Chapter 4

As the sun dipped down below the trees, Karina frowned and glanced around again.

During her past life, she'd been shot at by snipers so many times that she'd developed a pseudo sixth sense for being observed. It wasn't always accurate obviously, but she trusted herself to know when she was being watched. And right now, something out there was watching her. She didn't have any kind of danger sense obviously, just a feeling of being watched, but the hair raising on her neck and the discomfort she felt was more than enough for her to be wary.

And it was that wariness that made her not want to stop. Her feet were aching after the first few hours, but she didn't want to stop until she was far enough away. As the sun rose up, her feet were hurting even more, but she still wanted to keep going. And when the sun was almost directly overhead, that was when she felt like stopping, only for her senses to tell her that something was watching her.

That had stopped her from settling down and going to sleep, and so she kept going. Hours passed and eventually day began to shift to night, and yet the feeling of being watched never vanished. At this point every step wasn't just an ache, it was pain, pure and simple, but she was...afraid. For at least half of a day something had been following her, and never once had the feeling of being watched disappeared.

She hadn't even seen anything, not hide nor hair of whatever was following her. But its endurance spoke of either experience...or unfeelingness. She didn't want to believe it, but there was a distinct possibility that there was a wight or even a White Walker following her. After all, she was of Craster's stock, and while he had only given up boys before, there was nothing that said she herself couldn't be made a White Walker. Or, worse yet, a wight. You needed no special blood or qualifications to be a wight after all, which meant that if a wight or walker was following her, it could happily wait for her to stop and then kill her, only to raise her again and send her off to the Lands of Always Winter to be a hapless peon of the Night's King's armies.

Shivering slightly, she pulled her furs closer to herself and cast another glance around the empty forest. She then looked up at the darkening sky, taking her eye off the ground. A moment later her abused foot came down on a root, making her growl in her throat and glare down at the offending piece of protruding wood. Karina took a moment, sighed, then simply...gave up, slinging her bag off her shoulders and laying it against the tree before using the side of her foot to push snow away from the tree and making a spot to sit down.

Looking around again, she worked one of her shoes off and looked at her blistering and raw foot, gently rubbing her thumbs against it, her attention always partially on the forest around her. After a minute or so, she put her shoe back on and began to work on her other foot, easing the pain slightly. At no point did she experience a gap in her being observed, despite the fact that she still couldn't see anybody.

Then, blinking owlishly, she leaned forwards slightly and shifted, turning to look at the tree she was leaning against. There was another option, one she hadn't really thought about. The Children of the Forest and the Three-eyed Raven. If she felt she was being observed without being able to see her observers in turn, perhaps they were watching her. She had seen a few birds flying around after all, so maybe there was a raven in the mix.

As far as she recalled, the Children of the Forest weren't able to merge with trees, but they would definitely have an unnatural ability to hide within the forest, and for all she knew it was simply something that either was never mentioned in the show, or was a change. Whatever the case was, something was watching her, it hadn't stopped watching her even a single time, and in all that time, she hadn't caught a single glimpse of her observer.

Tugging her other boot back on, she leaned against the wood and closed her eye for a moment. Even if she wasn't wary of being observed, she wasn't stupid enough to sleep in such an exposed position. Anything could stumble across her, from animals to wildlings or even, if she was really unlucky, a giant. No, she'd find the next available safe-ish place to hide away and she would go to sleep there. If she was stabbed in the night then that would be her fate, because there was no way in hell she was going back to Craster after what she'd done.

Death would definitely be a preferable fate.

Blinking awake, Karina took a moment, surprised that she had not died in the night, before getting up.

Her shelter for the night was a small cropping of rocks that she had been able to wedge herself into. The gap she used to enter was far too small for shadowcats or wildlings to get through, she doubted a wolf could get through the gap in the rocks. She had only managed it after stripping off her clothes and literally gouging the skin off her arms and back against the rough rock as she forced her way through the hole.

