Asha
Once she'd felt Ten Tower's gate get knocked in, Asha had wasted no time.
"To ships!" she'd screamed as loud as she could, still barely loud enough over the noise of the ice-ship's volleys. "To sea!" It was hard enough coming down from the ramparts without bothering to check who was keeping up, and Asha had jumped into an empty cart rather than waste time with the last dozen steps. Dust from broken masonry had mixed with the heavy snow and it was all she could do to cough her way out of the fast-crumbling castle. Men were massing on the shoreline and in the tide, pouring from the ice-caked hulks like wine from a cask. As soon as each tiny figure made landfall it began to advance on Ten Towers as fast as it could manage, stopping for neither orders nor rest. Because they need neither, Asha had thought. Despite the chaos, the hulks' running themselves aground on Harlaw's beach reminded Asha that the docks had yet to be attacked. We are not trapped yet. She ran down the beach, the sand hard as rock beneath her feet, her chest burning from breathing cold air. Black Wind lay at anchor at the end of the last dock, bobbing invitingly. If I can only reach it. Hoarse bellowing echoed from the beach, the first sound the enemy had yet given. Asha didn't stop to look, fear a better spur than any lash. It took her a single stride to get up the gangplank. Once on the deck she went about cutting every rope that held the ship in place, not stopping her preparations even when the sounds of boots behind her reached her ears.
"Make ready to cast off!" someone cried.
"Fuck that, cast off!" Asha had replied. Only when the ship started moving, pulling away from the dock and Harlaw itself, did she try to catch her breath and stop the rush of thought in her head. The ice-ship made no move to follow, intent it seemed on making certain the island was well taken. Still, Asha saw it loose some of that awful light their way, ships here and there bursting into frigid kindling. Men blown to bloody bits of meat and bone. She had no doubt the ice-ship could catch Black Wind, even at full sail. It needs no wind to move, she thought. Nor oars that I can see. Moreover, it was huge, long as six Black Winds bow to stern and had room to hold tenfold more crew. Even choked with fear and dismay, a small part of Asha knew she had never wanted something so badly.
The rattling of the anchor-line irritated her so that she turned to tell the fool shaking it to stop or leap overboard. Instead she saw a bony hand clinging to Black Wind's deck rail, the corpse it belonged to pulling itself up and over. It had only time to stand before Asha's thrown axe took it in the face and sent it promptly back over the side, clattering against what sounded like plenty and more of its fellows on the way up.
"We're being boarded!" Asha cried, whipping out another axe as the corpses, some little more than barnacle-crusted skeletons, continued to pour onto the deck. A proper fight, she thought. Even against reavers long dead. They came quickly and tirelessly, as she had expected, but there was not the least bit of thought in any of their movements. They threw themselves at Black Wind's crew, swinging driftwood, rusted blades or just dead fists at anyone in reach. A thrown barrel was enough to knock three of them to pieces, spare limbs wriggling on the deck as splintered skeletons tried still to fight with no legs or arms or even skulls. Asha's dread was quickly replaced with derision. Even a thrall could give a better effort, even a thrall would make a sterner test. Amidst the sudden song of battle, Asha spotted long red hair shouldering past her to the rigging that held the anchor. Hagen. The woman brought an axe crashing down on the railing, cutting away the anchor- and the line the dead had used to climb up. For her trouble one of the stinking things rapped her in the back of the head with a driftwood cudgel and Hagen dropped where she stood. In turn, one of the ironborn simply grabbed the dead man by his hipbone and heaved him overboard with a single hand. When he turned Asha saw Tris Botley's face, red from the run to the docks.
"Not worth much are they?" he yelled. Not alone, she thought. But there's plenty more where they came from. She felt something poke her hard in the chest. At once she swung her axe, promptly snapping it in twain on Mormont's front.
"Ass." he muttered, poking her again with the Reader's Myrish eye. "Lord Glover had it when I scooped him and his sister up on the way out." he said, ignoring what dead remained to fight. Either it was luck as many had gotten up the line as did or whoever sent them had planned on more still making the climb. Asha could see no fallen ironborn among the mess of briny bones. "Get us gone," she told her helmsman.
