Chapter Twelve – Deeper Meanings
Arya
She thought that she had escaped them at Saltpans. She was wrong.
Whatever Rorge had promised the Lannister deserters and the remnants of the Brave Companions in return for her capture had to be of considerable worth, for they chased after her like the dogs of the seven hells. Hunted she ran. She kept off the roads and the paths, cutting across fields and rough forests, letting Stranger waste his energy in the running. Over hill and dale she fled them, but always they chased after, horns blowing, laughter bellowing, curses shouted after her as she vanished out of sight. So on the third day she made up her mind. It was time to start fighting back.
Robb had showed her how to shoot a bow, when Father hadn't been around to protest it of course, and Jon and kennelmaster Farlan had shown her how to set snares and traps. With a little cleverness she could make means to hurt rabbits and small game turn to hurt men and horses.
She rode over bogs and past cliffs, relying on Stranger's sure footing, forcing her pursuers to take long ways around that slowed them down to come after her. She wove her spare mantles into ropes along with plant fibres and strung them up across the width of the path she took by the trees lining it for the same effect. If they ever caught sight of her she would turn in her saddle and loosen arrows at them while riding, carefully preserving each fletch as she had only so many. The first two times she did it she missed. Not the third, or any arrow fired after that.
Syrio Forel had said that she learned quickly. She was glad for it. As those days became long and seemed unending, her quick learning was the only thing that kept her alive.
In the end she got away from them, but only just. They were still a ways after her, but she at least had almost a day on them. She could rest, sharpen her blades, and hunt. That last part proved the most educative, as killing her own food was something she had been unaccustomed to but now seemed to easily done.
Still, the rabbits were cute. Sansa would no doubt have fawned over them, but like all living things they were just meat. If their roles had been reversed she had no doubt that the rabbits would have hunted her for food without a second thought.
The road was lonely still, with only Stranger for company. She passed towns and villages and Riverlander hamlets, but though she snuck into them from time to time to listen to news and steal what she needed to survive she never spoke with anyone or let them see her without her leave. She did not trust them. If they caught her she would be reduced to a bargaining chip again, a full purse of gold walking on two legs, and she would rather not be that again. Lies and greed. She would kill them all first.
The only comfort she took in her days was in her dreams. In them she howled and ran with her smaller cousins, slight things by her side that with barking and pushes of the will were easily controlled. They hunted at her request, those small cousins, and they hunted men. Men in red, or men in scales like silver fishes. They did not hunt the men in white who bore the seal of her brother across their chests, because they were good men. That mark was good. Grey Wind. Brother.
Robb.
She would wake from those dreams with a smile and the taste of blood on her lips. They warmed her, yet with every dream there was a sense of urgency. Of running. Of hurry. She needed her help, she needed her warmth. Hurry, she heard the whisper in her mind as she woke – hurry, and be safe, little one. I love you, little one. I still love you, no matter how many rocks you throw at me.
And so she hurried onwards, ever onwards, deeper into the Riverlands. She crept into villages at night and listened for news, and she heard a great deal. Robb had taken Harrenhal – that dark and haunted and accursed place – and then turned North. He was heading past Riverrun, they whispered. He was heading for the Westerlands and Casterly Rock, going past northwards. Arya remembered her maps. She knew that the northernmost passage into the Westerlands was by the Golden Tooth. So that was where she was headed. If she was swift enough she could catch Robb's army there.
In one of the more recent places she passed – Harroway, she thought it was called, Lord Harroway's Town, but it was hard to remember those places she snuck into at night under the cover of darkness after tying Stranger to a tree in the woods – she snuck her way towards a tavern and waited outside it in the dark. Soon a man had come out of it, and another and another, men she did not recognise, men and women whose names were not on her list, but one of them was a sailor with a Braavosi belt buckle. She had been very lucky to find a Braavosi on the first night. Too lucky. Very much too lucky, but he was much to graceless to be a Faceless Man. She cornered him, snuck up behind him, stole his dagger and put the tip of Needle at his throat. And so she had her answer – or, at least, a fraction of one.
The Faceless Men came from the House of Black and White, he gibbered out in his fear, obviously not working for them despite being a Braavosi in Westeros. He was just there on a trading course, making profit by selling supplies and swords to the armies that streaked across the war-torn continent like randy tomcats. He wasn't one of them, no good young mistress lady no he wasn't. He told her that the House of Black and White worshiped all gods and none. He had an uncle who had kept the Many-faced God in his youth, so he knew things. All gods, and none, for they worshiped Death in all his aspects.
Which was stupid. Why would you worship death? Death just was, and it came just the same to everyone, no matter what gods they told themselves they believed in.
He told her about acolytes, of how not all members of the temple were Faceless Men, and of how sometimes the mighty would come to them to buy deaths. Sometimes for themselves, sometimes for others. The time was not certain, but if a Faceless Man had been contracted to murder someone they never failed to do so, in the end.