After taking a moment more to simply stare at the stone above her, she turned her attention to the hole she had to use to climb back out. When she came in, she had very quickly wiped away all of the blood and made sure that her own skin was dressed as best she could so nothing was attracted by the blood, but honestly, it was a necessary thing to do. If she had kept going, she would have probably dropped before finding other shelter, especially not shelter as convenient. If the hole was a little wider it would have been better, but she couldn't be a chooser when she was practically walking dead on her feet.

On the plus side she had covered a vastly greater distance than she had expected, having spent an entire day walking. Even subtracting for when she was walking slower and more tiredly, she had still walked at the very least fourty kilometres before stopping, an absolutely brutal pace and one that put her greatly beyond the possible grasp of Craster. She could not walk that distance again in a day, not even a half or a third of it, but hopefully, she wouldn't need to.

After picking a few items to eat from her bag and some water, kept liquid by her having placed the waterskin underneath her clothes, she had a blissfully peaceful breakfast, taking the time to simply enjoy the snowfall she could see outside. She didn't even feel like she was being watched, so maybe whatever had been watching her the night before had left or decided she wasn't worth observing. Whatever the case was, she was just glad she didn't feel so paranoid anymore.

When she was finished eating, she took her bag off and pushed it through the hole, then steadily stripped off and pushed each item out. Finally, she unbound the wrappings she had used to dress her injuries and placed them on the clothing pile, then twisted to present the smallest possible profile and began to push herself out of the hole, gritting her teeth as the stone scraped her raw injuries from the previous entry. If she hadn't already been so used to pain she might have made a noise, and a few times she had to stop as the rock around her caught on exceptionally sensitive and painful sections, but after a while, she was able to pull her legs out after her and crawl away from the hole, her breathing carefully controlled.

Checking herself over, she could see that the injuries from before were all bleeding again, and after feeling with her hands, she noted that she had scratched a deep new gash against her back when she had unconsciously twitched and scraped her back against a particularly sharp protrusion. Kneeling down beside her clothes, she picked up one of the dressings and began to rebind her injuries, accomodating the new borders of the large and deeply-scraped flesh.

As she thought about her accommodations for the last night, she decided that she had definitely needed to stay there on the previous night. Either she picked that location to hide and dealt with the fact she was a bit too big to actually fit without scraping herself against the too-small gap, or she ran the increasingly high risk of dropping from exhaustion outside. And with her legs being as fucking bone-dead tired as they were, she probably wouldn't even be able to start walking again.

Hissing as she brought the wrappings over the scrapes over her back, she inwardly reminded herself that she had to do it, that she couldn't afford to waste the wrappings covering her injuries when she went through, they would have been torn to pieces and then she'd be left with nothing to cover her wounds, especially if she got wounded worse in the future, even as she tugged the dressing tight against her injury and felt another burn of pain accompany it, making her close her eye.

The lie was easy to enter her mind, even if she never really believed it.

As she expected, she couldn't set the same pace she had kept up the day before, not even close.

Her legs were simply too tired, her feet hurt worse with every single step, and it wasn't even the kind of pain that she didn't mind 'enduring', not like the pain on her arms, back and thighs. That pain was one that she could handle, but the feet in her pain was like a sharp tenseness, each step forcing the tendons running along the bottom of her feet to cramp up, rendering each step more unpleasant than the last.

At the very least, she was no longer being observed constantly. Whether it was just her innate paranoia or not, it had gone, and with it, she honestly felt way better. With the distance she had from Craster, she wasn't nearly as worried about being dragged back for whatever fate the man had planned for her, which meant the main things she needed to worry about was getting lost, getting found, or running out of food.

Water wasn't an issue, there was snow absolutely everywhere that she could boil. All she'd need to do is rig together an evaporator to drip boiled water into her waterskin and she'd be fine. But food was harder to obtain in the wilderness, especially in the True North, for obvious reasons. Being found would be a danger if wildlings found her and decided they either wanted to kill her or 'steal' her, of which neither was a fate she particularly wanted.

