2. Honor on the Moon, Chapter 3
Two days in, Jon tired of the Neck, and he knew he wasn't alone in that. Even now their horses struggled atop the black bog, and Morrec had yet to stop worrying over the chances of getting snapped at by snakes hiding in the mud and shallow waters, head turned down and swiveling at every squelch and ripple.
It was why Jon had been glad that, for as much as the wolf had grown over the recent weeks, Ghost was still small enough to climb atop Steelfoot's croup, clinging onto the horse with impressive balance. He could've had his friend wade through the swamp, Jon knew, but it seemed a cruel thing when he himself could sit on his mount and avoid it altogether. What Jon couldn't help Ghost with, though, was what must've surely been the most horrid stench the wolf had ever smelled. Musky and hinting at death, even Jon scowled at it all through the trip.
The others had resigned themselves to it with the pinched patience usually born of bad weather, having gone through these unpleasant lands already on their way north. Still, this didn't keep them from mirroring Jon's expression, and they all rode with a collective frown atop their equally terse horses.
Winter had yet to reach this far south, and although it wasn't excessively warm, the thick humid air had forced Jon to abandon his cloak and leathers and even roll the sleeves of his shirt up past his elbows, all to avoid the discomforting stick of damp cloth on skin. Even more, Jon reached up to undo the laces at his collar.
Tyrion, clothed in a similar state, made his own irritation plain to all.
"You were right, Jyck," he said. "Damn me, we'd have been better off taking the ship back from White Harbor after all."
Jyck, brow gleaming wet as any of theirs, merely grunted his reply. His hand, gloved still so as to better grip his sword, snapped at his neck to kill the bugs buzzing around him. It was a move they'd all grown familiar with, and Jon repeated it shortly after on his arm. Still, mosquitoes and flies and all sorts of tiny creatures buzzed around them anyway, eager to get their fill of blood.
"Aye, dwarf lord, yeh should 'ave," Yoren said, smirking. Unlike the Lannister guards, Jon saw he had no issue with giving Tyrion some lip. "A week or two at sea sure beats all this muck an' grime, that's fer certain."
"It's you who convinced me otherwise, you oaf," Tyrion grumbled. "The longer we go, the less I think you know what you're doing."
"Ho? I never claimed to be a crannogman, Lannister." From his cracked lips, Yoren spit a glob which smacked against the puddled water below. "Down along the Green Fork, I said, and along the Green Fork I'm takin' yeh."
He gestured to their right, where the great river flowed in calm, almost stilled currents. Where it started, and therefore where the ground ended, was hard to make out, as their horses walked hoof-deep in the swamp water as it was, but they'd yet to stumble upon any real trenches or mudholes. Yoren, it seemed, did know something of traveling the Neck.
"Somewhere about here," Yoren continued, "we're bound to spot the towers. If not, we'll come across a village drifting down the stream, and I imagine they'll know where to find the castle. It's hard to miss, all told."
"Oh yes, and so I see why the crannogmen have such a troubled history with invasions," Tyrion said drily. "Least hidden place in the kingdoms."
"I thought it the most hidden place in the kingdoms," Morrec said, confused.
Biting back a laugh, Jon watched Tyrion turn to his guard with an impatient glare. It was an easy thing to restrain, as he quickly busied himself with the next bug to sting his neck.
"Well, hidden or not, we're certainly no closer to finding it," Tyrion said. He looked up, eyes narrowed toward the canopy of trees overhead. From them hung strings upon strings of roots and vines, covering the branches like a great spider web and casting all below in murky shade. "And the sun will set soon enough. We're better off trekking back to the road to camp on dryer land, aren't we?"
"Ready to give up so soon, are yeh?" Yoren asked.
"Oh, I'd love to see another wonder of Westeros, but I fear any longer along this damn river and we'll contract some plague long before I do."