"Where?"
"South." Qarl said, emerging from the throng. His face was ashen, clearly the dead unnerved him. Stinking of brine, no wonder.
"South will put us on Banefort lands, a spit of beach cut off from the rest of the westerlands by proper mountains. No doubt the dead will come calling after us and we'll have nowhere left to run."
"Perhaps the Cape of Eagles?"
"Anywhere we might reach, the dead can too." Asha said, lifting the eye to her own. Through the tube she could see the ship in detail, a single piece of ice flawlessly cut from a larger iceberg. Strands of silk hung from what rails she could spot running 'round the base of each great fin and again halfway up. Her breath caught in her chest. What could only be Others were standing at each foredeck, accompanied by nine-foot gangly creatures with sharp cruel teeth and subtly long noses, hair cut short in sharp contrast to the Others, save in one case. On the upper deck of the front fin an Other without a hair on its head and wrapped in white bear fur had its squinty blue gaze directly on Black Wind. On me, Asha thought. They need no tubes to see this far. Its arms were crossed and from its belt hung a grapple hook wrought from razored ice, the same as the dagger Ooloop had given her. Around its throat was a silver chain with dozens of long barbed arrowheads, silver also, hanging from it. The rest of the crew were focused on Harlaw's beach and the dead swarming around Ten Towers, while others were more attentive toward their ship. Their mouths were moving but Black Wind was too far away to hear their tongue. Finally, the sails caught the cold wind and they were away, Asha staring at the ice-ship until it shrank out of sight.
Even quit of the Others, the snows did not stop. It's the cold, she told herself when she could not stop her hands from shaking. She slipped them under her arms to keep them warm. Only the cold, she thought as the memories came back for the dozenth time. Castles crumbling, ships turned to splinters, dead men seething out of their salty sleep by the score. The Others had no more part to play than lob lights at us. No wonder I can't stop shaking. Despite her objections the crew seemed set on the Cape of Eagles, likely out of shock more than a calculated risk. It will be some days before we reach the cape anyhow. No doubt we'll know by then if Mallister lands teem with the dead. When night fell, she felt someone toss a thick blanket around her shoulders.
"Don't argue. The rest are sleeping and losing a finger to frostbite will ruin your throw." Mormont grunted.
"Did you see anyone else when you snatched the Glover whelps?" She tried to keep her voice from breaking.
"I've never seen anyone run half so fast as when you made for this ship, Greyjoy. If you're hoping the Reader and his sisters made it out to sea, you've not got much to hope for. Aeron had no idea where he was or what was going on around him, I can't see him making it either."
"What about Theon?"
"He was right next to you. When did you last see him?" She thought hard.
"I…I didn't. One second he was there, the next the ramparts he was standing on were gone."
"That seems answer enough, then." Theon and the Damphair done for. Just the Crow's Eye and I left, if he's still alive.
"Iron Victory was among the hulks that beached on Harlaw. I suppose that means Victarion and his Iron Fleet do their reaving for the Others now." Mormont only shrugged.
"You saw what the dead are worth without massive numbers. If you cross paths with him, give him an axe and heave him over the side."
"Knowing him, he'd sink fast enough. He was fond of wearing plate at sea, to show he wasn't afraid of drowning." Her companion snorted.
"The world is well rid of a man so foolish-brave."
"He may not have been so keen if he knew what was really going on down there. Fish-men and things." It was then she realized the fishwaif had quite gone missing as well. "Oh, fuck. Not like she could just slink into the waves with the dead all around."
"They didn't strike me as the swimming kind. Walk along the sea bottom, fine, but not swim through open ocean. If she turns up, fine, if not…don't lose sleep over it. Enough people are going to die, you can't dwell on one waif." That cheerful sentiment reminded Asha just who she was talking to. Fucking northmen. Show them a peach, they'll show you a pit.
"I can still be glad the Others didn't take the time to come after us."