Getting lost was a bit of a problem, since the forest looked very much the same, but there were two landmarks she was looking for. The first was the Milkwater, the river that could lead her straight to the Gorge. The second was The Wall. If she saw it, that meant she was going way too far south, but if she kept it in visual sight, she would be able to walk along it to reach the Milkwater still. As long as she wasn't going west accidentally, she would eventually see one of those two landmarks, since the Milkwater ran north of Craster's Keep and headed out west, she physically couldn't avoid it, and The Wall was the same. Even if she went north accidentally she would hit it and would then be able to turn left and follow it down to her destination.

Stifling a yawn, Karina tipped her gaze towards the sky, the sun indicating that she still had a few hours of light to walk in. At night she was able to keep moving thanks to the snow, it reflected moonlight beautifully and made it fine for travelling, the only problem being how bloody cold it was. But what she was looking for was a place to camp. Now that she wasn't desperately fleeing away from Craster's area of influence, she felt more confident taking her time to find proper places to sleep, since she didn't -did- want to get herself scraped up again.

It'd also mean she would have time to set up traps and warning signs so she would at least be aware if something was going to attack her in the night. She highly doubted that she would be able to find a burrow as secure as the one she had previously used, but as long as she could find somewhere relatively safe to sleep, she would be satisfied. Even climbing a tree to sleep wasn't beyond her, though the incessant snowfall would make it a very uncomfortable and potentially dangerous endeavour, risking getting too wet and cold during her sleep and freezing to death.

No, she would find somewhere safe to hide, even if she had to hurt herself more to achieve it.

The next few days were spent in the same monotonous way, endless trekking across the beautiful nothingness.

Her feet still hurt badly, but she was steadily getting better and better at simply ignoring it. Her legs also ached, but just as with her feet, she acclimatized to it and learned to block it out. What was important was getting past The Wall and into Westeros. After that was done, she could take some time to recover from her trek and figure out what the fuck she was going to do. She had no money, her skills weren't easily marketable, she was probably never going to be imposing in stature, and above all else, she was a woman.

If nothing else, women in Game of Thrones who weren't born to power were basically fucked. Even Brienne had her family name to rely on somewhat, allowing her to become one of Renly's Kingsguard. If she didn't have that, there was no way she could have managed to actually get the opportunity to duel Loras, regardless of her abilities. Karina, by comparison, stood no chance of getting that kind of opportunity.

Briefly, she contemplated joining the Faceless Men, but shot that down quickly. They were all about giving up their own identities, simply becoming a tool for the Many-faced God, something she did not aspire to, not in the slightest. She liked who she was, upsides and downsides included, and didn't want to give up who she was just for a fancy bit of disguise and voice-changing power. Sure, Arya retained her identity, but she was a main character, they had plot armour.

Multiple stabs to the gut, especially to the stomach and intestines, were not something easily healed. She then took a dip in a river that probably saw shit get dropped into it, so she'd also be heavily at risk of a deadly infection. But, again, plot armour. If that happened to Karina, she'd be dead as a doorstop. So no, she would be avoiding any kind of scenario that would rely on anything more than a normal amount of luck to succeed.

Avoiding placing her foot on an awkward root, she reaffirmed herself, shaking her head. Braavos was still an option, but the Faceless Men were out. However, to even be able to use any of that, she had to get into Westeros, not exactly an easy feat. If it was easy to get from the True North into Westeros, then the wildlings would have long-since done so. The only ways past the wall were the gates in the wall, none of which she could use, the Bridge of Skulls which was dangerously close to Westwatch-by-the-Bridge, the keep literally designed for watching the bridge.

What she knew though, which the wildlings didn't yet, was that only three of the castles were manned, and Westwatch wasn't one of them. That meant the Bridge of Skulls would likely be unguarded. Not that she planned to just run at the bridge like an idiot, it would require careful scouting and planning, but if it worked out well, she could slip across the bridge and then along the coast towards the Wolfswood.

Her eventual plan would be to find the Kingsroad and follow it south towards the Crossroads Inn, then from there east along the coast again until she reached Gulltown. Finally, she could board a ship travelling to Braavos and get the fuck away from Westeros. From just a basic guess, since she hadn't yet had her periods start, she was ten, maybe eleven years old, physically of course. That meant she had about ten years left until canon started.