"I s'pose you'd catch it sooner than most, hidden away in yer fancy—" Yoren stopped, eyes narrowing over the river. "Hold now, there's some fisherfolk sailing over there!"
They all followed his gaze, and just as he said, they found the small boat floating atop the still waters. It was a small wooden thing, with a pair of oars at its side like wings and a pair of figures atop it. One sat and the other stood with what looked like a spear strung with rope, both of them dressed in a dark green which nearly camouflaged them against the muted colors surrounding them.
"Perhaps we could ask them for directions?" Morrec said, and at once he kicked his horse forward, hand waving in the air and voice raised over the buzz of nature. As he did, his horse splashed near what looked like fallen tree logs, their nearly black bark floating at the river's edge. "Hark, there! Hark, you—"
In an instant, one of the logs leaped up and snapped its great maw, glistening white teeth suddenly coming into existence along with a reptilian head. Luckily for Morrec, his horse skittered back with a great burst of panic, neighing and nearly throwing the man off. Just in time, as the large beast below missed the hooved legs with nary a hair to spare.
"Morrec, you fool!" Jyck said. Without a moment's thought, he leaped off his horse and stomped through the shallow water, sword singing as he drew it forth. "Get back before you get that horse killed!"
"H-How was I to know?" Morrec stammered, pulling on his reins.
By now the log beast had drawn up on its own legs, showing them all the full bulk of its body. Green-black scales, slimy with swamp water, packed with thick muscle, and a long, spiked tail swishing at its rear. Its close-mouthed growl, low and throaty enough to stick heavy in the ear, seemed to signal the other logs around it forth, and in short order Jyck found himself set upon by three of them. All lapped closer in rippling waves, none of them tall enough to reach even his knees but certainly larger than him if taken by their full size.
Still, Jyck stood firm against them, setting himself between the creatures and the rest of the party. "Get back, you lot!" he said, sword pointed forward.
They did so, Morrec sidling alongside Tyrion's horse and Yoren already a few yards behind. Jon thought to join them, but seeing the log beasts wade around Jyck, clearly trying to surround the man, he found that he couldn't. Instead, he grabbed the longsword strapped to his saddle, sliding down his horse even as the blade slid from its sheathe. The heft of it sent a twinge up his bad shoulder, but Jon heaved through the pain. He'd not risk his ranger's sword against such things, lacking in range as it was.
Ghost, of course, had made to leap down onto the swamp mire too, but Jon merely held up a hand and the wolf stopped. Steelfoot, seeing the log beasts near, skittered back on his own and carried Jon's faithful companion with him, much to the boy's relief. Ghost was a beast himself, but the terrain was bad enough for a direwolf, and as large as he'd gotten, these swamp monsters had him beat three-fold.
One of them snapped at Jyck, and the man swung his blade wildly at it, cutting thinly into its long and pointed maw. It growled again, that low and snotty growl which ripped across the shallows in small waves, trying still to circle around even as blood seeped onto the green-matted water. Idle as these things were while floating still along the river, they seemed doubly tenacious once they'd decided on prey.
By then Jon had ran up next to Jyck, boots thoroughly soaked and squishing with each step. The man simply nodded at his entrance, and the both of them waited in tense focus for the scaled beasts to pounce.
Another snap, this time from Jon's right, and the boy swung his blade in a sweeping arc along the water's surface. It struck the monster's maw, slicing right through it in a splash of blood and flying teeth. With a frantic, guttural cry, the thing splashed backward, nearly rolling away, upper jaw split down the middle and hanging only by thin strings of flesh.
Another went at Jyck and the man tried his hand at the same tactic, slicing sideways at the water in a splash of rain. His sword struck true, and in some sense too true, for it carved through the monster's hide at the neck and stopped midway. The body slacked onto the water, bringing Jyck stumbling forward with it. Seeing this, the last beast, the one Jyck had scratched at the start of the encounter, leaped forth.