"You know as well as I do the dead were lucky to get as many topside as they managed. It wasn't one or two ships they were after, they wanted to take Harlaw. You saw, again, as I saw, what their ship could do. Why waste breath chasing stragglers?" Silence fell, while Asha tried to come to terms with what had happened. There are more people on Harlaw than those who live in Ten Towers, she thought. Smallfolk. Miners and fishermen. The very real possibility that the Iron Islands might be reduced to a few bloodstained rocks and corpse-choked bays made Asha's lip tremble. She shook herself. Had we stayed, we'd never have gotten away. She snorted. Gotten away. Floated off, more like. All but unnoticed by the enemy, save for one.
Her mood did not improve as the night wore on. The snow kept at them, piling quickly on the deck whenever they let it.
"None of this is natural," one of the men complained. "Snow isn't supposed to follow you like flies hot on the trail of a corpse."
"It isn't following us, Roggon. My guess would be it's snowing everywhere." Asha told him, trying to spot movement. Trying to find proof we're not adrift on some black void, where sea and sky are one. The clouds had quite blotted out the stars and so what little light they had was due to torches that had to be kept sconced out of the wind, where their warmth did not reach the deck.
"Mormont, you'll have to be our lookout. Indefinitely." Asha said when the man returned from checking on the Glover children. "How are they?" she asked.
"Scared out of their wits, of course. Cold and hungry, too."
"I could say the same of my crew." Seasoned reavers all, yet more than one pair of hands shook at the rigging, more than one pair of legs shuffled about sluggishly despite their haste to get away. Asha knew shock when she saw it. Only I'm used to seeing it in my enemies after a victory. When he spoke next his voice was lower so that only she could hear.
"What are we going to do if they find us?" Most like we won't even know they've found us. We'll hear ice grinding on ice, the dark will turn to light and that will be it.
"They'll be busy taking the islands for a little while. Even with a ship like that." Then she remembered Ten Towers' front gate crumbling. Or not.
"Very good. And if there's another like it waiting for us in Ironman's Bay?"
"Well, then we're just fucked. No sense worrying about no-wins, you moody northern cunt. Might as well worry about a rogue wave flipping us over and never mind the Others." Asha felt a hint of color in her voice, a smile flit across her face. Mormont grumbled something and shoved off, likely to find one of her crew to be grim and miserable with. She set about replacing the axes the dead had taken overboard with them, startled by a leather scabbard beneath her stash. Carefully she sifted the common dirks and axes aside to reveal the sword Theon had plucked from the surf on Dragonstone. Mormont must have kept hold of it even when he grabbed the Glovers. Thanking chance for the northman's quick thinking, she pulled it out of the pile of iron blades. He was a foot away just now and I didn't notice he didn't have it on him. There's dark, there's night, and then there's what we're stuck in. Carefully she freed it from its scabbard, taking in the dark blade. The torchlight makes it look alive, she thought. Then she had another idea, looking back into the pile. Just as steadily as with the sword she pulled out the bundle of rags, maddeningly cold in her grip. She shook it and out came the razored ice, the dagger falling to the floor without a sound, without bouncing or rattling as any earthly metal would. Let's see which is master of which. She put no force into the sword, touching its tip as gently as she could manage to the piece of crystal. Immediately there was an ungodly squealing, like she'd just speared a pig. The ice parted at once, hissing angrily as the sword simply melted through it. She sat there on her knees, openmouthed, unable to get the sound out of her head even with the Glover children shrieking. Eventually their little lungs gave out and they had to stop for breath but before Erena could go on making a fuss Gawen started at the sight lying on the floor. He came over, Erena clutching his side from behind him and shaking her head into his cloak.
"That's Valyrian steel." he said, prodding it with an arrow. Instantly the arrow's head cracked down the middle, the ruined dagger's cold not so soft to common iron. "Why is it in here instead of with Ser Jorah?"
"Mormont has more to worry about than keeping track of one sword." Ask him and he's like to say his days of needing swords are over. Asha remembered when he'd torn away the bars of the Damphair's cell.
"Still…someone should have it. It's not doing any good in here with us."
"Ironmen favor axes, boy. The sword's too long, too unwieldy on the deck of a longship."