Plenty of time to get the fuck away from the story.

"-relling again?"

Stopping in place, Karina looked towards the source of the voice she'd just heard, faint but unmistakable even with the sound of the river near her. Somebody was nearby, and considering they were talking, that meant there was very likely at least another person, maybe more. She was curious for just a moment, but pushed that down as she moved further away from the river and into the forest, avoiding the area the voices had come from.

She had reached the Milkwater and followed it for a day, which when added with her other walking meant she had to be getting close to the Gorge, but it also meant she was walking along a freshwater river, an obvious source of fish and drinking water. That meant it was probably a group of wildlings that were camping beside the river or fishing for food. It could also be a group of crows on a ranging who were filling up on water perhaps.

Whatever the case was, she was happy to avoid them.

Glaring with just a hint of anger at the giant ice wall in front of her, Karina inwardly pondered how the fuck she could have forgotten such a simple fact.

The Milkwater ran into the Gorge, and the wall went right up to the very edge of the Gorge, meaning she would have to cross the river at some point. But the river had widened further and further, and if she wanted to cross it, she'd have to traverse a river that looked about as wide as the River Thames. Plus, the river was ice-cold, so if she fucked up and fell in, she was practically guaranteed to get hypothermia and die. Either she went back along the river to a narrower point and crossed there, or tried her luck making a raft where she was and crossed the river.

Biting at her lip, Karina looked around. The trees were all the same to her, she never bothered to learn the difference between this wood and that wood aside from whichever burned best, so she had no idea as to how buoyant they would be. Her best bet would be to break off sticks and toss them in the water to see how well they floated. But honestly, she was just pissed that she had come so far, and a fucking river was stopping her from escaping the True North.

With a low growl, she marched up to the nearest tree and ditched her bag beside it, then grasped ahold of the trunk and began to shimmy her way up. As soon as a branch was in reach, she took a knife and cut a groove through the base of the branch, then used her legs, which were wrapped around the trunk, as leverage to snap the branch off, letting go when it broke to fall to the ground, quickly followed by a few more branches.

Sliding back down the tree, she dragged one of the branches to the river and hurled it in, observing as the wood splashed around for a moment before settling on the surface of the water as it was dragged down the river. Humming as she watched the wood disappear, she headed back to her small pile of thin branches. Her main worry was that she had no idea how much wood she would need to keep herself above the surface of the water. If the wood went entirely under, she would be fucked, but even if they only went under enough to get her feet wet, she would still be pretty screwed.

With a grumble, she climbed back up the tree and began to slowly and methodically cut off any branches that were about as thick as her arm. She reasoned that with maybe two dozen meter-long branches, a dozen lined up facing one way, then a second layer facing the other way, she would have a one-meter-wide raft that was two arms thick, which sounded buoyant enough to carry her.

Just to be safe, she got extra branches, climbing different trees to cut off their branches. Then, when she was satisfied, she began to work, slowly whittling down the branches to the same sizes then stacking them, one layer and then the next one. To secure them together, she bored plus-shaped holes on either end, allowing her to push a stick through them then flatten the end to act almost like a nailhead, holding the branches together and making them as rigid as she possibly could. For added security she used her sled bindings, wrapping each corner of her makeshift raft with them, just in the hopes of holding the damn thing together.

Finally, she took a particularly thick branch and whittled it mostly flat, using the widest part and fashioning possibly the crudest paddle possible, then made a handful of back-ups in case they snapped. The one thing she definitely wanted to avoid was being stuck adrift on the river, because that would see her going down the Gorge, which most likely had at least one set of rapids that would destroy her raft and kill her.

By the time she was finished, the sun was firmly setting. Despite her misgivings, she did not want to wait until the next day, worried that the voices she had heard the day before would venture towards her and find the obviously not natural construction, potentially finding her as well. So, she dragged the raft towards the river, attaching it to her arm with one of her bindings so it couldn't drift off without her, then slowly pushed it into the water, watching as it floated on just the first layer of thick branches.

