A.N.: So direwolves are supposed to be bigger and stronger than normal wolves, which are huge. I was watching a documentary on Alaskan winters and someone had huskies and a sled, and I had a lightbulb moment. I also like the philosophy that animals hunt for food; men, for pleasure. And wild things should be free.
I hope we can all agree that the final montage and the song 'The Last of the Starks' (like all of Ramin Djawadi's score) are insane! Oh, the feels.
I'd recommend watching TheGaroStudios' video 'Jon Snow' on YouTube for anyone regretting S8's arc for his character: It's insanely good - and so much more satisfying than what we were given.
Valyrian Steel
03
White Winds
Even months and years later, she could never recall exactly how they made it to the haunted forest, two wraithlike girls laden with furs and weapons, dragging a sled and a broken boy on the cusp of manhood: Headfirst into the worst storm they had experienced in all their wanderings of the true North. The white winds had snatched at their furs and torn at their exposed skin, stinging where ice had frozen in the air, pelting them, the snow gentling each sting as flakes the size of daisies swirled around them, blinding them. They whispered against her skin like forbidden kisses.
All she could remember, after turning her back on her sweet giant, was that her eyelashes had frozen.
It took days to realise it was because she had been crying.
Hodor's fate battered her mind, attempting to turn it inside-out, and grief at Summer's sacrifice threatened to overwhelm her, aching for Last Shadow, sorrow for the last of the Children meeting their fates so valiantly, uselessly, to give them precious time, in a place where time had not existed for millennia, made her hollow - and angry. Grief and terror and hope kept her moving.
Hope was the only thing more powerful than her dread.
In the snowstorm of the Night King's creation, they did not dare let go the harness lashing them to Bran's sled: To let go was to lose one another. And to fall behind was to be left behind: They could not afford to stop. They would never meet again: Unless it was on opposite sides of the inevitable war. The only war that mattered. The war for the dawn. For life.
When people asked her, years later, how they had escaped the Night King and his army of wights, her answer was simple, and confounding: I put one foot in front of the other.
There was no magic to it. There had been no miracles, no heroes but a simple-minded giant who held the door. Just her and Meera. And they had simply refused to give in: They marched, and they dragged Bran, his eyes still milky from visions, and they fought against the howling white winds and raging snows, not daring to look back and see how close the army of the dead was. In the snows, they couldn't even smell the dead, and that was something. Meera had noticed the cold: Larra had noticed the smell.
They had each killed a White Walker, with weapons of obsidian: But they had paid for their escape with the lives of Hodor and Summer, Lord Bloodraven, Leaf, and the other Children. The last of their kind.
The wind almost knocked them off their feet, snatching at loose curls, slapping and slicing their exposed skin, and her bones ached to the marrow; her legs shook violently, and she was sure her feet bled. They were weak. Weaker than she had suspected.
Had the Night King been sated enough by the murder of the Three-Eyed Raven, by the Children, to not give chase? His generals were one thing: But Larra had looked the Night King in the face, and known she looked upon an ancient god from a forgotten age. A god of Death.
She could not defeat Death. She could only outrun it, for as long as she had strength in her body to put one foot in front of the other.
They weaved through the trees, the haunted forest echoing with howls and screams as the winds tore at barren branches, saplings groaning and creaking as they bowed in the gale, and Meera struggled, and lost her footing. The sled lurched, and Larra panted, tugging.
They hadn't stopped for hours; but the dawn would not come. The night…the night chased them…and its King had sent his soldiers after them. She dared not stop, dared not look back.
"We have to keep going!" she shouted, tugging sharply.
"I can't!"
"You must!"
Whimpering, devastated and exhausted, knowing that to stop was death, Meera struggled to her feet; they tugged at the sled, and freed it from a hidden gnarl of tree-roots. She saw the look on Meera's face just as they heard it: The first snarl, carried on the wind. They were sheltered from the worst of the elements amongst the trees, finally, blessedly sheltered, but even the woods would not stop the dead, any more than the shore could stop the sea.
"I'm sorry!" Meera cried, her face crumpling, as she panted and shook with exhaustion, guarding Bran with her body. His eyes were still milky-white, sightless - seeing everything.
For how long?
"Meera, take Bran and go!" she shouted over the wind.
