THEON

The warhorns blew just after midnight, as he had known they would. No one had told him that, and yet, in his gut, he knew it was true. And that same indescribable feeling told him that this was the last night. This was the end of the battle: or rather, the end of their lives.

Even now he was not quite sure why Euron had let him go back to Castle Black. At first he thought there must be some reason, that there was a devious plan, that Euron was making him tell the Watch false information and trying to trick them. But now, as the nights wore on, he was becoming more and more convinced that the only reason was so that he could know the despair of dying with men. And, more importantly, the despair of knowing all along that they could not win, and indeed that they had no chance of winning whatsoever.

He wondered if anyone up here on the ramparts believed anything else, in their hearts. The Northmen had prayed to their old gods, a few had prayed to the southern Seven, a few to the Drowned God, a few, even, to the Lord of Light. But he did not see how they could be sane men, and believe that their gods had any way to save them. There would be no mercy tonight. The wights did not know mercy. To Euron Greyjoy and the Night's Queen both, it was just a word, an idea dreamed up by mortal men who were full of fear and had nothing else to believe in.

No, there would be no mercy tonight.

The mist was thick, and it came within a hundred yards of Castle Black. Theon knew the legions of the dead and Euron's thralls were waiting just beyond it, grey figures in the pale clouds. But before they advanced, it was their master's turn. When he saw Euron walking out ahead of his men, he knew that his earlier thoughts about this being the final night had been proven true. Euron had never been seen until tonight. He had been toying with them until now. Tonight was the real fight: tonight, as he had at Winterfell, he was here to accomplish something.

Euron stopped, and waited. Though the thousand defenders all had their bows trained on him, they all knew that he must surely be impervious to their arrows to be playing to the gallery like this. They all stood and watched. Theon saw among them the pale nervous face of Samwell Tarly, the Lord Commander, plainly as afraid as any of the men he commanded. Beside him were Tormund Giantsbane and the Greatjon Umber, commanding the wildlings and the Northmen respectively. Previously the vanguard had fought disunited battles, across the castle. But here, tonight, the attack would come from only one direction: there were no tactics here, just pure, unrelenting force, and for Euron, a near-endless supply of dead men willing to die again for him. And so they would all fight together. And die together.

Theon watched as his uncle raised his hand from his side. In it he held the Horn of Winter, and though it was pitch-dark, the moon seemed to shine on its curved black surface, and the instrument of chaos was aglow. Very slowly, very deliberately, he raised it to his lips. And blew. It was not loud, as they might have expected. Instead a single soft note issued forth, as soft as the voice with which a mother might sing to her crying baby.

But pitch and texture meant nothing to the dead. They heard it, and they stepped out of their chilly rows, and they came forwards.

Euron smiled up at the battlements, then turned away, and retreated back into his advancing army.

There was a long moment where the entire defensive line held its breath. Then, realising that they were not quite dead yet, the Greatjon parted his lips and bellowed "ARCHERS!"

Theon had no bow; the northmen did not trust him with weapons, and he was missing too many fingers anyhow. So there was nothing he could do but stand and watch as the men pulled their strings back ready to fire. He watched their shaking hands – cold and fear mingled as the host of the dead charged onwards – and the gaunt expressions of their faces – and then the release.

The arrows fell upon the enemy. The wights did not scream; they had no voices to do so. Instead the noise was a wet, boneless thudding, one arrow after another; thud thud thud, to various effects. Some of the wights took an arrow straight through the skull; they froze grotesquely and tumbled to the snow; others received an arrow to the limbs, another to the chest, a third to the neck and they fell down, impaled and immobile but still twitching. But the vast majority kept coming. They weathered that first volley, and the second, and the third, and as the fourth was readying to be loosed they were scrambling up the palisade, and as the fifth volley went out they were climbing up onto one another's shoulders and trying to reach the rampart. Then – and all the while Theon watched immobile – one of the wights reached over the wall, grabbed some unlucky archer by the scruff of his coat, and pulled him bodily over the edge into the hell below. He disappeared with a gory scream. He was not alone in that. A moment later the next man followed, and the next, and the screaming became a chorus—

