"Well, what do you make of it son?" Halys Hornwood asked curiously, his brown eyes taking in the slightly macabre leavings they had been told of by the pair of hunters.

Daryn wasn't sure how to answer his father. He couldn't tell whether he already had an idea of what he wanted his son to see in this strange scene or if he was genuinely mystified by it and was asking his honest opinion. He had been trained to be the Lord of Hornwood from an early age, his status as only child somewhat of an oddity even for a smaller bannerman's family and thus his treatment at his father's hands alternated between genuine questioning to further his training in the necessary aspects of ruling or lordship and rhetorical questions that were meant to make a point to him.

Though he supposed that if they were counting all his father's children then it would be unfair to exclude his younger brother Larence Snow. But considering that he was twelve and currently residing at Deepwood Motte, Daryn very much doubted that it would come down to him to rule over the House of Hornwood anytime in the near future.

He scratched his wisps of a brown moustache that might've matched his hair if it was more than a few slivers of overgrown stubble as he attempted to stall for time. His blue eyes, inherited from his mother, scanned the five charred bodies and abandoned weapons. He said the first thing that came to his mind.

"Very odd father. Very odd." He proclaimed, his nose picking up a scent that was separate yet entwined with the smell of burnt flesh and cooking meat. His father looked at him before pointedly looking back at the bodies that were scattered on the soft ground.

"Yes, I know it's obvious to say as much." Daryn pre-empted his father. "But hear me out. It's not just the fact that they've been left here. They're also the only things that have been burned in this area! I mean, how do you suppose their attackers could've done that? And what purpose would it serve?"

His father's eyes grew thoughtful as he looked at the bodies again, crouching by one of the nearest ones while the small squadron of armed men they'd brought with them hung back a bit further so they could keep watch for any wild animals who had chewed the bodies any more than they had been.

Daryn wondered how it was these men had come to such a gruesome end here. One man falling asleep in a campfire was a freak accident though it had been told as happening before. (Noticeably without any specific names being given but always a family member's friend of whosoever happened to be insisting it had truly really happened.) But five armed men, all in different places of the forest? And all without setting the surrounding woods alight?

No. Nature was not that strange and bandits though these men likely were, they couldn't have been that stupid. Others had been here. But why wasn't there more trace of them?

"Begging your pardon m'lord." One of the hunters spoke up from the back. It appeared to be the younger of the two, the hunter's son Owen. An average sized boy, his hands were rough from repeated skinning and drawing of the bowstring. His black hair was shaggy, but clean. His eyes were green in contrast to his father's blue and alive with an eagerness that Daryn was unused to seeing from one of the smallfolk. "But it wasn't-"

"Quiet Owen." His father Earic reprimanded softly. The older hunter was black haired like the younger. But that was where the similarities ended. Where the son was obviously eager to speak, the father had barely spoken full sentences since bringing report of the bodies to his lord. Where the son was shaggy but clean, the father was trimmed yet somehow unkempt: his stubble showing he hadn't returned home to shave in some time or that if he had he hadn't seen the point in doing so. Where the son was awed by the presence of the lords of the land surrounding Hornwood keep, the father was nonplussed; instead electing to be more wary and cautious even outside the obvious deference he needed to show.

"But father!" He started, indicating the ground nearby the bodies with a wide swing of his right arm.

"Our lord of Hornwood has not given you leave to speak. You should hold your tongue until he gives you leave to use it." Earic preempted, only minutely shaking his head in response to his son's agitated gesture. He bowed to Daryn's father before he continued. "Forgive my son Lord Hornwood. He gets his manners from his mother. Lovely lass, but too blunt by a half."

"What does he mean?" Daryn asked before his father could answer Earic. He wanted to know what it was the younger boy had seen that they might've overlooked.

"Well," The boy started hesitantly. He looked to his father and Daryn's own, his demeanor now more timid as he seemed unsure whether he was committing offense by answering Lord Hornwood's heir directly. Daryn's father waved his hand in a gesture that seemed to indicate he should go on.