"What about you?" Meera screamed, and her face fell, her eyes widening in horror as she gazed past Larra.
The dead. The sight of them sucked the breath from her lungs, and filled her with dread…but worse, worse than the decayed corpses wielding broken weapons, tearing ceaselessly through the storm…the lone White Walker. Not the King; one of his long-haired generals. Armoured and armed, his pace was slow and unyielding as a glacier, the wights all the more chaotic around him for his stillness.
"Meera…your bow," she wheezed, and Meera reached for it, nocking the first obsidian arrow.
They would die: But they would fight.
She refused to give in. From the moment the Ironborn took Winterfell, her sole purpose had been to survive: And to survive, because she had to protect her brothers. She lived for them. They gave her purpose. Protecting Bran was all she had: And she would fight to her death to protect him. With her last breath, she would defy anyone who attempted to harm him.
As the wights descended, she unsheathed her new sword to wield it in battle for the very first time. She was exhausted to her marrow, every muscle burning…but she had been trained for this. For exhaustion, and hunger, and desperation…
Those without swords still die upon them, Father had once told Ser Rodrick, who hadn't wanted to train a woman for war, bastard though she was. But she was a daughter of the North: They were made of tempered steel and unyielding ironstone.
Arrows whistled past, wights stopping in their tracks, but the White Walker strode on, his face ice-white and still, his blue eyes glowing in the half-light.
Dark Sister felt as if she had been forged for Larra alone, an extension of her arm, and the blade sang through the air. She killed one, two, another, and another - she fought for survival, her exhaustion forgotten, blood flowing through her veins like liquid fire, fierce and good. Her blood was up: It was all she had. The burning desire to fight - to live. It was all she had, and it was not enough, but she fought. As Meera emptied her quiver, Larra cut down more wights, keeping them at bay.
But there were too many.
Too many, and too fast. Unrelenting.
A White Walker before her eyes. She thought of Old Nan's stories. And then she fought, and no other thought entered her mind but anticipating the next strike, and avoiding each blow. She was too exhausted, too weak to block; but fear made her nimble.
Dark Sister came alive in her hands; her body moving as if without thought. The Children called it dancing.
She danced with a White Walker.
Larra heard the wights, heard Meera's bow singing, the crunch of shattering wights as dragonglass killed whatever magic animated them, she heard the winds howling, but it was the howling of a direwolf that cost her - almost everything.
The familiar howl of Last Shadow filled her with strength - with hope, with memories, with determination - fuelled by love - to survive; for half a second, she was distracted. A giant black direwolf leapt out of nowhere, over Bran, bundling into three wights advancing on him.
Last Shadow. She had grown - and she was not alone. More wolves appeared out of nowhere, leaping out of the snows at wights, tearing them to pieces, and someone astride a great black horse swung a flaming thurible on a long chain at any wight within range as the horse galloped around the trees.
But she lost focus, her arms shook with the impact of the blow she just blocked in time - she stumbled, overbalanced in the snowy terrain, and screamed as the Walker stabbed at her with his ice-white blade. Seven hells!
It was a scream of fury - and pain. Had he broken ribs? Her breath came so painfully, she thought so; she would be bruised.
But she was not dead. Not yet.
The White Walker showed no emotion, only lethal purpose. He was a sword in the storm.
She bared her teeth and screamed in fury as she clamped her arm down over the white blade still tangled in her furs, raising Dark Sister to use the flaming pommel and break the brittle ice-blade in half. She fell back as if to fade - and screamed as she leapt forwards, knocking his broken blade out of the way to plunge Dark Sister deep into his heart.
Larra looked into his glowing vivid-blue eyes and saw nothing. No emotion, no desire, no life. She did not smell a putrid corpse, as the stench of the wights made her eyes water even in the storm; only ice. Cold.
The sound of ice creaking and cracking seemed to quieten the storm raging around them; she heard every fissure as they appeared on his snow-white skin, bluish-silver and white, awing. She clenched her eyes shut as she fell to the ground, ice shattering, raining down around her as she landed heavily in the snow.
