifted past it. He’d have looked for shapes like girls and coins but Poke hadn’t answered. He looked back to the man.

Poke’s face was blank, staring out amidst the woods. His mouth hung open and his tongue had lolled out like a dog to hang sidelong from his mouth. As if aware of Trench’s look he gurgled. Not once. Twice. His eyes did not cut sidelong onto Trench but stayed unfocused, staring far ahead. He drooled onto his tunic from his open mouth. A thick slathering rope of pale saliva stained with claret hung briefly from his bottom lip before becoming too heavy against the cold air and falling upon Poke’s jerkin.

“Guh guh guh guh.” Poke said.

Trench was so surprised he nearly smiled. It took him a moment to register the axe buried between Poke’s eyes, deep into his face, or that the blade had cleaved clean through him until it’d vanished entirely inside of him. Blood ran in great rivers around the darkened steel blade, a deep grey of nearly charcoal, with a simple ebon-cord wrapped handle. Poke made another sound. His lips bobbed up and down vacantly.

“Guh. Guh.” He said. “-GLUCK-!”

And with the last sound his split mouth opened along the blade that had parted it and a great ball of thick, bright blood rolled out and dropped from his lips onto the frosted ground before Poke fell backward and lay still.

Ten feet to his left the man he’d known as John gave a shrill cry that broke Trench’s paralysis and that of the men around him. He turned in time to see the blade that’d pierced him through entirely withdraw and John crumple to the ground. The man wielding it was tall, broad shouldered, and in the dim light of the moon and their torches Trench could see his grim face and the short, dark beard along his jaw. Ser Grot jogged his horse almost casually along in a wide circle, looping behind the man who’d emerged from the woods.

“Lay your sword down, stranger, else you die. You’ve made a point and I’m willing to consider lettin’ you go with only a few lashes from the boys here.” Said the Knight.

The man stood there, unmoving. Trench did not like how terribly still he stood, how tall and how unafraid he seemed. The sword in his hand was dark-steel like the axe that had split Poke’s face. He’d never seen anything like it. The steel had ripples of color, grey and ebon, that ran along its entirety and three wide fullers now thick with blood. It was a broad blade at the base that tapered and looked frightfully sharp and damned heavy. Trench wasn’t sure he could have hefted it with one hand.

The man himself did not move. A shield lay slung acros his back but he did not reach for it. He had a cloak of mountain bear fur across his broad shoulders and wore mail beneath. The pale rings of steel were interrupted by thin steel plates of similar look to his sword that wrapped his forearms. From the look of it his legs were entirely unarmored save for the plated greaves. His breastplate was fitted but unadorned. Still, for it all, it was the look of the man that troubled him most. Or rather, to be precise, the way he looked at them. Through them. Disconcerned with them. Unyielding, unrelenting.

“Wait,” said the Knight. Leaning forward some with a grim look. “You…”

And then Trench didn’t like the look on Ser Grot’s face, not at all, because it paled considerably before he lifted a gauntlet-clad hand and drew the sword from his hip.

“Kill him! Kill him, now!” He shouted.

Two men that Trench didn’t know, couldn’t have known, were first to rush forward. He couldn’t understand their eagerness and was keen to wait, to watch. Poke was still pouring out onto the frost-covered road and he was not eager to join him. The man, wielding that massive sword as though it weighed nothing, killed the first by beheading him as neatly as could be.

But what struck Trench was how –fast- he was. A man that size shouldn’t move that quick, he thought, as the figure simply stepped past a strike as though it was nothing to him. That terrible dark-steel blade came down and caught the other fellow on the shoulder in a brutal downwards stroke and kept cleaving through until it’d turned his entire torso split and blood fountained thickly in the air in a fine, darkened mist.

Trench took a step back. And then another.

The others didn’t, though. They rushed forward. Trench felt his boot strike something and didn’t look down, couldn’t look away. The screams lifted for only a moment before the sounds of steel on steel joined them. Amidst the whirling figure of the motley assortment he saw glimpses of dark steel and the man wielding it. He’d smoothly drawn his shield onto his arm as though it’d belonged there and moved amongst the small crowd, now. There was little flourish to his movements but Trench had seen enough to know he’d never see better. Every stroke met a target. Every parry was pristine. It was an economy of brutal movements to which the men could not overwhelm with their numbers. The last was opened after his own strike had been turned by the stranger’s shield, split from crotch to chops, and the pale coils of his guts had poured out of his opened belly and hit the road in a steaming, wet pile.

“Worthless dogs.” swore the Knight. And as he began to turn his horse to run it first dawned on Trench that he intended to do the same.

Only the stranger was too quick. Impossibly quick. He didn’t run. There was no hurry. There was simply a preternatural quickness as he strode to Benjamin Grot’s horse and swept the plate-clad knight from his horse with a backhanded stroke of his shield. The impact was brutal and unforgiving. A crunch of plates yielding under the metal of the stranger’s roundshield and then the vision of the Knight, wearing a perhaps sixty pounds of armor, flying off his horse as though he’d been tossed back by a giant.

He landed heavily, a shattering impact that saw his sword bounce from his hand and the breath leave him in a suddenly frightened, wheezing cry.

Trench waited, some part of him screaming for his legs to move, but he could not. He wanted to hear the silent stranger speak. Only he didn’t. It was Ser Grot that spoke. His voice thick and shaking with terror.