"The thing is m'lord, this wasn't the work of more than one man." He got out in a rush. He obviously didn't want his father or Lord Hornwood to change their minds about letting him speak his peace by taking too long.

"What?!" Came Halys's sharp question. He took two steps toward the boy while Daryn did the same, both seeking to draw more out of the younger hunter. How could one man have possibly done all of this?

"If you follow their tracks back where they came from m'lord Hornwood," The boy began, eyes beginning to shine with enthusiasm again as they got onto the subject of how he figured that. "You'll see that they was looking at someone's camp."

He walked away from the clearing for a bit, finally coming to a larger gap in the trees that one could call a small clearing if they were feeling generous.

"See this here on the ground?" He said, bringing his hand to hover a few inches above a mound of darkened earth that Daryn hadn't even noticed until the young man had pointed it out. "This was a fire pit when these men got killed. You can tell from the ashes that remain in it even after the man tried to bury it. And before the tracks that came from the dead men disturb the place, there's only one set of clear feet. They thought they'd catch him off guard. But somehow," He indicated a small area nearby the fire pit that had been partially overrun but still contained many overlapping impressions of what Daryn assumed were the dead men's tracks. "He saw them coming. He went this way:" He started walking toward the area they had found the bodies.

"He encountered one of them. The others probably heard, came right quick. Six sets of prints lead here. Only one goes back to the camp again and moves away from it." He concluded, smiling broadly even in the stench of old burnt flesh.

His father Earic sighed quietly. "The boy is right Lord Hornwood. But he misses the most obvious things and the reason I didn't want to say such earlier."

Owen looked at his father in astonishment.

"Firstly, he misses that there is no evidence of how this lone fighter managed to burn the bodies. There's no evidence of him having used any sort of pitch or setting any kind of pyre to do this. Were I a superstitious sort of man, I might be ready to call it sorcery and be done with the matter." He said as matter of factly as though he were speaking only of some possible snowfall. "The second thing however is the most important one."

"The truth of it Lord Hornwood: these men weren't simply bandits who came across an easy mark. Their weapons and what remains of their clothing says that they work for one, but they themselves were a scouting party." The more experienced hunter continued. He pointed back to the area the five dead men had come from. "Their tracks come from the direction of the coast. Near that area, the only river they could've crossed is the Weeping Water."

Daryn's father sighed heavily. "Of course." He muttered to himself.

"Father?" Daryn asked him.

"When we're back at Hornwood, I'll explain Daryn. But until then, let us say I understand where our huntsman friend is trying to say." Halys said, his reluctance to breach the subject obvious.

Once they had returned to Hornwood, Earic and his son Owen were compensated for their information and the bodies of the bandits disposed of. Soon afterward, Halys led his heir to Hornwood's private solar and began explaining to Daryn what the huntsmen's information meant for their potential actions.

"What do you mean, we cannot do anything about this?!" Daryn burst out incredulously. A scouting party of men from a bandit group organized and smart enough to send eyes forward instead of charge into a lord's territory had been killed, their route obvious and their passage through Lord Bolton's land had been unnoticed at best and uncontested at worst. Why did that mean they couldn't inform him about it so that they might do something about this band of raiders he wondered? Was this not what it meant to be a Lord of the North?

"I mean that even if we were to request Roose Bolton give an explanation as to why these men could make their way through his land unmolested, do you imagine he will not take offense at the implication that he cannot patrol and handle his own lands sufficiently? This is far from the first time bandits have made their way through Roose Bolton's land. But how would we prove it? By the word of thieves and killers? Even if they had lived, none would seriously take the word of a criminal over the word of a highborn lord. By the weapons they carry? All stolen, rusting and falling into disrepair. Hardly the tools of a grabbing hand of the House Bolton. The stories and whispers smallfolk tell? Hardly more reliable than the word of the bandits." Halys's tone was firm even as his eyes shifted slightly, betraying his somewhat conflicted opinion on the subject.

"And even if we manage to overcome all of those doubts and do send soliders to hunt down these vagabonds, where would we even start? The only men who could've told us where they came are dead and their trail is long since cold. There is nothing we can do here Daryn, much as it galls me to admit so." His father finished, leaning back in the chair behind his desk.