And now they were on top of the wall, and the defenders were fighting them hand-to-hand – with the wights, that term was quite literal. They attacked with scrabbling fingers and inhuman claws, and the men fought back with steel, and everywhere was a mess of limp and flopping limbs and torn entrails and the white snow atop the black battlements was turning red and as Theon watched it close in he knew the red would soon drown everything out. Here it was, seeping through the snow towards him; a hundred feet, eighty feet, sixty—

It was not until the blood tide was a dozen feet away that he realised he had to move. At once it was as if his ears became attuned to a different set of sounds; the dull noise of violence separated itself into individual screams and one of them was shouting "BACK! BACK! BACK INTO THE CASTLE!"

A moment of stupefied stillness, and then he turned and ran. Even as his first fleeting foot came down he felt hands grabbing at his ankle – living or dead, he could not tell. He shook free and sprinted to join the men trying to force their way through the wood-and-iron door at the end of the rampart. With every second that passed he could hear the wailing behind getting louder and louder; Theon kept scrambling, kept pushing, squeezing through every and any gap – and then hot air flooded him and he fell through into the tight enclosed space of the stairway. Someone was shouting for the men to form up to defend the stairs, but he kept going, down the sloped steps of the tunnel, into the darkness of the wormways.

Over the next minutes the men fought, Night's Watch and free folk and Northmen side by side, desperately trying to keep every inch of ground and retreating only when absolutely necessary. And all the while Theon huddled in the alcoves and the unseen places, filled with fear. Somehow in his frenzied retreat he made his way to Samwell Tarly, and his fellow commanders. He overheard Toregg Giantsbane telling them that his father was still on the stairs, but could not hold forever. And that others were dead; one of the Ryswells, Lord Wull, and they had not heard from Lady Mormont. It was around then that Theon felt something break inside him, and he knew he could resist no longer. He pushed back through the lines, breaking from the claustrophobic circles, into the back tunnels which the Night's Watch had left locked and guarded. He shambled the length of the tunnel, still armed with his sword but with nothing to do with it. There were storerooms down here, like the one Melisandre had been guarding – where was Melisandre, come to think of it? She must have fallen too, he realised.

He turned the corner, and the blood froze solid inside him. For there he was: Ramsay. Not merely idling or waiting by circumstance, but deliberately waiting for him.

He did not speak, and he did not have to. For Ramsay Bolton had mastered that way of looking, and of turning you to ice just as you met his gaze. The pale eyes glimmered, oh so faintly, as he watched Theon down the hundred feet of hallway. He was surrounded by his men, the Bastard's Boys, but none of them mattered. All that mattered now were his eyes, and their cold mockery, and the hand he had on the bolt of the door.

"No," Theon said.

Ramsay did not hear him. But he did not have to. "Yes," he replied. It was a whisper, and yet it was so loud in the echoing space. Theon looked past him. He could not see what was beyond the iron door, but he could see what lay in the sawdust at Ramsay's feet. The bodies of the sentries who had guarded the doors. And beyond the doors…

"No," he said again.

"Yes, Reek," said Ramsay Bolton. He unslung his sword, crusty with blood. "Oh, yes." And he turned the key in the door, and then leapt aside. The Bastard's Boys went scurrying after him.

Theon, alone in the hallway, watched the unlocked door for a long side. For half a second he dared to think nothing would happen. And then the door opened, and it did. They came. Came rushing through the middle and down the flanks, screeching, a shapeless mass of flesh and cloth rolling as a great tidal wave; they came clambering along the walls and crawling upside down along the ceiling beams. Theon stood there with his torch in one missing-fingered hand and the sword in the other, and watched them swarm. He breathed out and the air was pure ice, as cold as any of their unblinking eyes.