“Mercy, Stranger.” His gauntlet clad hands lifted weakly up, palms open. “Please.”

The stranger said nothing. Slung his shield. With his back to Trench it was now that the emblem was visible and Trench saw it. On the front of the shield, snarling savagely, the massive head of a dragon with rows of sharp teeth peered back at him. It was not painted but worked into the steel work of the shield itself.

“Please!” said the Knight. “I’ll tell them I did not see you!”

Trench could not see the man’s face. He saw Grot’s. The knight had pushed himself up with one hand now, the other held infront of him. His legs lay stretched out with the right bent at a terrible angle, distinctly broken. His face was bloodied but clear, streaked with thin tears. He looked more a child than a man. Broken in terror. The silent stranger leaned forwards then and grabbed the back of Grot’s head as though he meant to kiss his brow in some beautiful gesture of mercy.

Instead, he drove the sword through the Knight’s blubbering mouth until the broad blade split the corners of his mouth and foot after foot of cold steel punched clean through the back of his head. The Knight did not speak or gurgle like Poke. Instead, dead in an instant, he went entirely limp and was left supported only by the man’s gloved hand and the blade that pierced him.

Trench realized now that it was too late to run. There was only the horse. He abandoned his sword, heavy as it was, and bolted. All thoughts drained from him save for one. The horse. He’d make the horse, pull himself to it, and ride on. The stranger would not catch him on a horse. Might not try to. He didn’t look to the stranger, didn’t watch, simply ran. The air whipped by his face and bit into his skin with its cold. The dark stretched on as a cloud passed before the moon and the torches that lay upon the frosted roadside choked out against the earth.

Trench felt the reigns in his hands, the shifting warmth of the horse, and swung his leg up. Triumph. Pure, blissful triumph.

And then fire lit through him, starting in his back and spreading to his chest. He felt stiff. Pain flickered behind his eyes and he realized that he felt stiff because a sword had punched clean through him and now jutted out below his chin from his chest. His fingers went numb. He couldn’t feel the leather of the reigns. He couldn’t feel triumph anymore. No fear. No panic.

Shit, he thought. Shit.

And then he thought nothing else and died.

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(Ryken of White Harbor – The Night’s Watch - West of Craster’s Keep)

The hard riding was behind him and still there was no comfort. There wouldn’t be. Around him the woods rose up as grim sentinels in the night. The boughs of ironwoods hung across the log road and bore the weight of the ice and snow without complaint. This was the only place beyond the boundary of the wall where the ironwood grew and its harvest was the hardest of work. It was aptly named; stout, strong, and grew wider than ten men arms stretched. These woods bore many of such trees. Old and ancient trees. They were too far north to be touched by the hands of the woodsmen and the cold here too dangerous to risk. Ryken knew that well. His horse, dying beneath him even as it walked on, was learning.

He had left his home and his father at the Bastard Lord’s command. The command had been to ride north and find their last hope, find it and keep it. In the dark they had moved slow, ponderously, as Ryken had dressed and the pouch that the old Sergeant had found for him had been stowed beside the book he was using to test his new-found skill at reading. The women and children did not scream in the night but soon many had already been silenced. The cold was a stealthy killer. It crept into a man and chilled him, calmed his shaking hands, and then stole him away in the night while he slept. Horses, beautiful animals from the south of the Wall, had no defense here. They were taken awake, in the midst of walking or standing, without whinny or complaint. One moment standing, braving the cold on stout legs with muscled flanks - the next they keeled over, eyes rolling wide and lifeless.

Ryken was wrapped in furs and wools and still he feared for himself. His face had burned but was numb now. His ears, in particular, did not feel as though they belonged to him. The cold, he reasoned, was greedy. A man’s piss could turn to ice before it touched the ground on nights like this. Merciless, the cold of the North had been the greatest enemy to any man that wandered this far. The men that lived here, the men that the Lord Commander , were amongst the hardest of the hard. Uncivilized, said some, but hard none-the-less. They kept to the Old Gods and the Old Ways, the stories had said. Some were savages. But they knew how to survived the cold and they would stand against the evil tide. It was these thoughts that drove him on.

He had ridden for almost three days and seen nothing but the road. In places, buried beneath the snow that plagued this place, he had lost it and hours in finding it again. His horse’s breath came in wheezing gasps that spilled thick mist into the chill of the night air. It’s nostrils and lips were frozen over with a layer of ice. Still, Ryken felt it drive on undeterred. The animal’s training must have amongst the greatest he had known to brave this place and carry him so stoutly. He named the animal Iron Heart and decided he loved it. The animal seemed to feel it and picked up a step or two.

Hours later, born in the blackest part of the night, Iron Heart gave a sudden shudder and stopped walking. Ryken slipped from the saddle and felt his feet strike the earth and found it entirely frozen. Hard, like stone, and unforgiving. He stood beside Iron Heart and stroked his face, felt it cold to the touch and looked into the animal’s brown eye. It saw without seeing, staring out across the road. It’s breath came without great plumes now but little puffs of steam. Its chest heaved, slow and stilted.

“You were of great stock and courage.” He heard himself say.

The animal attempted to step forward, faltered, and collapsed with a sudden and sad thud upon the hardpack of the road. Twice, then thrice, it lifted its head in defiance of death and failed upon each. Ryken’s heart broke and he knelt, pushing aside the truth that his end would come soon as well, and stroked the animal’s side as it breathed unsteadily.