Daryn was speechless. His father who had told him so much of what was expected as a Lord of Hornwood: to watch over his people, to ensure the prosperity of the realm, to uphold the laws and the justice of men was telling him that he couldn't do any of that because the politics of doing so were too complicated. Daryn turned his head to the window of his father's solar to buy himself time to try and marshal an argument and so he wouldn't have to look at his father as he did so.

"What of the magician they attacked father?" Daryn asked. "If we found him-"

"And where would we find this mystic man Daryn?" His father asked gently. He rubbed the back of his neck with his left hand tiredly. "Even if we could find him, do you really think he could tell us anything these bandits could not?"

Daryn was silent. He could not say so and they both knew it.

Halys shook his head sadly. "It is unfortunate that these men got so far into our lands." He continued, running his right hand through his prematurely grey hair in agitation. "But in any case, I shall be doubling the patrols for a while near here. Limited as our house's lands are, we cannot afford any outbreaks of banditry, not with the winter coming." He leaned forward to take his quill in hand, pulling a piece of parchment toward him as he prepared to write out his orders and edicts for the smallfolk.

He briefly looked up at Daryn. "Get to the courtyard and find Lucas. Tell him he needs to step up your lessons so that you may be ready."

"Yes father." Daryn answered softly, knowing he would get nothing accomplished by continuing to argue for action with him. As he descended from the solar heading to the courtyard, he pondered his father's explanation as to why they could do nothing to act upon this trespass. He could somewhat understand it. Their family words may have been Righteous in Wrath yet that did not mean they could rush in haste. If anything it meant they had to be more discerning with their anger and sense of retribution. Even under the straightforward and honorable House Stark of the North, there was still political maneuvers to be made. It was annoying but thus far as Daryn had known it hadn't actively hindered them from doing what was best for the land.

Storing food for hard times, trading with merchants within and without Westeros, being sure of their own safety within their borders. It had all been an unquestioning balance of things in Daryn's mind before. But now he couldn't say so with nearly as much certainty. What was the good of being a fellow Lord of the North if they couldn't even work together to be rid of the undesirable elements of their homes? Surely there was enough of that below the Neck where the Southern Lords were as unused to hardship as they were to honesty?

But more concerning was the knowledge he had almost missed because he was not as good at tracking and seeing as he could be. He had given dedicated effort to his studies of running a household and the art of combat, but had never seen hunting as much more than a chance at practicing his horsemanship and his archery.

But that Huntsman Earic and his son Owen had seen in the tracks on the ground and the bodies of the dead men a story he could never have guessed at if they hadn't shown him. If he learned how to truly hunt for himself, perhaps it could serve him in helping keep his piece of the realm safer.

As he reached the courtyard from the halls of Hornwood, his eyes sought out the Master at Arms Lucas Samson. Lucas was a man his father's age, prompted to the position of Master at Arms for his service to his lord on the battlefields of Robert's Rebellion. He had previously been a simple household guard, but had proven himself to his father after taking a blade lance to the gut for his father. He had barely survived and still had trouble with his bowels and his breathing to this day for it. Despite that, he could be a strict taskmaster when he felt Daryn wasn't giving his all in training.

Across the way, he spotted Lucas's distinctive bald head. Striding toward him, he reached a decision.

"Lucas!" He called to the Master of Arms. As he turned to face him, Daryn asked a question. "Do you happen to know Earic the Huntsman?"

Lucas squinted at him suspiciously. "Aye, that I do young Hornwood. Why do you ask?"

"Why else? I wish to learn the art of hunting Lucas." Daryn answered, an excited gleam entering his eyes.


Author's Note: A glimpse into the aftermath of Jon's encounter from an outside perspective. Hope you all enjoy it! And a hearty thank you to new reviewer Raging Dark King as well as returning reviewers Caelleh, thesnakesofthesouth, IWantColoredRain and Awesome Story! Hope to hear what everyone thinks of this newest installment. :)