Jyck tried and failed to pull his sword free. Jon made to help, reaching out with his sword, but he was too far—at least two arm lengths away. He could only watch in dread as the beast leaped up to Jyck's leg, jaws wide open and ready to clamp down like a mousetrap.
In a feat of such reflex and luck as Jon had never seen before, Jyck, rather than pull his foot back, kicked it forward and smacked his boot against the monster's snout. The beast drew back sharply, head nodding up in sharp spasms.
"Good one!" Jon cried, relieved and impressed in equal measure.
Jyck tried again to pull his sword free, foot on the scaled corpse and weight thrown back. Seeing the remaining beast already shaking itself from its stupor, Jon dashed toward it, his own blade raised high overhead.
Just as he did, the monster dashed toward him too in blind survival rage. Its maw opened wide once more, and Jon flinched at seeing the teeth so close, a ring of white knives set to eat him whole. They came ever closer, and Jon cursed his slow swing. He'd not make it, he knew. He closed his eyes.
Something thunked, a sudden cracking, squelching sound, and Jon opened his eyes to see that the white knives had stopped not a hand's length from him. The maw closed along with the rest of the monster's body, and stabbed into its head Jon saw a long, wooden pole, pining it down so that it once again looked like nothing more than a fallen log splashing in the shallows. The only difference now was that blood flowed freely up from its wound and swirled out like wispy smoke across the water's surface.
Finding his breath, Jon saw the sole remaining beast, the one he'd wounded before, escaping back into the river and diving down its depths. From what he'd seen of its mouth, Jon doubted the thing would be capable of hunting anything ever again, and it would likely starve in due time. The thought filled him with a brief spark of savage satisfaction.
It was a feeling he had no time to revel in, as he saw that behind the pinned corpse, floating slowly toward them from the river, was the boat they'd seen before. Now the figures atop it were clear to him, and to Jon's surprise he saw that they were young—around as young as him. Even more, one of them was a girl, and from the looks of her stance, back straightening and arm coming down to rest at her hip, she'd been the one to save his life with that spear. The other, a boy who reminded Jon of Bran, merely sat and looked upon them all, green eyes glinting strangely.
The girl looked back at this other boy, and seeing them together Jon knew at once that they were related. Hair the same light brown hue, faces slender and both of them rather small even for a pair of children. They looked at each other in some silent inquiry while Jon and the rest stared at them in tired surprise. Eventually, the girl turned to them, and her eyes glared, as green as the other's but somehow far less unsettling.
"Who are you, and what are you doing here?" she said sharply. Her hand came down to a knife strapped to her hip, sheathed not in leather but in what looked like snakeskin.
Jon's party looked around at each other, then finally settled their gaze on Tyrion. Grumbling, the dwarf raised a hand and waved it to gain the girl's attention.
"I am Lord Tyrion Lannister," he said, "joined by my retinue as well as some other companions, including a brother of the Night's Watch."
If the name surprised her, the girl didn't show it. Instead, she crossed her arms, glare somehow narrowing further. When she spoke, her tone tilted up in exasperation. "Don't you know it's dangerous to bother the lizard-lions? Even a baby could figure that out."
The boy behind her groaned at her words, face falling into his hands. She kept her eyes set on Tyrion, though Jon noticed she'd occasionally glance in his direction. More specifically at Ghost, who lay atop Jon's saddle in a clinging hug.
"Well, I can assure you that getting nearly eaten was not at all our intention," Tyrion said. "We merely followed up on some… bad advice. You wouldn't happen to know where to find the hold of House Reed?"
"Aye, we know!" the boy said, suddenly sitting upright. The girl twisted to stare him down, whispering something harsh, but he ignored her. Instead, he looked fervently at them, nearly falling from the boat in his excitement. "We can take you too!"
Tyrion raised a brow, but otherwise sounded relieved to hear it. "I'm sure we'd all appreciate your assistance, boy. What might you two be called?"