The sound was from the wood and to his right. Not far off. A sudden crack of frozen foliage shifting as something moved amidst the cover of the North Wood. Ryken’ hand found the hilt of the castle steel sword and his brother’s axe and fought them free, fingers stinging from the cold. There were rumor of Frost Giants and ancient creatures this far north. Years ago, from the shelter of these trees, packs of massive Dire Wolves ravaged south laying waste to animals and man alike. They had not been seen for a thousand years but rumors spoke of them. Great Bears, monstrous brutes that stood twenty-five hands high, had vanished as well to the south where they roamed. It mattered not. Ancient or not, a Bear of any shape would be the end of him. Still, he had his sword. It was steel and its edge sharp. Perhaps, if he struck true, the beast would fall as it killed him and the skin would save the next fool sent north.

He readied himself. He was not a true Knight, nor nobleman born. He held no lands, no titles, no fame. A soldier, simple a title as it was, he was also not without skill. Amongst the Night’s Watch scouts and riders he would have trusted himself against them all. His sword hand was true. It spoke the Old Language of the First Men. The cold had and would slow him. Still, he did not shy. There was no place to run. None to hide. Only steel and the cold.

The sun broke upon the horizon, sudden, as though it was apt to rush into the sky. Dawn broke in a blur of fiery vermillion, gold, and red that filled the sky and colored the clouds radiant pinks and crimson. From the woods they came, not wolves or bears, but a host of men in ebon leathers and heavy fur cloaks. They were bearded, brown-haired and fair-featured, with bows in hand and spears or axes upon their backs. Men of the North Wood. The sun at their backs reminded him of the Goldenstar banners. His fingers found strength and warmth as the fury swelled up in him like a grim tide.

One gestured. The others were silent. He placated them and sheathed his blades. They came. Advancing as though the cold and the snow was naught to them. The one that had gestured knelt beside his animal and spoke words in their harsh language. It was elegant in its brevity, its strength, but guarded in the wood and impossibly rare to hear south in the Kingdom’s heart. He knew the words. Spoke them.

“Your Chief,” he was strong in their tongue. “I must speak to him.”

The wild man struck out a hand and soothed Iron Heart, who did not look frightened and still breathed.

“He is a good horse.” Said the wildling. “Help us fix a sled and we will take him. But it isn’t our Chief you’ll be speaking with, Crow. You’ll speak to the Blood Bitch, first. If she doesn’t run you through with her spear that is.”

---- ---- -----
(Biju Broad Blade – Rollo’s Band – North of Craster’s Keep)

Biju did not care much for this plan and wished he had argued more strongly against it. The woods were dangerous during the best of times but now there were worse things than the great bear and the dire wolf. This was a world in which the worst of things lived and moved but did not breathe and he thought they should make quick southward and find their way beyond the wall. Now, as it stood, the idea of hunting and making camps and tracking the men from the ocean with their long spears and steel all seemed foolish. He was afraid. They were all afraid. Pretending as though that was not the case seemed as useless as this scouting foray. The steel-clad men had proved more than capable warriors even starving and exhausted. They were, in truth, remarkable killers. He imagined part of Rollo’s intent to kill them was revenge and pride. Stupid given all that they had to contend with. Still, they’d hounded the steel-clad men’s steps for three days. They had not managed to kill one, yet, but that would change in time.



Biju just didn’t think it mattered.



The forest seemed dark even during high morning. Such was the nature of the snow, and the cold, and the creeping fear of what lay north and all that it would mean for the world of men as it was. Biju had only been to the wall a few times and each time he imagined a world beyond imagination beyond. The sword in his hand was battered and old iron, passed down from his father, and he kept it sharp. But beyond the wall he imagined men with gleaming steel swords and endless green in all directions. He was eager to get beyond it and to see. He’d always been eager, truthfully. The nightmares descending form the north had simply amplified the desire until it was pounding away inside his head.



Biju knew that he would get south of the wall and that he would put down this iron sword and all the bleeding and killing and plundering and take up the hoe and farm. He’d bury his hands in soft dark dirt and live where it was always warm and his woman wouldn’t be a beauty, he was no handsome man, but she’d be pretty enough and they’d have children and watch the sunshine and get fat on their harvest and on cow’s milk and cheese. They would live. He would live. It would be more than the endless wastes of this frozen place and the fearful rush as all the dangers descended and the cold crept at your toes and fingers and nose.



Two elk appeared from the trees and burst past, shaggy and swift. Biju watched them go, intently, debating the bow on his back even as their massive hooves churned the snow in their passing. A bull and a cow, the former taller than he was at the shoulder, moving together easily as they wove through the trees at a breakneck pace. He looked from where they came and saw nothing. The woods were an empty expanse of snow-covered trees as far as he could see. The wind, a cold breeze from the east, moved the boughs and brought snow dusting back to earth and set the old iron woods to creak in tired protest of it all. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.



And then a shadow passed over him and on, winged and dark against the white ground. Biju looked up.



The creature above him was longer than two men laid head to feet and a dark, charcoal grey. It had a long, serpentine neck with an arrow-shaped head. It was covered in scales, glinting in the light, some edged in with silver and flashing brightly as it banked sharply to his right and was briefly lit by the full radiance of the high morning sun. The tail was slightly longer then the neck and tapered before its end, which swelled to what appeared to be a bony club, bristling with spikes like a scaled mace. It was fast, cutting through the air like a hawk, and as he looked on it abruptly folded its massive bat-like wings and plunged from the sky at a steep angle. Spellbound, Biju looked on. The winter’s chill forgotten as his eyes struggled with what he was seeing.



