4 Months before the death of Jon Arryn

The Eagle

The Eagle lay prone on a lip overlooking a narrow valley in the Frostfangs, much farther to the North than the Eagle had ever been before. Through the valley marched well over one hundred Thenns.

The Eagle guessed they were headed to join Mance, which was another problem for him to sort through.

First, the Thenns outnumbered his small band by at least a factor of four. This numerical advantage could be negated by hitting them in the valley, but then his band would be at the mercy of the metal weapons the Thenns carried. As the only people among the Free Folk who had retained a working knowledge of metallurgy, the Thenns were equipped with armor made of interlocking bronze discs, and carried axes made of the metal as well. A fight in an enclosed space favored the Thenns as well. But perhaps the biggest obstacle was that the Thenns were headed to Mance. If Mance had enough support among the various clans to openly call himself the King Beyond the Wall, then the Eagle was worried what crossing Mance might mean for his people, back between the forks.

The Eagle saw the Hare dart across a low point and slide in next to him, luckily without alerting any of the Thenns. The man paused to catch his breath from the jaunt before speaking.

"Let me take a shot at the Magnar" he said. "I can kill him without them even knowing who did it. We can get away and we won't have to fight. None of ours have to die."

"We should just leave" the Eagle replied. "We should leave this band alone and go and hit the Valley of Thenn. There have to be some warriors left there for us to fight."

"You'd let the Magnar walk right through this valley?" the Hare asked, incredulously.

"I would. If we attack him right now, we will gain nothing. We will all die."

The Hare looked as if he wanted to protest, but acceptance slowly filled his face and he nodded. "Spread the word" the Eagle told him. "We're pulling back."

The Hare darted away from him and the Eagle began to move in the other direction, to gather the members of the group placed farther to the north. But a loud shout behind him drew the Eagle's attention back to the south, toward the far end of the valley. Somehow, for some reason, the ground underneath his son, the Wolf, had collapsed, and the Wolf had fallen thirty feet into the valley.

The deep snow drifts at the floor of the valley more or less broke his fall, and the Wolf appeared a little dazed, but physically unharmed when he rose. But the Wolf now stood alone at the head of the column of Thenns.

The Eagle darted toward the front of the column as the first Thenns reached his son. The group wasn't immediately hostile, but the situation in the valley was clearly tense. If his son had a physical body to match his name, the fur on his neck would have been standing erect. The Eagle could tell, as he watched his son back away from the Thenns, something had gone wrong.

One swung his axe at the Wolf, an attack the Wolf parried with the shaft of his spear. The haft deflected the axe, but was rent in two by the force of the impact. Unfazed, the Wolf shoved the spearhead into the neck of the man attacking him, before spinning around to engage the next man. He threw the shattered lower end of the shaft away and drew his knife as more and more Thenn's began to surround him.

Seeing this, the Eagle reached the ledge overlooking his son and did not even slow down, leaping from the ridge into the valley below. He temporarily felt as if he were flying, before the Eagle buried his spear in one Thenn, and his talon in another. He had landed on the second Thenn, whose corpse combined with the snow to cushion the Eagle's fall.

Abandoning his bone spear, the Eagle grabbed the fallen Thenn's axe and began laying into those around him. He buried the axe in the neck of the first man to engage him, and severed the arm of a second, just below the elbow. Ducking under the swing of a third assailant, the Eagle buried his talon in between the links of the Thenn's armor. The Eagle didn't even take note of the higher and lighter death moan that gave away a woman, as he barely jumped back in time to avoid having his skull split in half.

Two more Thenns attacked him furiously, and it was all the Eagle could do to backpedal and keep the blades from sinking into him. Launching himself backward, he tripped over the body of one of the men he had slain earlier, and the assailant on the left moved in for the final decapitating blow.

Before it could land, a bone arrow took the Eagle's attacker in the eye and a series of loud crunches and screams indicated reinforcements from his warriors on top of the ledge.

The sounds distracted his remaining assailant long enough for the Eagle to slip his knife out of its sheath at his waist and flick it at the Thenn. The knife only grazed his attacker, but it slowed the Thenn enough to allow the Eagle to roll out from underneath the impending axe blow. The Eagle's hand clasped the haft of the axe formerly belonging to the attacker on his left and threw it at his remaining foe. This time, the blade struck home, and the Eagle had a momentary reprieve.

The Eagle rose to see scores of Thenns go down in the initial attack, as they were caught by surprise and pressed together, unable to even raise their weapons to defend themselves in the tight walls of the valley.

He watched his sons, the Wolf and the Raven, finish off the last few remaining Thenns behind the wall of warriors from between the forks.

The Eagle didn't know if Thenns finally got the troops in the rear to back up and give those in the front space, or if his warriors had thinned the ranks enough that there was now room to work the axes, but whatever the cause, the Thenns began their counter-attack.

The initial charge got the Thenns nowhere; the first wave of attackers, almost to the man, ended up with spears in their heads. But the second wave pushed through and the Eagle heard several spears snapping when the pressure on the spear was too great.

Once the two sides closed in together, the fight was all but over.

"Run!" the Eagle roared at those under his command.

It was a sloppy, gory mess, but a significant portion of the warriors the Eagle had brought to the fight managed to disengage from the pressing Thenns and flee further south, away from them. The only advantage his people had had coming into this fight was their speed, as the heavy metal armor of the Thenns slowed them down. It didn't take long for the warriors from between the forks to outpace the Thenns.

"How many did we lose?" the Eagle asked the Stag as the two began to lead the party back to their village.

"A dozen" the Stag responded. "When the Wolf fell, I thought it sure to spell doom for our mission. But really, had he not fallen, we would not have achieved such a great victory."

"Great victory?" the Eagle asked. "What great victory? The Magnar still lives, and over a dozen of ours are no more."

"Have you not heard the count?" the Stag asked. "We slew close to one hundred of them. The Thenn will remember this day for generations."

"I hope not" the Eagle said. "I hope they get over the Wall and in their ecstasy forget this ever happened. We made a powerful enemy this day. We spit in the face of the Thenns."

"I thought this was what you wanted?" the Stag questioned. "Did you not mean to engage the Thenns and take revenge for their raid on our village?"

"I hadn't anticipated there being survivors to remember that it was the people from between the forks who did this to them. Now they know it was us, and they will come for us."

"And we will be ready for them."

"No one is ready for them. No one stands and fights the Thenns. We need to move. Either that, or join Mance and hope he'll protect us."

"I've never heard of victory emasculating a man" the Stag said.

"Our victory dissipated as soon as a single Thenn left the ambush alive. No, we lost today. And when the Thenns come for us, we will know just how badly we failed."