Eddard IV

It had taken some not inconsiderable diplomacy to assure the Queen of her children's safety after the wolves entered the feast, but at the end, Ned could go to sleep content with the knowledge that at least one daughter had avoided the dreaded bedding ceremony. It was bad enough that he hadn't known enough to avoid it for Cat or his gooddaughter, and told as much to his wife when she asked him to scold Arya.

"I like it as little as you, Ned," she said as they lay together on his bed. Cat had covered herself in his blanket, but Ned felt too hot even without it. It was a rare Stark who was not made for the cold. Even Sansa, the most Tully of his children, was fonder of autumn than summer. "But you coddle her too much. She is a woman grown now, not just your little wolf."

Ned rolled off the bed and crossed the floor to the window, hoping for a gust of cool northern wind. A fog had settled over Winterfell, and gentle drops of rain, more mist and snow than a shower, started falling before his eyes. But the charge in the air suggested worse storms over the horizon and Ned decided that he would forestall Robert's hunting until it passed. The black form of a crow came to perch on his windowsill and looked at him with beady eyes full of judgement, before turning south and croaking.

"Perhaps I should decline Robert's offer after all," Ned said, voicing his doubts as if to let them out at once.

"Ned, we have talked about this," his wife began.

"I am of the north, my place is at Winterfell with you and the children. What will I ever do in the rat's nest they call the capital?"

"You will be the Hand of the King, my lord, and you will help rule the realm," Cat reminded him.

"Stannis can do as much, and he is the king's brother besides," Ned argued.

"The king does not trust anyone else to do it. Will you abandon your friend when he needs your help?"

Ned's mouth twisted at the memory of three bodies wrapped in Lannister cloaks. "My friend died the day he donned the crown. It is only duty to my king and the realm that even lets me entertain the notion."

"Then remember your duty to your children as well. Sansa is half in love with that prince of hers already, and Rickon wants to go even after all the tall tales that singer has stuffed into his ears."

"I need not accept the king's offered burden for them to do so—"

Cat sat up, letting the furs slide down from her body. "You cannot mean to leave Sansa to go south alone! Would you rather have her remain a stranger to her betrothed until the day they are wed or that Cersei Lannister take her as a ward?" Ned did not want his other children to go into marriage as strangers, not like he himself and Robb had done. And he would sooner send his daughter to Essos than to a Lannister, there were stories about the queen that he'd heard from the party.

"They are only betrothed, my lady. That is not as set in stone as marriages are—"

"We cannot break her betrothal with the Crown Prince, not if we don't wish to leave her an old maid," she responded curtly. Truth be told, they had had this discussion earlier, and it was only Ned's doubts that made him hesitant to do what he knew he must.

"I know that you worry for our little lady," Cat began gently, "but that is not how the others will see it. They'll think that there's something truly wrong with Sansa, which makes us break this betrothal. The king would be wroth as well at you breaking your word."

"Others take your others," Ned japed weakly. Neither could summon a smile to it, Brandon was always the one that made people laugh.

"King Robert loves you as a brother, Ned. He travelled for a month to bequeath the honour upon you," Catelyn said.

"Honour? I would sooner go Beyond the Wall. At least the enemies there will say what they will to my face."

"In his eyes, it is a great honour. We both know how…..anxious the queen has grown over the years. She will not take kindly to you spurring her husband and she is the daughter of Tywin Lannister. If for no one else, do it for me and the children."

"The children?" Ned prompted when she fell silent.

"It would do Robb good to rule the North, he is more that a man grown."

"He is my heir, not the lord," Ned frowned. "He is not supposed to rule until I am buried in the crypts of Winterfell." Catelyn made a sign of warding off evil at that and Ned climbed back into the bed with a fond smile on his face.

"Your heir who is married to a southern flower, or so they think," she reminded him. "I believe Margaery will be able to charm them into accepting her, but they will not take lightly to two Lord Starks marrying south. He must show them—"

"That he is strong enough to rule, I know," Ned heaved a sigh. Northmen could be fiercely loyal to the Stark in Winterfell, but they were also the most stubborn people he had ever met, save perhaps the Stormlanders. They had good reason to be, foolish leaders in winter could lead to the whole clan starving, so each Stark worth the name had to prove his worth to rule them. "He could make progresses to do that, one to White Harbour and another to the Barrowlands."