It struck the bull elk and drove it firmly into the snow, rear feet revealing massive claws that cut into the elk’s sides as though the tough hide and dense fur offered no resistance at all. The elk made no sound but crumpled under the larger creature’s weight, and with it landed, Biju could see that its head was crested in long horns that were jet-black in color and angled back towards its tail. The mouth, which it revealed to roar a low, menacing rumble, was lined with teeth as large as dining knives and ebon in color. The dragon’s head turned sharply on that long neck, following the cow as she jerked sharply to the side and set out to sprint away. The blind panic of the animal was palpable.



Biju could not believe what he was seeing. He knew what it was right away – even though he could not remember the story from where the word came. Dragon . He was looking at a dragon. It was twice the size of the largest horse he had seen and its eyes were pale silver reptilian orbs with a slit of ebon in their middle. It was the color of the sword that the leader of the strange band he was tracking’s sword, charcoal grey with accents of silver and ebon rippled through its scaled hide. It was stunningly beautiful and shockingly terrifying to be even this near. It roared again as the elk got further, maybe thirty-five feet away.



And then flames shot from its mouth – the color of dark smoke and tinted with a silver center. The flames were a jet that filtered through its black teeth and leapt across the space it traversed in a stream. Snow melted instantly beneath it, smoking, the water instantly boiling. Two trees that flanked the jet, half-frozen and otherwise not touched directly, instantly burst to flame. The cow was caught in mid-stride and consumed, though the dragon cut off its assault almost immediately. She gave a terrible, bestial cry and then went silent, dropping to the ground with her flesh bubbling and cracking where it’d been burned through. Both of her eyes had exploded, boiled and popped by the intense heat. The bull, laying in the snow beneath its claws, was abruptly abandoned. The cow was still burning, skin sizzling, when the dragon reached her. It bent its head, teeth bared, and then began tearing at the carcass.



“It’s a demon!”



Biju looked over his shoulder and saw the origin of the voice. Halryce was a younger man and bold, wicked with a spear. The length of it looked natural in his hand – an extension of him. He had a wild look on his face. Excited.



“With me, brother!”



Biju turned to consider the Dragon. It had heard Halryce’s voice and stood over its kill, flames still licking off the flesh and dancing off those glossy charcoal-gray scales. It seemed comfortable amidst the flame but bristled as it considered the pair. Halryce had rose and started forward, charging, his fur-wrapped boots kicking up great clouts of snow as he charged the distance between them. But Halryce had not seen what Biju had seen and Biju did not run with him. Instead, horrified, he looked as the Dragon crawled further forward, guarding the flaming ruin of the corpse it had been feeding on. It bristled, scales flexing and shining amidst the flames and thick, oily smoke rising from the corpse. The horned frill around its skull flexed outwards, ominous and intimidating. And it roared.



Halryce was brave and undaunted. His hand hefted the spear, overhead, prepared for his throw. His left hand crossed his body and drew the sword that he had taken from one of the Crows they had butchered two months before. It was southern steel, - good steel, and glinted in the light.



The Dragon’s maw opened and the thick gout of charcoal flame leapt forward again, crossing the distance in an instant, lighting trees like great, snow-covered candles as it passed them. From fifteen feet away he felt the heat of it as it struck Halryce and consumed him. The man’s hair burst instantly into flame and vanished, his body shrouded in charcoal and penetrated by that silver core in the dragon’s unbelievable breath. He shrieked and went silent in an instant. The sound an inhuman, terrible thing. All at once his furs burned away and his spear went alight in his hands. Even after the dragon’s flame ceased Halryce burned. On his knees, where he’d staggered, as his flesh melted off his bones and a towering golden flame burned off him and reached skywards. The spear was gone. But before he turn to flee Biju saw two remarkable things.



The steel sword in Halryce’s hand had melted to the snow, a puddle of liquid steel that cooled in the snow.



And the dragon – move to take hold of the fallen buck and hoist it into the sky with a terrible beating of its bat-like wings. They hoisted it steadily into the sky where it slid past the treetops and out of view. Biju ran. Only he didn’t run north towards Rollo, but south, he was near Craster’s Keep now and not that much farther was the wall. Biju Broad Blade would not contend with the steel-clad men nor a dragon nor the monsters from the ice and snow. Biju Broad Blade would live. And he would be Biju the Farmer one day soon.

But first he would run into the Blood Bitch of the Mountains.


(This thread is closed.)

{Tarik – Chieftan -- Frostfangs Mountains}

Once, a long time ago, he’d made a promise to himself that he’d never return south of the wall. It seemed like a lifetime ago, and at the same time it seemed like enough time hadn’t passed at all. This place that he’d carved out here for himself and those he’d come to love as his own – it was more home than anywhere south of the wall had ever been. He’d found the woman that he loved, he’d raised a daughter who had all the fire of the Free Folk inside of her. She was, without a doubt, the greatest single achievement of his life.