"Your axes are iron, and iron does not work." The little lord pointed to the arrow. "Swing them all you like. After they've cracked against funny icy swords, you'll wish you had something stiffer than a headless axe in hand." Gawen stooped and huffed as he pulled the sword up. "Do a thing the way it's done, not the way you want to do it, my father used to tell me. I thought he was talking about building snowmen." He hefted it and the sword flipped on its point, the hilt landing in Asha's lap. "I suppose it would work for killing them, too."
She took in the hilt, the twin dragons with ruby eyes.
"Hold on…" Gawen said, less stiffly, making her look up. He sat down across from her, Erena peeking out from behind him at the sword. Evidently, he forgot whatever it was he was going to say next, and after a few moments of awkward silence Asha gave him a tap on the shoulder to settle him. "Where did this come from?"
"Theon found it washed up on the shores of Dragonstone. The, uh…fish-people started sending booty ashore in exchange for any seastone we might find. That's why we tossed the Seastone Chair from the towers of Pyke." She told him, feeling more foolish by the word. "Look, it was Theon's doing. Blame him."
"You got whole beaches full of treasure for a few hunks of smelly stone and one slimy chair?" Gawen asked. "It sounds like your brother knows what he's doing." Or he got lucky, for once. "Off the coast of Dragonstone, you say."
"Aye."
"So, before that, it was in the Narrow Sea somewhere?" Asha's mouth tightened.
"It stands to reason."
"Uh…"
"What is it, lad?" she snapped impatiently.
"When I was at Ten Towers, there was naught to do but hide under my bed. When I got tired of that I started wandering around, and one day I found the Book Tower. There were a lot of books that were too hard, but I found one that seemed written plain on purpose, as if to make what was in it clear even to an ironman." Asha's curiosity won out over her pride.
"What was it about?"
"The Blackfyre Pretenders. The house, such as it was, and their rebellions. Um, there was a lot of fighting. But at the end it said the man really behind the first few uprisings, that Bittersteel, he died in Essos as a sellsword."
"What has that got to do with us?"
"Well, the Blackfyres took their name from the sword Aegon the Unworthy gave his bastard son. The sword became their Iron Throne, they fought over it as often as they came over trying to win the chair." Slowly, realization dawned on Asha.
"But the Blackfyres were wiped out. Bittersteel never managed to put one on the throne."
"There's no mention of him wielding Blackfyre the day he died. What if the remaining claimants weren't to his liking? After yet another defeat, what if he was so bitter, he decided that even if the Targaryens had the Conqueror's throne, they would never get his sword?"
"You think, what, he just…threw it overboard?"
"Bittersteel was that sort of man. He could nurse a grievance better than any woman could a babe."
"In this, he was nothing special. My own father was of that make." Gawen frowned.
"There's a lot of wars. Grievances and slights that grow bigger, like a snowball. Books about them filled whole shelves in Lord Harlaw's Book Tower." Asha got his meaning. Not so dull as most northmen. It must come from growing up a ward of Uncle Rodrik's.
"This isn't a war about slights, though. Or thrones, or lordly rights, or things like that. The Others think they can roll over Westeros fine and dandy, the people in it just waiting to be cut down. They're not attacking over a slight, or a throne, or who's heir to what. They're doing it because they can."
"Like the ironborn, eh?" Gawen asked.
"Aye." Asha let a rueful grin fill her mouth. Only better. Better at shipbuilding, sailing, fighting. And killing. Better and more at killing.
She spent the next few hours with the Glover whelps, trying to ease their little minds. Gawen was too old to be put off and too sharp not to know their situation was dire, but he held his tongue for Erena's benefit.
"What else did you find in the Book Tower?" Asha asked. Gawen shrugged.
"A lot about the ironmen. Some was written about the ironmen themselves, but most was written outside the Iron Islands by maesters, so you have to take that into account when you're reading. One person might call the Red Kraken bold, the other reckless. Who wrote a book is often more important than its title." Erena tugged his arm suddenly.
"If you want to talk to the lady, you can do so yourself. I'm not a puppet and you're not a mummer." The elder Glover told the younger. The girl turned pink.
"I can read too, but not all the books in the big tower were in the Common Tongue." That surprised Asha. I never knew the Reader to learn another tongue.