"Jojen," the boy said, smiling softly. "This is my sister, Meera. We can take you all on our boat if you'd like, but first you'll want to ride a bit further south to store away your horses at the waystation down the river."
Nodding, Tyrion looked to Yoren, who only shrugged in response. "We'll meet you at this waystation then," he said. "Down the river, is that right?"
"Just a bit further, aye," Jojen said. He slouched back on his seat, taking up the oars. Without much fanfare, he begun to pull the boat down the river. "See you there, Lord Lannister."
By now Meera seemed to have accepted this some, though her arms were still crossed. "You'd best bring me my spear," she said, looking at Jon. The boat began to disappear behind some of the shrub bush which encircled the river, and Meera turned away from them. As they left entirely out of sight, Jon could still hear her voice, lower now, slinging some harsh words at her brother no doubt.
Watching where they'd gone, Jon considered all they'd said. Their names in particular sounded somehow familiar, though he couldn't quite place how. Shaking his head, he reached over to Meera's spear, wooden haft botched with dirt, and pulled it out of the body it had so efficiently pierced. Its three-pronged tip met him, covered in dark blood.
The boat couldn't take them all, so Morrec had offered to stay behind at the waystation.
"Someone has to stay behind to care for the horses," he'd told Jon. Then, with a smile, "come back with a good tale to share, eh? I've come across plenty of pretty sights, but I'll thank you for another, even if in words."
The waystation had been little more than a shack, paired with a rickety wharf and no hay for the horses. Thankfully, the man in charge had much grass, brown in complexion, which he claimed to have fed to plenty of mounts in his time. Though he'd not looked like the most trustworthy sort—as battered a man as the place he looked over—he seemed just as feeble, and Morrec had a sword in any case. The Lannister guard waved at them as they sailed off with Jojen and Meera, huddled close on the boat as it calmly floated out from the dock. Ghost watched them leave too, sitting by Morrec's side, glad to have found some dry ground at last.
Even so, the boat was somewhat cramped. Jon tried to keep from touching his elbow to Meera's, though Jyck's heavy paddling and the rocking of the concurrent waves made that impossible. The girl, unlike her brother, kept silent, giving naught more than a nod when he gave her back her spear. She examined it now, eyeing the three-pronged tip, and seeing that she'd not speak to him, Jon tried his best to engage with the others instead.
"It's really quite fascinating," Tyrion was saying, eyes straying from Jojen to the river and back, "I've not seen them, but we southerners have made our own attempts at crannog structures, mostly along the Red Fork. A fool's errand, of course. Nothing more than fancy boats."
Jojen, and now Jon could see he was only a year or two older than Bran, nevertheless spoke with as much confidence as any adult. "We wrap the reeds in lizard-lion skin. It keeps water from soaking through."
"Seems you've lucked out there," Tyrion said. Sitting next to him, Yoren huffed a laugh, and the dwarf eyed him sideways. "Oh, all their danger besides, I think we'd all benefit from having those beasts elsewhere. Or at least what's left of the dead ones."
"I think they'll give you enough trouble to make you regret it."
"True enough," Jyck groaned, shoulders rolling with each heave of the oars. "I've seen enough of those pests for one lifetime."
"Same here," Jon said. He pressed on his boots, finding them as moist as an hour before when he'd climbed up from the swamp onto his horse. The feeling, uncomfortable as it always was when he'd had to walk in wet shoes before, seemed to him all the more disturbing with the added knowledge of those things which swam in the waters he'd stood on. Jon looked around at all the bugs flying about them, as if clouds upon the surface of the river's murk. What was to say there weren't some strange water worms or other small critters suckling at his feet even now?
Tyrion leaned slowly forward, legs hanging from his place at the rear seat. "Here's my real question… How is it that you all communicate across the river? Surely ravens can't find somewhere that doesn't sit still, but how else would you know where to find all your disparate little aisles?"