She wasn’t actually his, of course. She didn’t know that, and if he could help it she never would. He’d adopted her as his own when she was just a babe, taken her and taken his woman and found his way in a world that was strange and unfamiliar and harsh. It had not been easy, adapting to the life beyond the wall. It was cold and harsh and cruel and filled a man with fear and dread constantly. You had to fight to stay alive, in the north. If the elements didn’t kill you, the animals or the people might. They’d eventually found their place, though. And he’d settled, and gathered men, and over time they’d formed their own tribe. That tribe had grown in number over the years and as he trained them and made them efficient, he’d trained his girl alongside him. She’d learned to fight and she’d learned to lead and she’d learned to survive. She might not have been the fruit of his loins, but she was more his child now than any other mans.

Once, a long time ago, he’d been a Crow. Longer still before then, he’d been a Riverlander and the second son of a Lord and Lady. If he tried very hard, he could not imagine their faces or their voices any more. He had nothing to remind him of his days south of the wall except for the memories of summer days beside the river. It was all he allowed himself to carry, and it was not a sweet enough memory to entice him south once more. He was not a sentimental man caught up in the hopes and desires of some forsaken son of Westeros. He’d forsaken the south as much as it had forsaken him and he was no longer a son of Westeros. He was no longer a Riverlander, or a Crow. In the long years that had passed, he’d become something much better.

He’d become one of the Free Folk. And it was like coming home.

So when Mance Rayder came and tried to get them to rally to his cause – it had been easy to turn him down. His place was not south of the wall. His place was here, in the far northern Frostfangs. He had no desire to return south, and he had absolutely zero desire to take his people and his daughter south of the wall. They would stay here and live out their days. He would teach her to lead in his stead, so that when the time came she would be ready to take his place. He might have come into the world under the warmth of the summer sun, surrounded by lush grasses and rivers full of fish – but he would leave it under a gray sky, wrapped up in the cold of the North and surrounded by the people who were far more his people than any Southerners had ever been.

Unfortunately, the best laid plans of men are often sent astray despite their best efforts.

Despite his desire to remain far north of the wall, they were being driven south out of necessity. The dead were rising around them and getting closer by the day. His people had already suffered encounters with them, and he’d lost a fair few to the very real threat they posed. They’d been forced to pack up and travel south. The constant pressing threat of the dead lingered there, just out of sight. And the very real threat of the wall loomed far ahead to the south.

There were a fair number of them – nowhere near what Mance Rayder commanded, but a couple thousand operated beneath him. The trek so far had been dangerous and difficult. Even bundled in furs, the cold seemed to seep through to the bones. It takes a hardy sort of person to live far in the mountains. The mountains have shelter, though, and places to hide when the wind whips around and freezes everything in its path. Traveling provided little opportunity for the kind of shelter they were used to. There was a sense of purpose to them, too. But it was a purpose sharpened by fear, and the very real need to survive. They’d faced many a great threat – his people – but the dead were by far the greatest threat yet.

It had become a driving force to keep them going – staying out of the way of the Night King and his dead.

He should have been overjoyed to be going home. Instead, he felt a great sense of dread. They were the harbingers of doom – like death omens sent south of the wall to warn the Westerosi Lords and Ladies of the impending threat that loomed just north of them.

He wasn’t going home, he was leaving it. He was abandoning the only place that had ever really felt like home and fleeing to the south. It chaffed his pride, to be on the run, but he needed to keep his people safe. Keep his daughter safe.

They would return to the north when the threat of the Night King and his dead was dealt with. Or they’d all die trying.

-----------------
{Brilene of the Free Folk – Spear Maiden Commander – Haunted Forest near Craster’s Keep}

She’d never been this far south. Her entire life that she could remember had been spent in the northernmost reaches of the mountains. She found that things got stranger the further south they ventured. Her father had been reluctant to move them south, adamantly disagreeing with Mance Rayder and refusing to join his cause.

She knew that he’d been from the south, once. He’d talked of his beginnings south of the wall, and of his time with the Crows as well. But he’d found his home here, amongst the Free Folk, and he’d been more than a little reluctant to return to the place that had birthed him and spit him out. They’d been ultimately forced to leave. Mance had been right and the dead had come. The Night King and his army were formidable and they had not yet faced the full brunt of it.

The first time they’d faced the dead, they’d lost more than they’d gained. The second time they came face to face with the dead – they’d been familiar faces. The men and women they’d lost returned to fight against them. It had been terrifying and horrifying all at the same time, and that was when they’d decided it was time to leave.

The journey so far has been fraught with dangers, but there is also wander for her. She sees the world with new eyes – seeing places and things she’d never seen before. The Thenns in the mountains had been … well, they’ve clashed with them before. They are barbaric and savage and almost as bad as the dead. Worse, really, because they don’t have to be mindless and dead to do the things they do. They make the choice to behave that way because they like it. She’d been glad when they’d been free of them – though she’d be lying if she said that she hadn’t wanted to kill them. She’d be hard pressed to find someone that would argue with her that they would be worthwhile keeping in the world.

Down the river and across they’d gone, wrapped in their furs and bundled tight against the winds. They’d lost some to the elements, still. The cold was different here than in the mountains. More wind, more freezing ice to stick to noses and ears, more biting cold to suck in to lungs and make everything freeze from the inside out.

It had been a long hard journey to the Haunted Forest and her father told her they were not far from Craster’s Keep. Which meant the wall was not that much further beyond them now. She hated the forest. It was dark and the trees were tall and ominous. It was not wide open and there were many places that something or someone could sneak up on you. They would camp here for a day. Maybe two. She set her Captains to setting up watches and circling around the perimeter. It was efficient and they were a well-oiled machine. Before she could venture out herself, though, she saw to it that her father was settled and well-protected.