Panting, her side agony to her, she raised her head, fingers tight around Dark Sister's grip, wary for the next attack, and gasped, watching, stunned, as the wights dropped where they were, disintegrating, dust on the wind, rusted weapons dropping into the snow with piles of old bones and mouldy furs. For a second, she only stared, taking it all in: Then she realised. The wights had met their true death with the defeat of the White Walker who commanded them, had maybe created them.
Panting, she collapsed against the snow, turning onto her back, hissing in pain, staring dazedly into the endless grey-white sky, bare trees waving and groaning in the wind, snow flurries eddying around her. She blinked, and focused, and smiled humourlessly at the ravens clinging stubbornly to the branches. Wherever there are wolves, there are ravens, Maester Luwin used to tell her.
The shrouded man on horseback trotted over, the stench of his sweating horse acrid on the crisp air, looping the coils of his chain carefully, the thrurible extinguished. His voice tickled her memory when he said, "On your feet…the dead do not tire."
Last Shadow snuffled as she prowled over, bigger than Larra ever remembered, and gave Larra's ear a lick, tucking her nose under Larra's chin for a moment, whining softly, and Larra might have burst into tears of relief had she the energy.
"Shadow," she wheezed, and her dire-wolf, her companion and sister, chuffed softly. Intense heat roiled off her in waves, and the familiar, comforting scent of wolf swept memories of better times through Larra's mind. She knotted her fingers in Shadow's impossibly thick jet fur, and the enormous direwolf gently pulled her to her feet. Her legs shook violently, her arms felt like dead weights, bruised from the impact of fighting the White Walker, and her side protested, in absolute agony…but she was alive.
And Meera was alive. And Brandon was alive.
Meera was hurriedly gathering as many arrows as she could reclaim from the fallen wights, already disintegrating in the vicious winds; Shadow guided Larra to the sled, to Bran, whose eyes were dark once more. He stared at her unblinkingly, simply reaching to lift the harness Larra had fashioned under the weirwood, fastened to the sled. She had fit it to Summer. She had designed the sled, crafted from dead weirwood branches, so that Bran could skim across the snow and ice in comfort, using reins to guide Summer, who had been large enough to draw the sled like horses did wagons. It was supposed to ensure that Bran had a means of transportation he was not completely reliant on other people for; but there was capacity for someone to stand behind, and take the reins. They hadn't time to test the harness and the sled together.
Last Shadow padded in front of the sled; Larra sheathed Dark Sister before securing the harness around her direwolf. There was no blood on the blade; no indication at all she had slain a White Walker, a monster from legend. Shadow stood still, waiting patiently, as Larra adjusted the harness: Summer had been smaller than his sister, and Larra fastened the buckles with stiff, bruised fingers. Meera helped her right the sled, Bran jostled inside his furs, and Larra wondered, fleetingly, whether Bran had called the wolves to him. He was a skinchanger, far stronger than Larra - she could change skins with wolves, but wouldn't dare try and see through another man's eyes; the Children had taught her, making her practice every day. Skinchanging left Bran's body vulnerable while he inhabited an animal's skin: It left his mind vulnerable to the death of his host. It was a dangerous and erratic power; Larra didn't trust it.
The shrouded man called to them, but the sound was lost on the wind; as Larra stepped on the footboards, he helped Meera onto his horse, and started galloping away. South. Always south now.
They couldn't have outrun the dead without Shadow, without the mounted stranger.
But they did. Somehow, they did.
Theon Greyjoy used to talk about sailing. Odd that she thought about him then, after everything: She had only thought about Theon in anger ever since he took Winterfell, took her brothers' home from them, betrayed Robb's trust. Theon used to talk about the sea. Pyke. The Ironborn; piracy. Freedom. She imagined sailing the high seas felt a lot like skimming across the oceans of snow and ice at high speed, exhilarating and fast, breathless - and a little painful, trepidation niggling at the pit of her stomach as she held on to the handle-bar and gritted her teeth against the cries of pain that threatened to burst from her, the snow and ice biting her face, her legs like fresh-forged lead, still burning. The White Walker hadn't killed her, but she knew her own body: He had done her some damage, in the act of stabbing at her, if not actually skewering her.
She clung onto the sled, not daring relax her grip, and focused on nothing but Bran, and Meera, and their cloaked companion - and their honour-guard of direwolves.