"What did the words look like?"
"They were funny. More little pictures than words. But the big pictures, they were scary. Trees with droopy leaves, ropes hanging from them. And the heads. Big scary black heads."
"Have you seen the book she's talking about?" Asha asked Gawen.
"I never did. Those stupid heads gave her bad nightmares for a good while, though."
"They were chasing me. I was in that green place full of droopy trees and they were chasing me around!" Gawen rolled his eyes.
"She lost the book, so I could never spot them myself."
"Heads like…on pikes?" Asha asked the Glover girl.
"No. They weren't…people heads. Or, not real ones." She made a face. Her jaw went firm and rigid, lips a tight line and her brow heavy over staring eyes. The suddenness of it made Asha shiver. "They might have been statues. But statues are supposed to have bodies, not just be big heads." The girl's words made not a lick of sense to Asha, but she knew something of nonsense becoming something much worse in dreams.
"You say they were black."
"Black as night. Not gray, like Gawen thought I meant. Black." Asha looked down to the sword. Quite possibly a Targaryen heirloom.
"Like the blade?" Erena looked at it carefully, eyes roving over the metal with a focus Asha would not have thought her possessed of.
"If I say yes, it would be wrong. But they were more like this than stone." she said of the sword. Asha shook her head.
"Enough to worry about just now without adding on a few silly pictures in some book, my lady. At least, I think so." Cold races, deep races, and us caught in the middle. Erena gulped and hiccuped.
"I only ever saw the book once, after all. Could be I'm just remembering the pictures worse than they were…" Even so, she didn't sound totally convinced. Her brother can finish calming her down, I have a ship to mind.
Even hard-pressed as they were, the men at the oars seemed loath to breathe too loud. Afraid to alert cold ears and draw cold eyes.
"We should make the cape soon." Tris Botley murmured when Asha came near. Not that we'd know. We could skirt the Mallister lands until Black Wind's bow breaks against Seagard itself.
"Mormont." She called as loudly as she dared. A grunt in the darkness was her only reply. "Keep a weather eye, yeah?"
"For what?"
"Land. The Cape of Eagles."
"We can't land below the Neck-"
"I don't intend to. Just to stop at this town and that along the cape, maybe take on whatever we can find. See what we will in regard to the Mallisters. At least we can let them know they have new neighbors, ones that will make them pine for the days when ironborn came calling." Asha said, as if they were just running low on supplies. Maybe we can manage to make off with a few people, even. Fresh arms for the oars, extra swords for if we run into another floating hulk. Asha spent the next few hours pacing the deck, ears pounding trying to hear the water part somewhere out on the water. Listening for the sounds of the Others. Grinding ice, the clatter of bones.
"There." Mormont pointed off to the left. "We're on course for land, but if it's people we're looking for I can see a fishing hamlet down that way." Asha whistled under her breath.
"For what it's worth, Mormont, I'm glad you're with us. Glad, too, that your time in the east hasn't taken the north from you." Another grunt. Wordy, these northmen. Still, better than a poisoned arrowhead. She waited until they got a bit closer (or so she guessed) before she next spoke. "Can you see anyone? Alive or otherwise?"
"No. It just looks like a fishing village. Everyone's probably asleep." Or dead, off to roll over the next village and the next before pooling around Seagard.
"Shall we ready to dock?" Tris asked.
"Aye. Weapons at the ready, but we're not here to reave." Asha replied, cursing the darkness for what seemed like the thousandth time.
"Can we light torches? Or will that draw them?" Qarl mused.
"We don't even know if they've made land yet." Hagen replied.
"If you lot can't see, the rest doesn't matter. Light your bloody torches. We can see off a few walking corpses for our trouble and go on our way. If all of them go out at once-"
"We fuck right off." Asha finished for him, nodding. One by one each crewman got a torch and Asha spotted their destination; a little village that might have been raided a hundred times. Only now we're here to help, Asha thought. As well as ironborn can, anyway.
The biggest of the village's three docks was still only just long enough for Black Wind.