“We’ll set up a perimeter around us,” she assured Tarik. There was certainty in her voice, but there was affection in her eyes. She loved her father dearly, and was fiercely loyal to him and their people alike.

They did not look alike. Not even a little bit. He had almost-black hair and dark brown eyes and more square features. She, in contrast, had soft features. Her eyes were a bright and clear blue, and her hair was a flaming mane of red. She was called the Blood Bitch, amongst her people, because of the color of her hair – and also because of the ferocity with which she fought. She was beautiful, with freckles spread across her cheeks and long red lashes framing her eyes. They did not look alike, and she could not compare her looks to her mother’s – for her mother was long-since dead. She’d died when Brilene was but a girl, and the picture of her face and her hair and her eyes could not be conjured in the girl’s mind no matter how hard she tried. She did not have to look like her father to be his daughter, though.

They shared the same fierce loyalty, the same Free Folk spirit, the same strong heart. Their similarities weren’t in appearance, but beneath the surface where it really mattered.

He was a man of few words, her father, choosing to save them for when they were needed most. Now was a time he did not waste any words. Instead, he nodded his understanding to her. He trusted her implicitly, and affection lingered in his own eyes as he watched her stride off to do her work. She and her group would act as the first defense to any threat that might face them. She was sure that it made him worry about her – but then again, maybe not. She was capable and fierce and trained well under his careful tutelage. She could handle herself if and when the time came. She’d done it before, and she would do it again and again in the future. To protect herself. To protect her father. To protect her people.

--------

A band of her men returned as the dawn broke. One of her Captains, Stynir, lead the group back. She did a quick head count as they returned, relieved to find that they were not missing any. In fact, they’d acquired one and a horse that was being pulled on a sled. Her eyes tracked first the creature being pulled and then the man that moved with them. He was unfamiliar and new. Her men would not bring a threat this near to camp, but still her fingers tighten around the haft of her spear. Her eyes narrow, only slightly, as she holds up a hand to signal for the man to stop a fair distance from her.

Stynir approaches and speaks quietly in her ear as she watches the unknown stranger all the while. He is a Crow. The only Crow she’s met to his point is her own father and he was a Crow so long before she had memory of her life that she does not equate him with the role. Crows are, as they’ve been told since they were young children, a threat. They are a danger to the Free Folk. He is alone, though, and she is immediately suspicious of his motives.

“Last I checked, only Crows that wanted to talk to Chieftains were the Crows that wanted the Chieftains dead.” She speaks in the Free Folk language, her voice strong and sure.

He is not the first stranger to find his way to their camp today. The first was also a Free Folk, but not one of theirs. He came in a panic, screaming of a monstrous creature called a dragon and how it would kill them all if they didn’t get south of the wall. She had a hard time believing in something that she could not see, and had a hard time following the crazy ranting of a man left out in the cold on his own for too long. They’d secured Biju Broad Blade to a tree, on the outskirts of their camp. Where he could be watched, but he didn’t pose a threat to her people.

She doubted this new stranger knew the first, but it’s an awfully large coincidence to have two stumble so close to the heart of them in such a short time frame. He speaks their language, and not just a little. She does not know much about Crows except that they do not mix well with Free Folk – but she does know that not many of the speak the language of her people.

“Are you here to scream about dragons, too?”

( Ryken of White Harbor – The Night’s Watch – West of Craster’s Keep )



By the day the cold got worse but Iron Heart survived. The animal was stubborn and several times tried to rise, wide-eyed, nostrils flaring in fear as it stared at the fur-clad men that surrounded it and hauled it along the frozen ground. The snow crunched beneath his boots as they walked. He could taste the frost in the air and despite his years along the wall could not recall a cold so sharp in all his life. This was what the Starks had meant when they’d said winter was coming. The snow fell harder and the nights stretched long and dark and even the stars seemed fainter in the sky. But still, he survived, and the free folk he recognized as his captives did not threaten him further. They cared for his horse. And the leader, Stynir, dealt with Iron Heart affectionately and spoke to the animal of shadow cats and ironwood trees and how soon it would be fed and warmed by a fire. These were not the savages that had hurled themselves at the wall for generations. These were not Godless men without honor or purpose.



But he was not surprised that was the case. He knew the tribes well, better than most, and had long heard of those furthest north at the crest of the Frostfangs. The Thenns, of course, had mostly died during the Battle of Castle Black – but those that survived maintained the near lordly way of their bearing. It was true, of course, that they were cannibals. But the practice had not continued that he’d known of and they had proved themselves organized, capable, and well-versed in war. Still, amongst all the tribes, it was Tarik’s band that had been held in the most high of regards. They were not a mixed people. They had strong roots that ran deep to the time of the First Men and many family lines had been preserved. Tarik, a former lesser lord in Westeros, had been a man of the Night’s Watch before he’d deserted. His leadership had transformed the band from a simple tribe to the most vicious and disciplined fighters north of the wall. Their prowess was legendary amongst the other Wildlings.



The trees were clung to by snow and ice.