Jojen smiled. "I think you—"
A sharp strike of wood clapped over his words. "You might let us keep some of our secrets, Lannister," Meera said, leaning her spear against her shoulder.
At her stern face, Tyrion could only throw his hands in surrender. "Oh, no offense intended. I've what we in the South call nosy manners. Forgive a dwarf's curiosity."
Meera huffed in response, and Jon made sure to scoot a bit further away from her.
At the oars, Jyck looked over his shoulder at her, brow furrowed in exertion. "Watch yourself there, girl. It's a lord of the Seven Kingdoms you face." At her grumbling, his frown dipped further. "And what have you that spear for anyway? Can your brother not handle it?"
"He's learned to, sure," Meera said, meeting his scowl with her own. "As have I. All crannogmen do from a young age. All of us."
"We have to," Jojen added. Seeing Jyck turn to him, his smile widened a fraction, and the look he shared with his sister across the boat seemed to soften her just as well. "Living in the river, it's all fish and frogs for us. Can't really grow wheat or herd sheep around these parts."
"Yes, I suppose it'd be rather difficult, if not impossible," Tyrion muttered.
"I don't get it," Jon said, low. When everyone's attention turned to him, he coughed to clear his throat, voice rising. "Well… if it's so harsh, why live here at all?" He looked over the green-tinted river, the bugs, the overgrown trees, the scaled beasts slithering over and under roots. "Haven't you crannogmen really anywhere else to go?"
Meera chuckled, a jeering sound. "Haven't you northerner folk really anywhere else to go aside from that cold wasteland?"
Brow drawn up, Jon stared at her. "How'd you know I'm northern?"
"It's all over your face." Shrugging Meera settled in her seat, and slowly the harshness in her expression seemed to wash out, if only slightly. "Either way, only the gods know why anyone lives where they do," she said, almost sighing. "What use is it to ask?"
"With all due respect to religion, I'd place some faith in at least some of our lowly mortal brethren," Tyrion said. "History can tell us why just as well as any god."
Face set in a deadpan, Meera leaned on her knees, chin sat dully on her hands. "Oh, in that case, please, do enlighten us, my lord."
"I'm sure you know plenty, Meera, but as for you Jon, I'd bet my whole family fortune you've barely read up on much other than your northern kings. Am I right?"
"I'd rather you not put it like that…"
"Oh no need to be humble, Jon, we're all friends here." That drew some chuckles, even from Meera, though Jon merely grumbled. "As Meera or Jojen here might be able to tell you, the crannogmen are of the First Men, having come to the Neck during the age of dawn some ten thousand years ago. As far as invasions go, it was relatively peaceful. Some of the children of the forest actually managed to survive it. I believe they're the ones who taught your people how to build the crannogs, am I right?"
"That's what the stories say," Jojen said. He seemed altogether enraptured.
"It makes sense enough," Tyrion said. "Having lived in the marshes first, they'd be the ones to know, and I suppose the knowledge must've passed down through the years as your peoples intermixed. War broke out eventually, of course, but by then you crannogmen had all but taken over these lands anyway."
"Hold there, lordling, you're saying these folk went 'round the sheets with the forest children?" Yoren said. When Tyrion nodded, he laughed, hand on his belly. "I s'pose that explains why they're so short!"
Meera glared at him, but Jojen was the one to break the following silence.
"I thought the children of the forest were… well, strange," he said. "Made of treebark and bound to weirwoods. Could they really… I mean…"
Seeing his reddening face, Tyrion patted the boy's arm. "That's what the stories say, yes, but at the Citadel in Oldtown, our maesters have long thought that the children were just as human as you or I. Why wouldn't they be? So long since their extinction, or since they were bred out, it makes more sense that those fantastic stories serve to flourish a more mundane truth. Human tribes have been rising and falling for as long as we know, and as time passes, the real events are forgotten. It's why we try our best to put it all in writing."