"Bring the sword." Asha told Mormont. He coughed in reply. She turned to see Gawen standing between her and her cabin, the sheathed sword in his arms and Erena standing behind him, looking terrified.
"I want to go." he said.
"Absolutely fucking not." Asha replied. He turned to Mormont.
"Knights in the south have squires. I could be your squire, like in battle." Mormont gave a soft sight, showing infinitely more patience for the Glover boy than any ironborn, Asha included. He got to a knee easier than a man his age ought have managed.
"Even the squires have training, my lord. They know what to do and what not to do. Still then, I'll wager you could work that bit out, having grown up at Ten Towers. Don't begrudge your time in old Harlaw's Book Tower against the ironborn. Few northmen see so much of the world, if only on paper."
"If I'm so smart, why can't I come?" Glover asked, sounding every bit the boy he was.
"This isn't going to be a battle. Gods willing, we'll be back before anything can go wrong, but if it doesn't, we'll have no warning. The enemy won't fight like men, like knights- a squire wouldn't be much use against enemies that don't feel and don't flee. When you're someplace safe, like Bear Island or Deepwood Motte or wherever you end up, you can learn how best to fight them from those that have done it before. Until then, you're to stay on the ship and take care of your sister. You understand?" Gawen Glover gulped, trying not to cry. Would he even know his own father should they meet again? Asha wondered.
"Yes, Ser Jorah."
"Good boy. Back in the cabin with you both, I'll see you when I get back. Might be we'll have some Mallisters you can swap stories with." Glover gulped again, nodded, and led his sister back into Asha's cabin. Once the door shut, Asha exhaled.
"Not so hard-hearted after all." she mused aloud.
"Hard enough to crack some iron heads together, if only for the sound." Mormont replied. Immediately those nearest him began slowly shuffling out of arm's reach.
"Is the gangplank ready?" Asha asked, receiving murmurs in the affirmative.
"Then lay it down. The sooner we can see the place is free of Others and their chaff, the sooner we can be off north."
"Where both the Others and their chaff are sure to be in abundance." Mormont said, stretching his arms out in front of him, touching his fingertips together. Asha thought about punching him. Why bother? He'd not feel it unless I wore a silvered gauntlet.
One dock was much like another, but the hard earth beneath Asha's boots let her know winter had come better than any snow. Frozen ground, as like to give as mortared stone. It's lucky they have the sea; the Cape of Eagles' smallfolk won't be growing crops for a long time. They numbered a half dozen. Aside from Mormont, Asha took ashore with her Tristifer Botley, Qarl, Roggon and Grimtongue. Tris because the others murmur he's more silk than iron, Qarl because I don't need him forgetting the battle for the bedchamber. Roggon Rustbeard and Grimtongue needed to make no such displays. Ironborn to the bone were both of them, and bone-deep was their dislike for each other. Perhaps it's just the color of their beards, rust-red and coal-black. Or because Roggon loves to drink and boast while Grimtongue hates nothing in this world more than the sound of his own voice. Whatever the reason each was always eager to prove the better of the other. As the blacksmiths say, iron sharpens iron, Asha thought with a rueful grin. If the hamlet had a name, Asha did not know it. Raid too close to home and the greenlanders will come in force, as they did when Lord Balon tried to crown himself. Hovels and huts sprung up out of the darkness as she moved, hoping her torch and small party were proof enough they weren't there to reave. But for their footsteps, the place was silent.
"Anything, Mormont?" Asha asked.
"Not that I see nor hear nor smell. Only the salt of the sea."
"These folk may have fled to safety somewhere; a kick could reduce one of these stys to kindling." Tris suggested. A sudden scrabbling noise from within one of the further hovels was loud enough to wake the dead to Asha's strained ears. At once her axes were raised and from her left Roggon dashed to the gap in the wall that served as a window. He took a quick look inside and disappeared into the hut before Asha could call him back, emerging with a wriggling red mongrel under one arm. The pup snapped and yelped in indignation but when Roggon produced a bit of dried beef from a pouch on his belt, the animal quieted straightaway. When he chanced to see Asha's face, he shrugged.
"What? Dogs is good beasts. Beats buying one off a kennel keeper."