Stynir had lead them west and after a day’s time Ryken knew they were near the band. Some things could be known in the heart first. His father had told him that. Tracking, his father had said, often was about having a way of anticipating things before your senses could perceive them. It was a skill he’d trained well and he recognized when it called to him. Stynir seemed to sense it as well and in a short time, sure enough, they could hear the sounds of bodies moving through the trees and along the snow. Many of them. It had been rumored there was some three thousand head in Tarik’s band with nearly two-thirds of that functional warriors. And it were these rumors that had seen him northward for the Night Watch. Soon, it was said, the gates would be sealed.



“If what you say is true,” Stynir said, slowing from his place at the column’s lead to walk beside him. “He wore a fur of dark wolfskin that hung heavy below his knees. “Then this Jon Snow is the first to ever open the land of the kneelers to the free folk.”





“Winter is coming.” Ryken found himself answering.





And it truly was. These men, the true northmen, moved quietly amidst the ironwoods with steel and iron. Thick, dark furs and grim manners stayed them from the cold but the means by which they walked betrayed training of a greater accord. Their bows were ironwood and nearly as tall as they were – firing arrows as long as a man’s arm with iron tips. Ahead, as they walked, he could see the edges of a large camp. Several hundred of Tarik’s own were drawing skins up for tents and standing besides fires. They spoke the language of the First Men to one another and smiles came and went far more easily than scowls.



She was not hard to spot amongst them. Shorter than most, shapely, even in the dense furs that the cold made necessary it was clear she had a woman’s shape beneath them. She was beautiful. Stunningly so. High cheek bones. A noble face. Her girlish looks tempered by a sharp glint in her eyes and her hair, a curtain of silken flames, soft freckles across her nose and high on her cheeks. Her lips were full and pink. Her teeth white. She was radiant. Skin like snow. Ryken was certain he’d never seen anything so beautiful and his heart hammered sharply in his chest, all at once, stealing the wits from his tongue and leaving them lost somewhere in his head while his heart drummed steadily on.



“D-dragons?” He stumbled, surprised, before his eyes moved reluctantly past her to take not of the bloke bound to the tree a dozen yards away.



“No. I’m glad to have found you this far south. We might actually get to the Wall in time.” He said simply. The Blood Bitch was Tarik’s daughter. Though, by all accounts, she carried no measure of him in her face. It seemed impossible to consider given her beauty. Ryken was stunned. The world spun beneath him briefly as he made to address her – unwilling to move forward. Instead, exhaling, he forced himself a low breathe and settled into a feral crouch besides the fire they’d come to rest nearby. Iron Heart watched him from his sled at the fire’s side and Ryken reached to drag his fingers over the animal’s broad neck. His coat was still chilled to the touch but not nearly as it had been. “You know the Army of the Dead is moving southward. You’re ahead of it by a bit, far as I can tell, but not far ‘nough for comfort. Jon Snow has let people south of the Wall and given them land to work. He’s given men steel in return for agreeing to fight when the dead reach the Wall. You should pack up now and head for Craster’s Keep with me – then let me bring you to the Wall as quick as we can make it. All of you.”



Iron Heart was breathing well, now. The last few hours it’d seemed the horse had recovered. Here, besides the fire, the chill of the North was still oppressive and blade-like. But it was less so. Ryken warmed his hands by the flames as they curled lazily upward and then smoothed them along Iron Heart’s neck. The horse appeared calm, despite all things, watching him warily with a deep, thoughtful brown eye.



“If you won’t come with me – I ask you let me go so I can get back.” Ryken said as his eyes slid up to find the Blood Bitch’s own. Her beauty struck him again but he found his words. The language of the First Men was an old thing that felt kind on his mouth. His chin jerked towards Stynir steadily. “And I ask for my steel back so I’ve a chance to make it.”







----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- --------------- -------------

(Roland - Captain of the Black Banners - Northwest of Craster's Keep)



They’d walked for most the day and the snow was piling high. They’d skins now, makeshift cloaks, but the cold was a relentless enemy and it was a fight that he knew they would not win. Roland tracked his eyes through the trees and did not recognize their kind as they moved past the thin-bodied winter maples and frost pines and into the stout-bodied, towering giants of this world. The trees were dark, near ebon in color, without leaves upon skeletal branches that spread like a myriad of spindly fingers into a sky filled with only the promise of snow and longer nights to come. He knew despair and felt it tug at the corners of his heart once more, looking back over a shoulder, and seeing the tired line of freezing men walking after him without complaint or argument. They were loyal but they were freezing. They needed real shelter, or a break in weather, soon.



They walked well into the night, time the enemy of far greater concern than fatigue, and slept scant hours before going again. The next day passed much as the first and while no men fell it was clear that before long they would. He had not seen Auron and a still quiet had fallen on them. He knew it as the sound of desperation. All had been lost and seemed rife to do so again as they traversed the uneven ground. Here, more than before, it broke into hills that swelled and then fell away like waves on the sea. They saw no game and witnessed no forage. Fresh snow smothered any hope at tracks each morning and so they trudged on. The star in the sky that guided them southwest was the only constant they knew beside the cold.



The cold, of course, and the chill that came on its heels. The chill of being watched.



The savages had tracked them for several days and he, and the Captains, knew of it but said little. Most the men, however, had seemed to sense it and watched the trees nervously each time a sound rang in the stark wood. They peered, like deer, through the treeline. It was the look of it that troubled him so. His men were lions. They were warriors. But now, battered by the cold and hunger and the long frustration of sleepless nights they had grown wary. The fury in them, once so readily seen, had begun to slip. He suspected this was, of course, to plan. The savage band outnumbered them a half-dozen or more to one but in their first meeting the Dragon’s Teeth had made them pay for their overconfidence. The savages, he suspected, knew that time was very much on their side and had stayed out of sight. But he felt them out there.