"So they can mutter about him wasting their winter stores? The summer is more likely to end than continue to the next year and they will not have the money to throw feasts as someone of Robb's station deserves."

Ned gave a nod to acknowledge the point, but his mind was drifting elsewhere. Fourteen years past he had made Robert agree to take in the Targaryen brood, until they could be sent to the Faith and the Wall. The boy seemed a good enough lad, courteous enough for as long as Ned had seen him, and taking freely to Jon at the feast. The two girls were easier to judge, one as ladylike as Sansa and the other as wild as Arya. It was his word that had decided their fate, first a life as a ward in King's Landing and then a life in silent orders that was barely a life at all. Still better than death, he thought but it was a cold comfort. The world would not be kind to Targaryens, least of all in the capital and he owed it to the two princesses and one prince he had failed to save to see to their well-being. When he had asked the golden-haired girl about it, she had only said, "My siblings and I are in His Grace's debt for the generosity he has shown. We could not ask for anything more." Ned knew better than to hope for truthfulness from a hostage but the politeness of the reply had caught him off guard. He could not tell if that was what the girl truly thought, though she was only ten-and-four, younger than his own daughters.

Ned woke up early the next day and quietly left the chamber, ensuring that Cat wouldn't wake up. It was early enough that the godswood was empty when he reached it and he could pray to his father's gods in peace.

Once when Robb, Jon, Dacey and Arya had left on another hunt, he had heard Sansa run into the godswood as he prayed. She had come before to pray here but that was only on his insistence and he knew the gods of her mother were dearer to her. Perhaps this was why he did not reveal himself as he heard Sansa pray desperately for a friend. Vayon Poole's daughter was already wed to a blacksmith in Wintertown and considered herself too old to befriend a child. Bryn Cassel readily enough made friends with Bran, but he couldn't do the same for Sansa. As her tears started falling, consequences of siblings who were too different and parents who were too busy, he almost reached out to pull her into his arms but a lifetime of the battlefield had taught him how to remain motionless until she left, eyes dry but still red. As he later learned, his eldest children and ward had not invited Sansa because she was too young and too slow to keep with them on her pony. That was when he had sent for Lyra and Jorelle Mormont and they arrived within a fortnight, eager to reunite with their elder sister. Sansa had taken to visiting the godswood since then, even though she confessed to her mother that the heart tree scared her at first. Which was why Ned was more surprised to see her awake at the early hour than her coming towards him, her direwolf trailing behind obediently.

"Good morrow, father," she greeted him, with a command at Willow to sit on her hindlegs which the wolf did. Ned returned the greeting and they both knelt before the weirwood, the silence only broken by the rustling of the leaves, the sound providing as much comfort as he prayed for his gods to provide wisdom.

At the end, he knew not if it worked. But he had a duty, to the dead and those still living, so he told Sansa, "Pack your things, child. We will be going to King's Landing."

The Lost Boy

Klay woke up to his dog's cheerful barks and an empty bed. Redbeard greeted him by licking his face till it felt wet even through his thick gloves. "Redbeard, get off me. C'mon, who's a good girl? You're a good girl, so get off." His voice echoed, too thin and too loud in the twilit cave.

He wrapped himself in his father's old black cloak and sat waiting for him. "Can't you find father, Redbeard?" He'd heard of the skinchangers doing feats like that without even slipping into the beast. From her helpless eyes and frantically wagging tail, he could guess she could not.

Many shamans and godsmen decried that…the things that Mance spoke of had returned. "Why have they not attacked us then?" His father had argued. They need their thralls like gods needed priests, and how else would they get them, if not from the northerners? Klay could not find a fault in the argument so here they had come.

The world outside was the same as it had been the last day, like the cold had frozen all lands north of the Wall. The clouds gathered overhead were a blue-grey between the colour of an iceberg and his father's steel dagger. It gave the sky a colour that was not much different from the ground, if Klay was honest but he didn't dare say it. His mother had warned him that if the above and below was the same colour, he mustn't say it, or it shall all fall down. It was fifteen years ago when Klay was still at her breast but he wouldn't say it for her memory and the memory of how she clouted him as punishment. Now mother is dead, he reminded himself, and father is still missing.