Move, you fool! Move! A voice in his head was screaming. It sounded quite like Asha.

But that could not be. Asha was dead, Euron had said so.

I may be dead, Theon, but you are not! She had a quality in her words that made him feel like he had just been struck around the head with a wet fish. He stumbled backwards – blood in his mouth, where had that come from? – and took up a run. It was a strange, shambling run, the run of Reek, and for a moment that name preyed on him; but only for a moment. This was Theon's run now. He half-sprinted, half-hopped down the tunnel; at one point he tossed his torch behind him, hoping feebly that it might start a fire and that might become an inferno. He ran half-blindly, guessing at each corner, but by some miracle there were now black cloaks around him. Theon unhinged his tired throat and began to scream at them. "WIGHTS!" he screamed, "Wights, behind, BEHIND US!" He waved the sword like a loon around his head; no matter if it took of someone's head; if they did not turn, they would not be around long enough for it to matter. "BEHIND US!" he screamed as they charged through the press. "Behind you!" When they did not turn at once he grabbed men by the shoulders and wrenched them round and waved his hands in their faces: "Look, damn you, look!"

And then, mercifully, someone sent up the call. "BEHIND US! BOTH SIDES!" From that bellow he was sure it was the Greatjon Umber. The Greatjon Umber, who on any ordinary day would have him strung up and hanged on sight. And now the Greatjon was following his lead. You see, Robb, he thought, because you had bizarre thoughts in the midst of battle. This was what I wanted. I wanted them to follow me. I am sorry I put that above following you. I am sorry I—

Something leapt at him, tearing at his cheek with fierce claws. Theon threw it off with his better hand, and trampled it into the ground with a bout of frenzied kicking. He backed away from the dead or dying thing, swallowed up in more black cloaks, now turning to fight the enemy from both sides. "HOLD FAST!" the Greatjon bellowed at everyone and no one, but it did not matter what he shouted, for what else were they to do? Theon scrambled his way along the front line, pushing through the tighter and tighter rings of dark cloaks, back towards the Shieldhall. He had to tell Lord Commander Tarly what he had seen, about how Ramsay was on Euron's side now. He went through, bellowing incoherent nothings until he was hoarse. Once a wight leapt over the line of shields and reached him, but together he and four indiscriminate Northmen knocked it senseless. They forged on towards the frontlines while Theon crawled against the press on hands and knees, shaking off the glancing kicks in the head and side. Somehow he made it through the ring and back to his feet. There, with equal miraculous incredulity, he found himself not ten feet from Samwell Tarly, who held the line in front of the womenfolk and children who could not fight, and was busy ordering the tables. Even so, he had to scream to stand a chance of being heard: "LORD TARLY! MY LORD TARLY!" He drew closer, intending to smack his shoulder, when the man Tollett grabbed him and spun him round. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Ramsay," Theon told him, entirely hoarse. "Tell the Lord Commander; Ramsay Bolton has betrayed us—"

By now Tollett was dragging his commander over, before he was carried away in the seething mass of bodies. He bellowed something in Tarly's ear. The fat red face paled an instant, then turned to Theon. "Where do you think he's gone? Out to join Euron?"

"That would make sense," said Dolorous Edd Tollett. "Gather their forces and—"

"No," said Theon. His voice was much louder than he'd expected. "He won't be with Euron. They're both against us, but they won't be together. They'll… Ramsay… he tortures people. In the worst way. He lets them hope, and—" He suppressed a shiver. "He likes to take their last hope away from them."

Dolorous Edd and Samwell Tarly looked at one another. "The Grey Keep tunnel," said the Lord Commander. "It's bricked up, but it opens out in the kitchens. He'll have gone – the last way out. And he knows it – dear god, he knows it. If he's still underground, then he'll be trying to open that." He glanced at Theon. "Does that sound like something he'd do?"