Last Shadow had found a pack. At least twenty direwolves, of different colours and sizes, different ages. Even a couple of pups, close to their mother. Impossibly, she remembered Shadow that small, gangly and excitable, loping through the snow. And Shadow was in her element now, in the true North, amongst a pack. The direwolves formed a protective ring around them, guarding them on all sides, the more vulnerable wolves inside the circle, next to the sled and the horse that was unfazed by their nearness. To see a true wolf-pack in nature, in its element, embracing them as their own, vulnerable pups to be protected…it was extraordinary.
With the cloaked stranger on horseback, and Shadow pulling the sled, they covered a great distance at speed. She wondered how Shadow had known where she was…whether she had called to her across so great a distance, whether their bond truly was as strong as she had always believed. The Children had been teaching her, strengthening her warg abilities…like a muscle, the more she used it, the stronger it became, though without Shadow she had tried to strengthen her bond with Summer. Sometimes she dreamed through Shadow's eyes; the Children had encouraged it.
They put as much distance between them and the dead as the animals could provide; but even direwolves tired eventually, especially when they were hungry, and the cloaked stranger's horse was not a Dornish stallion, bred for stamina.
Eventually, they had to decide to stop, to rest. They all needed it; and the wolves took opportunity to hunt what little could be found in the snows. Sheltered by trees, the cloaked stranger had found them a derelict hut, erected by wildlings and abandoned - possibly they were with Mance Rayder, or perhaps they fought for the Night King. Either way, the empty home was a haven: It shielded them, for a few precious hours, from the perils of a night that was getting steadily more dangerous, a night that refused to end. They enjoyed a couple of hours of daylight, and that was their lot: They could not get South soon enough.
Every muscle in her body wound so tight she feared they might snap her bones, Larra inched off the footboards of the sled. She had thought she knew what pain was: She had been educated in their flight from the Night King. It was all she could do to keep hold of the handle-bar, and the reins, to keep herself upright. Her face felt as if it had been flayed by the snow and ice, and if she kept her nose, she would be surprised - and grateful. Meera grimaced in pain as she dismounted, with the cloaked stranger's help: It had been a long time since either of them had ridden. Together, they manoeuvred the sled into the shelter, and Meera groaned as she sank onto the snow-strewn ground, where pine-needles had once formed a carpet, instead of rushes. Precariously, Larra leaned against the wall of the shelter; she could no more bend her legs to sprawl on the ground as Meera had than she could perform twenty cartwheels for her amusement. Inch by inch, knowing she would pay for it when they started off again, she let her muscles relax, slowly, agonisingly.
In the time it took to sit on the ground with her legs outstretched and shaking, gripping her side and fearful of examining herself for injury, her mind slowly settling from the anxiousness that had plagued her since smelling the dead in the Children's caves, the wolves had disappeared…and returned, only a few hours later, herding a young, frightened elk. A gift. The gift of food; the gift of life.
They left the kill for the cloaked stranger - and waited patiently, prowling around the shelter like guards, lifting their noses to the wind, communicating constantly: The little pups had to be kept in line by the older ones, and Larra took the time to watch them, learning each of the direwolves, and Last Shadow amongst them. She was among the largest and strongest of the direwolves; there were others, a russet-coloured one that made Larra's stomach hurt, thinking of Robb the last time she had seen him, with snow melting in his auburn hair, bearded, a man before his time, off to war…
It was the cloaked stranger who handled the elk, carving meat for them to roast over a spit, enough for a meal and enough to tuck into the sled for later; packed with snow, it would not spoil for a while.
When he had taken their cut, the wolves set in; and Larra watched the social structure of the pack, the family of direwolves Last Shadow had been adopted into. Born one of seven pups to a dead mother, Last Shadow's eyes had already been open, she had been fending for her little-brother Ghost, an albino rejected by the others… Now she was enormous, larger than a pony and elegant, ferocious - wily. She always had been the canniest of the direwolves. Lady had been gentle; Grey Wind was unsettling in his swiftness and purpose, clever; Ghost was quiet and unnerving as his name implied, but ferocious and deeply loyal to Jon; Nymeria had Arya's mixture of impishness and danger; Summer had been intuitive; and Shaggydog was the wildest, the untamed wolf, the feral monster men feared - with good reason. But Last Shadow…she had grown up in the wilds of the wolfswood, hunting by Larra's side, or protecting the babies - she had put Shaggydog in his place, and from the very beginning had nurtured her siblings, bringing Ghost food, licking Summer's muzzle as he cried for broken Bran.