"I'll find him and then we can spend the whole winter talking about mother," saying it made it seem easy enough. "Beside a fire," he added. A warm fire, with food cooking over it and the mulled ale we've stashed in the southern cave. But that home was far away from the cold of the place they'd come to, against Mance. Rayder was trying to amass an army, which father had decided to have no part in. It was a common enough sentiment among the Magnars of the Free Folk, but father had decided to venture this far north to poke a hole in Mance's fish story. But something was not right. They had not travelled far enough north for it to be the cold walkers, even if they had woken.

The day was lighter than it had been when they had first gone into the cave. The boy hitched up his coat to cover himself better. A cold wind was rising. He could see a small thicket of trees that was not there before. Nightfall must have hidden it yesterday. Father might just be collecting more wood for fires.

Redbeard barked as soon as they entered the forest and Klay startled. He tried soothing his dog but his fingers seemed too long and ungainly as he ran them through her fur. Her fangs were barred and he could see the whites of her eyes. Father will hear the sound and come. So will anything less friendly, a chilly voice whispered.

Klay kept walking until he saw a blood red and bone white face twisted in agony. "A weirwood," he breathed. He sent a prayer to the gods of the rocks, streams and birds and quickened his stride. The gods are watching over these woods, he thought.

Until the boy saw movement in the corner of his eye. A dark shadow rushed down a grey-green sentinel. Its branches stirred gently in the wind, scratching at one another with wooden fingers. Klay hesitated. Perhaps it was a clump of leaves falling, or a bird taking flight from its nest. A hungry stomach and fearful mind made men imagine many things after all, and he was still a boy.

A light shadow leaped upon him from behind and Klay screamed. It took Redbeard running into the direction of the dark shadow for him to realise it had only been his dog. She was shivering and trying to curl in on herself and the boy had forgotten he was not alone. Redbeard disappeared behind the undergrowth that spread around the weirwood, the dark green corrupting the pure white tree and snow, blood red leaves littered around it like spilled wine.

Klay kept walking towards the weirwood, keeping his eye on the giant of the grey-green tree. His fingers shook like sharp white daggers in the hands of a child as he picked a stick from the ground. A rustle of the leaves. Something slithered on the snow. A treecat, he reasoned. Some of them were dark enough, though he could not understand how it had come so far from the Frostfangs.

The thing came out from behind the wierwood, not the tree Klay had been expecting. It was not a treecat anymore and mayhaps never was. Its body and face was black, a plum-rotten black from which its bright blue eyes gleamed. The man-lizard was almost upon him before he could remember to run. An axe was stuck in its side, jiggling wildly as it crawled toward him, faster than something like it should. Bleeding guts were bulging out, dragging on the snow.

The snow pushed against him as he ran. A rock flew past his head; he was the target. Klay turned his head, catching a glimpse of the creature's thick tail flickering to one side and another. It struck the sentinel as he ran past it. His feet seemed to be burned by his fear. The wight was coming closer.

A cloth tore. His cloak had fallen, caught on bushes as he was caught by death. Klay kept running, his feet pounding on the undergrowth, unafraid of the noise. The worst thing in the woods was behind him.

The weirwood appeared out of nowhere in front of him and Klay stuck his elbow on the bleeding eyes. The lizard came closer, his tail preventing any thought of escape. He tried pushing against the creature's sides, but the skin was cool and shifting. Pus flowed in its veins instead of blood. The star-blue eyes did not stop to relish catching a prey as a living thing would. It snapped Klay's foot in its mouth, as routinely as a slave would count his matter's coins.

The boy barely realised that he had lost his shoe somewhere. Blood erupted from where the creature's teeth had stuck into his foot; Klay screamed….. Another lizard-man slithered out from somewhere, its wormy-brown scales mouldering like a rotten carcass on the snow.

The first creature struck his teeth up to Klay's knees and pulled. It's peeling, Klay realised. It's peeling my foot like a cabbage. Using the last bits of strength he had, the boy tried crawling away, but the things were like a torrent he could not fight against.

The pressure slackened. The beady blue eyes retreated from the corner of his vision and for a moment, he could breathe again. Then Redbeard collapsed on top of him, a mountain of slack flesh and burning blue eyes that saw, and he could not breathe at all.