"That runt won't live to be a dog, and you'll soon follow him if you go off on your own again." Qarl warned. Roggon's face went redder than his beard.
"While your smooth pink cheeks will set the dead to rights, is that it, Maid?" At once the pup began growling at Qarl, which earned him another piece of beef from Roggon.
"Anybody in there, Rustbeard?" Asha asked before Tris could offer a reply.
"Not a one, captain. Living, dead, or living dead." A cursory check of the other huts was all they needed to confirm that the place had been deserted. "Might be they went off to Seagard to get behind stone walls." Roggon muttered once they regrouped.
"We'd have seen signs of a struggle had the Others been here."
"Would we?" Asha asked. "All they need do is roll up while the place sleeps, coat it in freezing mist and wait for the new-made dead to rise and trot out for orders."
"Nothing's frozen over thus, Your Grace." Tris replied. "Had the Others been here there would be signs. Unnatural ones, but still." His observation met with mutters of agreement from the rest.
"Well then, I suppose it's Seagard for us-" Asha began when a wolf's howl cut her short, coming from further inland. The wriggling pup froze in Roggon's arms. Only a wolf, Asha thought, before a second howl joined in. Then a third, then a fourth. Asha counted eight before another howl cut the rest off, one deeper and richer than any common timber wolf.
The Stark direwolves are all accounted for, Asha thought quickly. The female had gone to the stormlands with her mistress and the King in the North's had not come south. On a ship, anyway. Maybe he's wandered further than Snow suspects. Roggon looked ready to run off into the night after the beast, no doubt eager to strike gold after having found a penny.
"Eight, and the big one." Asha said aloud. "Go out there and you'll feed them all, Rustbeard. Your mongrel can serve for afters." she said tersely.
"There's more than eight." Mormont amended. "The rest are trying to encircle us."
"Wolves won't go after men bearing torches. They fear fire." Qarl said.
"Not when a direwolf's calling the tune, boy." The northman replied. Asha recalled the direwolf she'd seen on Dragonstone. Taller than me sitting on her ass.
"We'd best be off. There's no one here to rescue and no dead men to rescue them from." Asha said with sudden iron certainty. Those hills are not so far away as I'd like. Might be something is on the other side, weighing up whether to charge.
"There they are." Mormont said suddenly, without color. Trying not to give anything away. Asha could see only the barest shapes beyond the light of the torches, but she could see the many (many) hairs on the back of Mormont's neck go up. He sees something all right, and it's more concerning than a few wolves.
"There what are?" she hissed, feeling like a worm left to dangle for the fish. A moment more and she let out a gasp. There is no darkness so deep as could hide eyes like those. The blue eyes stared out from just beyond the hamlet's outmost hovel, icily regarding the ironborn. The noises of the pack grew ever nearer, though the eyes staring out from the hill did not move.
"Time to leave." Mormont said, his words for once clear and measured. Without a word more he suddenly talked Asha down, there was a sound like an axe striking wood and a white spear with a long icy head quivered squarely where she'd been standing. A hoarse bellowing cut through the dark. Words, she thought woozily. Talking. Mormont dragged her ten feet back and another spear landed dead-on where seconds before he'd laid her out.
"Fuck!" she heard Roggon cry, twisting the shaft of his axe in his hands.
"To the ship!"
"Fuck you, Mormont, I want a proper fight!" the reaver shouted in reply. As if in answer a dozen wolves charged out into the torchlight, some common and others white as clouds with flawless blue eyes. Asha scrambled to her feet but the pack made no move to take them down, content to ring 'round them neatly as a seamstress at needlework. She could hear Roggon's pup yipping fearfully even through the blood pounding in her ears. In the time it took to reorient herself the eyes had disappeared, only to resurface just out of the torches' light. Too tight by far to go dodging another spear, Asha thought of their predicament, but then it isn't wolves tossing spears big as scorpion bolts at us nor bellowing in some wintry tongue. Roggon bellowed another challenge. They're waiting, Asha realized. Waiting for one of us to break. To charge or flee. Then they'll come at us. Her heart felt fit to burst behind her ribs.