Last hope. Our last hope. Man's last hope. Theon had no idea if it was true. But it had to be.

"Which way is that?" someone asked. Theon realised, afterwards, that it had been he who asked. But why? Because I will not let Ramsay Bolton take any more from me, he thought. Not Ramsay. The Bastard. Call him the Bastard. And as strangely and suddenly as that, he was no longer afraid.

Tarly took a deep breath. "The Grey Keep. We… well, someone must plug the breach. And if Tormund is still busy here – or fallen, then—"

"It must be us," said the wildling woman Val, who had appeared at his side. "Tormund is dead, Master Tarly. He fell on the stairs, not long ago. So I am told. Which means…"

"Which means the wildlings are without a leader," said Samwell Tarly. "And we are without… well, I suppose this is it, then."

"That it is," said Val. "I will retrieve the women and children from the Shieldhall. You go ahead to the Grey Keep."

Tarly nodded. "If we can stop Ramsay, then maybe we can get out into the yard. Or into the wolfswood, even. Or—" He stopped himself there. He knows, Theon thought. He knows that it is possible. He knows that we die tonight, with our swords in hand.

They started down towards the Grey Keep. Theon was not sure who had organised it, or when they had started, or how long it took to get there. When they reached the Grey Keep, the wights climbed in through the now-opened breach and they came together, and the dead and the living danced. Time had become meaningless, and as for the individual – you were no longer alone, you were a part of something. Here, it did not matter who you had betrayed. You were the living, and they were the dead. And you fought because you must.

Then Theon saw him. There was something pale and strange in his irises, and the blood on his sword was frozen, but other than that it was unmistakeably him, same as he had been at the battle of Winterfell: Ramsay. And through the fog of fighting men, those pale evil eyes met his own.

Should he have felt fear, then? Perhaps. But he could only die. All he had to lose was his life, and whatever feeble legacy the male living line of House Greyjoy could lay claim to.

Theon spat blood. He did not know how it had gotten there, but it made an effective challenge. Ramsay stepped forwards through his men, and Theon saw that he had, indeed, taken some form of Other magic into his veins; his skin seemed to glow blue, ever-so-faintly. "I killed your Lord Snow," the Bastard said, brandishing his bright sword. "Just as my father killed your Robb Stark. You grew up together, I am told. The three of you. The King in the North, the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, and the heir to the Iron Islands. What a partnership that might have been, if you had not betrayed it."

For his own part, Theon had only one thing to say. "Be quiet, and fight. Bastard," he added. If he must die, let him prove he was no longer submissive, and never would be.

"As you wish," said Ramsay, and advanced.

He fought two-handed, and though Theon blocked the first overhead cut it jarred his bony arms, made him drop the sword almost a whole foot. He got it back up just in time, more by accident than anything else. Ramsay's smile grew. "You are slipping, Reek."

"My name is Theon."

Ramsay pressed him. "Your name is Reek. Remember. Reek, Reek, it rhymes with—"

"Theon." He beat away the next blow.

"Reek!"

"Theon!"

"YOUR NAME IS REEK!" Four hard blows now, each word punctuated, forcing him back. Theon could feel the sword dropping from his nerveless right hand, so he switched to his left. It was mutilated only a little worse, so it did not really matter.

"MY. NAME. IS. THEON!"

Ramsay beat him back; this time he hit the wall and had to move aside. The sword slashed again; once more he spun sideways; slash, spin, slash, spin, until he could spin no more, breathless. For a moment he thought that would be it, but then a door opened suddenly behind him and as Ramsay's sword came down he fell backwards, hard onto the floor of some new room. His bones were dozen-times-broken, he was more bruise than skin, the room was spinning, the bright candle on the table was spinning… his sword was gone…

Ramsay stood in the doorway. He knew, much as Theon did, that he was trapped, there was no way out of here. For a long time he waited, smiling, teeth glinting much as his sword did. "Oh, Reek," he said, "oh, my Reek."