But she had never been at home at Winterfell, the same way Larra had known she was not truly wanted, was despised and even dreaded by her father's wife - she feared Jon might steal Robb's inheritance of the North, did her level best to place a wedge between her lawful children and her husband's bastards… Look at us now, Larra thought, not for the first time: There was no difference to them, now. They had no home, no lands, no titles. Just their lives, and it was their lives that mattered to her. She wondered what Catelyn Tully would think, her precious boys left in the care of her husband's bastard daughter… That the bastard she despised had kept her sons safe where her husband's bannermen with all their armies had failed to.
She watched Last Shadow: Now, she took precedent. The smaller wolves waited, quivering with anticipation, but it was Last Shadow, the largest female, black as night and as dangerous, who fed from the elk first, with the hulking male, a grey and cream male with piercing amber eyes and scars on his muzzle, the size of her favourite mare… As the meat cooked over a small fire, and the smell roused a dozing Meera as nothing else in this world might, Larra watched the wolves… Even in the storm, even as the night grew longer, they lived… They hunted, and they fed, and they thrived, and she couldn't help wonder whether any of the young pups in the pack were Last Shadow's. She didn't know how long they had lingered beneath the weirwood, just that Bran had become a man while they were there.
There were a few jet-black pups with amber and snow-blue eyes, one of which was bold enough to lift its nose their way, and pounce on her boot, playful as she remembered Last Shadow being, delighted to find a sister, a friend. The russet-coloured wolf Larra had seen before, an elegant female with piercing eyes, prowled closer, its muzzle red with blood, watching Larra shrewdly, before batting at the pup with her paw, nudging the pup back toward the elk, and their dinner. The she-wolf stared at Larra, steaming in the cold, eyes piercing, cunning; she raised her muzzle to scent the air, scent them, and Larra remained still as the strange direwolf inched closer, finally scenting and licking her face, lowering her nose to sniff and scent her furs. The elk-blood had frozen in her fur but her rough tongue was hot as she licked Larra's aching face.
The she-wolf cocked her head at Bran thoughtfully, scented Meera, and loped back over to the elk to growl at one of the larger pups so the little ones could sneak up and tear some meat away. The direwolves weren't going to leave anything of the carcass, not this far North, not in these winter storms.
The cloaked stranger pulled his knife, and started to carve the cooked meat from the spit. Succulent, dripping with fat, the juicy meat had Larra's mouth watering.
The stranger crouched in front of her, the hood pulled low over his eyes, to offer her the meat.
"That Walker's blade should've skewered you." That voice again, rich and mournful and understated - she knew it; she knew she knew it. She just couldn't place it. Memories flirted with her bone-deep tiredness in the back of her mind: She wriggled in her furs, and finally got free of them, just long enough to show the stranger what she wore beneath: A chain-mail vest made entirely of obsidian. Tiny rings, thousands of them, hand-carved, smooth and beautiful, sewn on to a vest of bear-hide using direwolf hairs - Summer's shed hairs.
In the little hut, the vest shimmered and came alive in the firelight - as if she was wearing dragonscales…
She caught Meera's eye, and hurriedly bundled herself back under her furs, Bran's revelation about her parentage still too fresh, too painful a wound.
The stranger laughed.
It was more of a chuff, something soft and wild, unpractised - something wolflike.
Larra looked up sharply, into the stranger's hooded eyes.
"Uncle Benjen!"
A.N.: Who else is seriously in love with Benjen Stark? Ned and Benjen are possibly the most epic, honourable, self-sacrificing men in Westeros, if not the world: And Jon is the very best of them. I'm convinced Benjen knew about Lyanna's love-affair with Rhaegar/eloping with him. He wouldn't have been very old, if Lyanna was sixteen when she ran off with Rhaegar like in the books, but it seems like Benjen and Lyanna were very close as children, after Ned was fostered at the Eyrie. I'll bet he knew exactly who Jon was when Ned brought a baby back from Dorne, with Lyanna's bones.