"Don't move." she said, trying to get louder than a whisper and failing. Another pair of eyes joined the first, staring out of an unseen head set higher than any man's. Asha remembered the gangly brutes from the ice-ship. From afar, they left little impression… A swarthy face leaned out of the night, the madly wide blue eyes behind them staring down a long nose. The mouth beneath it was full of sharp crooked teeth that pointed backward in its mouth, set in a monstrous grin. The thing was clad in ratty furs and bore no arms. unlike its disciplined fellows on the ice-ship. Its cold exhales smelled of entrails. Of blood when first exposed to air. Beside it stood a wolf possessed of a direwolf's size and an Other's eyes, regarding them with cold disinterest its cohort did not share. Which is the beast and which the master? Asha wondered, even in her terror.
A thrown axe buried itself in the brute's left eye, earning a grunt of alarm. A long arm ending in spindly hooked fingers flew out from the darkness, the creature's wild swing enough to break the pack's discipline if only for a precious moment. The pack was in no more hurry to catch a blind backhand than Asha's crew and torches swung in the direction of the normal wolves further threw them into disarray.
"Run!" she screamed, unable to hear herself over the yips and barks of the pack, the lowing of the creature and the cries of her own panicked crew. Only when she felt the wood of the dock underfoot did she turn back to look. Amazingly, not one of her men had fallen behind- but the creature was hot on their trail and gaining ground, hands outstretched, mouth agape. But with only one eye, Asha thought pleasedly- until the brute simply ripped her axe out of its face. Even as it gave chase its ruined eye relit, blazing forth blue as ever sure as a hearth given a fresh log. Asha felt her heart skip a beat. You can't be serious. It took a lucky axe thrown by Tristifer hacking the monster's thumb off only for it to make a fist and simply spring out a new one for Asha to know for certain her eyes could be believed. How the fuck do we kill this thing? She could hear confused voices on Black Wind's deck, quickly turning to shouts of alarm. When the last man had rushed past her she made to follow. Asha heard the dock creak as the monster crouched, heard it crack as it sprung. She could smell the foul breath filling her nostrils once again. Five strides from the gangplank, three, one- Her right leg exploded at the knee. Before she could scream, before the pain could hit, she was slammed to the dock hard as as a hit from a charging bull. Her nose crunched flat against the gangplank and two teeth swam free in a mouthful of blood.
"AAAAAAGGGGGHHHH!" Her agonized scream, its gleeful roar, they were one as Asha tried to remain conscious. An arm looped around her waist, hoisting her off the deck easily as if she were a sack of turnips. No, she thought, until she felt the coarse hair of Mormont's cheek against her forehead. Then she was flying, tossed with a single arm, landing in the midst of her crew. A heartbeat later and she was in Mormont's arms again, being dragged to her cabin. Still another later and she heard Black Wind's deck groan as the monster matched Mormont's leap with one of its own. A bellow, a lunge, and Fingers was sailing overboard. A howl, a fist like a warhammer, and Droopeye Dale crumpled against the mainmast like a snowman in summer. Mormont dropped Asha, who felt a small pair of hands quickly drag her away from the knight.
"HERE." the northman called, his voice thunder amidst mousy squeaks. She watched him draw the smoky sword, watched him level it at the monster. It gave a wordless frenzied roar, swinging wildly at Mormont. Fists that had not moments before sent grown men flying dented his plate easily- and left nary a scratch on the hairy chest beneath it. Its jaw hung loose in an almost idiotic gape. Out snapped the sword, tracing a jagged path down the brute's chest. The scream of agony that filled the air made Asha's eyes water and cross. Her vision filled with blinking red and yellow dots. She could hear its flesh sizzle, a trivial surface cut soon becoming a hideous smoking scar. One that did not heal. As its hands came to the wound, head up and bellowing into the night, Mormont planted his sword squarely through them both and the chest beneath it. Asha saw its wide eyes go wider still, collapsing onto the deck. Mormont neatly sent its head rolling across Black Wind's deckplanks, coming to a stop a scant few feet from Asha. The blue eyes flickered.
Flickered.
Flickered.
Flickered, and went out.