All seemed lost.



The hovel sat upon a low hill and was surrounded by frozen corpses. The roof was thatch and snow-covered but sound, no smoke from the chimney, and was a shadow in the failing light of dusk as they came to it. His spirits lifted – though the place felt foul. He went to it steadily and the men did not hesitate behind. The horse of the dead knight was given shelter in the small stall besides the keep that they entered through the hide door that hung upon the awning and eaves. Within, however, the place was not as empty as they had believed. Girls, homely things, cowered and hid poorly in the skirts of the hovel. The fire had been hastily stamped down but coals could be seen. Behind him, one after another, his men entered. Their eyes tracked all that they saw. And a girl, no more than a wild thing like those that hunted them, trembled as his eyes fell on her.



“Come out. All of you.” He said.



Daeron moved to the fire and brushed the embers together, laying kindling, and soon had it growing. The fire pit in the midst of the home was circled with bricks and wide. He fed it steadily. The blaze growing and warmth, real warmth, beginning to fill the hovel and for the first time in several fortnights Roland felt his bones warming and saw a smiles tug at the grim faces of his men. None of which seemed too concerned with the girls, though, between them, they’d the entirety of the hovel’s length and some thirty feet or more.



“You promise you won’t kill us?” The skinny wild thing asked. Her voice didn’t tremble but he felt her fear.



“Have you any food?” He asked in return.



The girl nodded. Hesitating. As she stepped free others soon followed and he counted eight head amongst them. They were in a pitiful state. Their faces looked dull and sorrowful from the shadows at the hovel’s end, like kicked dogs, full of mistrust of the world and everything in it. They were dirty and while not all were skinny – they looked as though they were barely hanging on. The speaker of the group had keen eyes and looked the men over, noting their steel. “We have a bit. Some jerky. We had a few men here for a bit after they killed our da’ and had their way with the lot of us. We knifed them in their sleep and fed them to the pigs. You ain’t crows, tho’. So, who are ye?”



He shook his head. It was the only reaction he could muster. The men were finding benches and settling into them. His thoughts drifted to Auron, who’d gone missing, and he felt concern run sharp through him. Reluctantly, he understood this would be the place. His eyes tracked Daeron and the man rose from tending the fire with a grim, certain dip of his chin. “Give them half an hour, no more, then pick eight and start setting the defenses. Then we do shifts every three hours. No more. No less.”



“You think they’re going to get impatient suddenly?” His Captain asked.



“If I were them I’d already be on us.” He admitted grimly. “We get warm, we get rested, we get stronger. If we’re lucky they won’t come until morning.”



“Who th’ fuck are ye’?” The girl asked abruptly, her chin lifted, as the others drew plates to the men on benches. Daeron was quick to find men, who never shirked, and into the cold they went. The wind howled angrily and told Roland stories of death. Told him that he’d found war.



----- ----------- -------------- -------------- ------------
(Roland - Captain of the Black Banners - Craster's Keep)


They’d come in the morning and they’d come hard, as he’d expected, but they’d lost only one. Conlin, a well-loved man whose death was felt hard when one of the savage fool’s had managed to stagger him and another had taken the advantage and punched a wood spear into his throat and left him to drown in his own blood around it. The horde, most of it, lay stacked upon itself before the hovel. Freezing, steadily, in the ground like the crimson that splashed the snow and scented the air with the thick, cold stink of copper. The survivors groaned and whimpered and his men moved amongst them, killing them where they’d fallen. He counted over a hundred to their number but saw the state they were in. Desperate things. Half-frozen, poorly armed, skinny and without armor. Most were carrying wooden spears or stone clubs. Pitiful things. And his men with their steel-bladed spears and broad shields. He stood party to the carnage now and cleaned the blade of his sword. The dark steel rippled in the high sun and the girls, looking out, were wide-eyed and silent.



Rollo, the man who’d sent them on him, had fallen by his own sword. He was not mortally wounded, not if a healer could be found, but as it were the blade of Roland’s sword had split a clean slash along his back when the man had charged and Roland had slipped him smoothly. Rollo was a massive man and it was a grim thing to see him bleeding upon the snow, his eyes narrowed steadily as he looked up past Roland’s boots and towards the dark, thick stubble of his beard and then the pale glacial gray of his eyes beyond. He coughed once and spoke the common. He was a dead man. Blood came from his mouth and he ignored it steadily.



“Give me a mercy after you give me your name.” The slain man said steadily.



“Roland.” He answered, settling into a feral crouch with the point of his sword pressed into the snow and the frozen ground below. Roland looked into the man’s face and considered him at length. “Won’t hurt for much longer.”



“Don’t hurt now.” The man smiled. Blood filled his teeth and drained from the corner of his lips. “Too cold to hurt. Should ‘ave let you go, huh?”



Roland looked briefly aside. Daeron had his spear inverted in his hands and was nudging it through a pile of fallen men. Beneath his Captain, shifting, an arm moved. A man alive beneath the pile. Roland watched as Daeron thrust the bladed spear sharply downward and the arm went totally still. His eyes tracked back to the dying man only to find them staring, sightless, past him. He sighed heavily and rose.