Theon rose from his hunchback position behind the table as Ramsay came closer. Five steps. Four. Three—

He flung out a hand. "My lord."

Ramsay stopped. "My lord?" The smile grew. The swordpoint dropped a few inches.

"Yes," murmured Theon. "My lord should…" He coughed, great bloody breaths.

"My lord should what?"

"My lord should turn around," Theon said.

Ramsay did not turn. But the unexpected absurdity of the request, coupled with the sudden change in his former servant, caught him off guard, left him uncertain for one half second. And in that half second Theon grabbed the glass candle from the table, and leapt at him. Ramsay got his sword up in time to catch him in the side, but not quick enough to stop him leaping. And somehow, miraculously, gods be with him, Drowned God, old gods, Lord of Light, all, the shard of obsidian buried itself entirely in Ramsay's right eye.

The Bastard screamed, as he had never screamed before. Though his sword was in Theon's side, there was no doubt as to who had done the worse damage. Together they fell, crashing to the floor. The glass candle was slippery in his fingers, cutting his nails and flesh to raw ribbons, but he did not care. He lifted it up again, and brought it down in the eye, and down again, and again, and all the while he screamed "Theon! Theon! My name is Theon!" as the glass blade plunged deeper and deeper and splintered skullbone and brain and brought black and blue blood gushing in ungodly amounts from the eye-socket. The body was twitching and writhing in its death throes long before he was done. Eventually he stumbled backwards to his feet, and forced the sword out of him. It had gone in, but not deep, so he plugged it with a fistful torn from Ramsay's shirt. If that helped anything, good. If not, so be it. He was done here.

It was some time before he realised Ramsay was on fire. The candle had been lit when he plunged it in, and though the blood had tempered it somewhere, it had no found a place to catch light, and within a few seconds the whole corpse was afire, burning with that same bright fire that the glass candle aboard the Silence had burned with. Theon backed out into the hallway, into the tide of dark-cloaked men trying to make their way out through the Grey Keep, and closed the door behind him. Let it burn, he hoped, Ramsay, the room, Castle Black, all of it, burn it all.


Author's Note:

I am rather conflicted about this chapter. It is not what I initially thought it would be.

I had initially envisioned the Battle of Castle Black as something epic, on the scale of "The Dance of Dragons" from THE SUNSET KINGDOMS. But the size of "Dance" is something allowed by its significance along lines of conflict - that is to say, the Dance has several elements of nuance that come together as the culmination of ten or twenty different storylines - we have Tyrion and Varys's conversation about the Blackfyre conspiracy, Barristan's reflection on what true knighthood really is, and most importantly, I think, Dany's decision to be merciful at the very last moment. And these things are shown through the action, rather than just added on - so I hope.

With this battle, however, it is much simpler - the living against the dead. There are no conflicted loyalties, because there are no romantic subplots between a man and a wight, for example.

I've always gone by the advice that it is pointless having a battle scene just for the sake of it, to "liven up the plot" a bit. And I saw this here. Parts of this chapter were originally written from Sam's perspective, and it was just a matter of: "Sam slashed at the wight. The wight fell back. Then another wight attacked. But Sam was quicker than the wight." Battles like these are incredibly dreary to read, not to mention mind-numbingly boring to write.

So I set this from Theon's perspective. And as such, things that the reader will find significant - the mention of Tormund's and Maege Mormont's deaths, and Sam's feelings - are skipped over. We will have a Sam POV immediately following this (expect it tomorrow), but for Theon the most important matter is him and Ramsay.

I think the Theon-Ramsay conflict comes out of nowhere, but at the same time it doesn't need to be seeded. We know Theon's feelings towards Ramsay; we don't need them exposited. So I went with this. And I think it worked out well.

There are lots of "missing parts" in this chapter that aren't described because of the POV. But the rest will be explained soon. Or maybe not.

Next chapter: Samwell