Tentatively, she laid her arm on the raft, watching as it dipped just a little and leaned towards her. If she had more time, she would have attached more branches to act as outrigger stabilizers, but it was already really late. Reaching out her other arm, she pushed down on the raft, watching it as it dipped towards her. Finally, and with curses to whatever deity could hear her running through her mind, she pulled the raft as close to the shore as she could, then put a foot on it. With a quick hop, she put herself onto the fact, immediately dropping onto her knees and hands as the raft swayed dangerously.

To her satisfaction, which the water was now a third of the way up the second layer of branches, the considerable amount of wood that went into the shitty raft gave it the buoyancy to keep her above water, even with her fairly heavy backpack weighing her down. Grabbing one of the paddles she'd fashioned, she started to slowly and carefully dip it into the water, pulling it to her side and behind her, which slightly brought the raft further from the shore and towards the other shore.

Smiling despite her situation of kneeling on a makeshift raft on an ice-cold river with night falling and a paddle made from a stick in her hands, she put the paddle back under the water and began to paddle her vessel across the river, all the while the current dragged her towards the Gorge. From where she was kneeling, she could see The Wall, and she knew the Gorge only properly began a short distance before the wall, so as long as she didn't get too close, she would be fairly secure in her pace.

After a singular eternity of paddling, Karina had to stop herself from getting angry when her paddle snapped. It was something she expected to happen, she had made spares after all, but it also worried her. She was maybe a third of the way across the river, and she had five other paddles, but the one that snapped was the best one. Pushing down her momentary worry that she would really get stuck on the river, she placed the broken pieces down beside herself then picked up another paddle and continued to push her raft over the river.

It was maybe five minutes before the second paddle snapped, and the sound of the cracking wood perfectly matched the tingle her spine made as it broke, the primal sense of 'oh shit, this is bad' that she felt. Looking at the broken piece of wood, she placed it down exceptionally delicately as to not get pissed and throw it off the raft. Even if it was broken, she could use it in a pinch to keep paddling.

Another of the paddles broke not ten minutes later, just as she reached roughly halfway across the river. The fourth, however, was the paddle she would cherish and cuddle if she was that way inclined, it didn't snap at all, allowing her to reach the other shore with burning arms from the exertion without having to replace the paddle. Dragging the raft out of the water, she started to dismantle it, recovering her bindings.

The rest of it she tossed into the river to be dragged away, as there was no point letting some enterprising ranger discover it and realize that someone had crossed the river near the wall. Each piece was clearly worked on, they all had holes in them, and anyone with a modicum of intelligence would be able to see how they fitted together. But, when she tossed them into the river one piece at a time, they would be swept away and dispersed in the Bay of Ice, the evidence hidden by the ocean.

Karina glanced at the moon high in the sky, forcing back her exhaustion. On that side of the river there wasn't a forest, it led directly into the Frostfang Mountains, which meant there wasn't much cover for her. Humming, she gathered up the few branches remaining, tied them into a bundle and then tied that bundle onto the top of her back. The added weight was unpleasant, but if she couldn't find wood, she wouldn't be able to boil water to drink, which could end up killing her.

With that done, she set off to the south-west, following the river and keeping her eyes peeled for any sign of another living or unliving being. The Frostfangs were, after all, the border between the Lands of Always Winter and her current region, so it made sense that she might encounter a wight being used as a scout, and she had no obsidian to use. Using fire was a possibility, but she doubted a wight would be kind enough to let her kneel down and strike up a fire in front of it. Walking with a torch was just asking for someone to spot her in the distance and come for her.

Jumping her backpack to better settle it on her shoulders, she glanced around again, not just searching for enemies but also for somewhere to sleep. Her work throughout the day, matched with the fact that she had been walking before then, meant she was getting pretty tired. Being tired when she found the Bridge of Skulls was asking for her to make a stupid mistake, so she needed to find somewhere to sleep.

At the very least, she hadn't felt herself being observed again, so that was a plus-side.