"Interesting tale, my lord," Meera said, "but what's it to do with us now?"
Turning to her, Tyrion grinned. "It's got everything to do, my dear. Just as the First Men came to these lands, the Andals followed a few thousand years later. That invasion was far bloodier, by all accounts. They conquered all south of the Neck, excepting some very few holds, my family's Casterly Rock being one of them. To acquire us, they had to marry in."
At this, Tyrion drew up in performative pride, and Jon did smile some at that.
"By the time their aims turned northward, you were the only ones standing in their way," Tyrion continued, shaking his head his head. "Hard as it was for us to ride through these lands, can you imagine a whole army? Even worse, those small, annoying swamp folk who seemed to strike at the flanks and disappear into their floating river dwellings made things all the more difficult. They were impossible to find, and yet somehow always turned up right when it was least convenient. The march was tough, and though the Andals did eventually reach Moat Cailin, they came out of the Neck with countless stories about the bog devils who had harried them all throughout. It's a legacy which lives on to this day."
Tyrion looked from Meera, her own eyes glinting in interest now, to Jojen, who smiled broadly at him, and back to Meera again. "You're the greatest guerrilla fighters in all of Westeros," the dwarf said, "and it's all because you have, more than anyone else, mastered your terrain over thousands of years. That, my young crannogmen, is why your people are still here. We need no gods to tell us that."
Meera leaned back on her seat, elbow resting on the boat's edge. "You've caught me at a loss, my lord, knowing more than I do about my own people."
"Oh, don't mind it so much. I know more than most people about practically everything."
"I guess you need something to feel proud about," Jon said.
"Right you are, Jon," Tyrion said, not missing a beat. "I'll proudly sit in my cushions and drink myself silly with a book on my lap. You and the rest can all clobber each other with sticks for all I care."
Suddenly, Yoren drew forward. "Eyes up, little lord," he said, and for once there was no bite in his voice. "You'll miss the view."
Tyrion raised his head and, upon seeing something over the river, brightened in an altogether different way than what Jon had seen before. Curious, the boy turned around, joined by Meera and even Jyck. Unbidden, his own mouth hung agape.
Jon had only ever seen castles made of stone. He'd thought castles could only be made of stone. But floating some ways away on the surface of the water, hidden partially by the thin fog which had begun to build over the river, he saw a castle made of wood.
It was no glorified shack either. Full towers, perhaps not as wide or tall as Winterfell's but impressive nonetheless, rose high over the trees on the far shore. Four or five of them—Jon couldn't see exactly—but one stood over the others at the center, propped by a mass of buildings which spread like burgeoning roots over what could only be some sort of platform.
Eyes narrowed to see, Jon couldn't spot the crannogs which surely floated under the whole of the structure, lost as it was by distance and river brambles. But even from here, he could make out the groan and creak sounding over calm waves and buzzing cicadas. It was the sound an old chair made when one sat on it, or a rusted door. The castle, hazy enough as it was behind the fog, seemed to sway and stretch with each jarring noise, as if it were alive and protesting its being so.
"Amazing…"
It took a second for Jon to realize he'd been the one to say it, but no one denied him that. Out the corner of his eye, he saw Meera smirk, the first of them to take her eyes off the bizarre structure.
"Feast your eyes on Greywater Watch," she said, crossing her arms. "The seat of House Reed. Our seat." When all their eyes settled on her, awe replaced by confusion, her smirk turned smug. Jojen, for his part, sighed at her antics.
Meera looked over them, ending at Jon. "I'm sure our father will welcome you well. It's only fitting, as lord of these lands. And as a friend to your father, Jon Snow." Smile still in place, she winked at him. Jon could only gulp in response.
AN:
I decided to split this section of the story in two parts. Was somewhat stuck with how to go about it but eventually found a direction I was satisfied with; hopefully you will be too. Tell me what you think.
Thanks for reading.