But they didn't want to kill her. They had just wanted her. What for? Why?
For that he had no answer. But the Faceless Men could change their faces, so they could, please don't kill me young lady please. All of them, as one, they had no real faces, just masks made out of the skin of those they slew, and there was a dragon in the depths beneath the House of Black and White that spewed up toxic fumes and their leader, the Kindly Man was death itself with a bare skull bereft of flesh instead of a face and-
She had known that he was grasping them. So she asked him instead what it meant – valar dohaeris.
He told her it meant "all men must serve", posed in opposition to "valar morghulis – all men must die". It was a custom among some people, he had noted, some rare people who sometimes had business in Braavos, and most captains or merchants or commoners or Water Dancers never said anything of the sort, no, never. You spoke one phrase and got another back in return. Always like that with a few people, I swear that is all I know good lady, I swear-
She had thrown his dagger at his feet as she stepped away from him, and when he bent to pick it up she crept away into the darkness and was gone, heading back for Stranger in the woods outside Harroway. She had learnt almost nothing. Almost nothing at all. But unlike her siblings she was clever. She knew a thing or two about thinking hard and putting things together in her head.
Perhaps Valar Morghulis – Valar Dohaeris… perhaps it was some manner of password. An exchange between a few, not a saying but a secret language like she had with Sansa all those years ago, before her sister became a stuck-up bitch who cared more about dresses than having fun. A code. Yes, that was what Robb had called it once. Speaking in code, like a signal. Something with deeper meanings.
Or maybe it really was just a saying. A morbid saying and nothing but. And she was seeing Snarks in the hedges and Grumpkins in the shadows. Travelling off the road, hunted by strangers, took its toll on her, and she just wanted to go home. She wanted to be back at Winterfell, she thought as she curled up around herself in the small hours before dawn, hugging her knees as she begged of the hunting dreams to lull her to sleep. She wanted Nymeria to warm her, Jon to tussle her hair and Robb to tell her to be careful again. She even wanted Sansa, with her stupid songs and her stupid dresses. She wanted Bran to tell her about his odd dreams and Rickon to be a brat like he always was.
She wanted Mother and Father. When thinking of Father she still felt as if a blade stabbed through her heart. At those times, in the dark, she wondered where all her tears had gone.
She wondered if she could ever remember how to cry.
Robb
Tytos Blackwood's funeral was a strange, strange thing. It had not been intended to be that way.
A few of them had gathered, mostly Jonos Bracken and his daughters as well as a clade of Riverlords and Northern allies to House Blackwood, at Raventree Hall on their march towards the Golden Tooth. All of the great Lords excepting but a few brought their men with them, an army of massive proportions gathering before the passes into the Westerlands just west of Riverrun and Wayfarer's Rest. From there they would disperse and sack and destroy, while others would head to back to the Riverlands and Harrenhal and entrench themselves. Meticulous planning through long hours and sleepless nights had been his lot - he would leave nothing to chance now.
This what it was all coming down to: the invasion of the Westerlands. He had decided long ago that all the courtesies that his Northmen showed the Riverlands in the war, the prohibitions towards plunder and reaving, would no longer apply there. They would take whatever they wanted as recompense for the brothers, fathers and sons they had lost in the war. That, Robb thought, would please the Lords in his service and secure his position as king.
Still, no amount of gold they stole from Lannisport and Casterly Rock could bring the dead back to life. He felt that weight on his shoulders all the while, heavier than even his accursed crown, that ugly thing of bronze and iron and blades. At times he wondered how many men would have to die so that he could have his vengeance.
As many as it takes, some dark part of his mind he had once thought his own would whisper back. As many as it takes to see it done.
Once he would have doubted that the thoughts in his mind were his own.
Once.
Hoster Blackwood had been fuming in silent berserker rage all the while as they lowered his father and elder brothers into the earth around the dead Weirwood in the great godswood of Raventree Hall, his mother and sister and three brothers gathered about him in collective sorrow, his father's black cloak of raven feathers wrapped about his shoulders. He was Lord of Raventree and Blackwood Vale now, a boy of sixteen merely, brooding and dark all the while ever since the Mountain had slain those men that they buried on that day. He had been a boy, forced to become a man – and then Robb remembered that Hoster was only a little younger than himself. Truly? Was it really so? Sometimes, when his wounds hurt and it was hard to breathe in the mornings, he felt ancient.
Funerals made him despondent. He supposed that such were the nature of funerals. He wondered what he would feel when he saw Father's bones laid to rest in the crypts beneath Winterfell. He would have had built a sepulchre to rival Cregan's or Brandon the Shipwright's for Father – had that been what he would have wished. No, Father's tomb would be as simple and stern as he had been in life. That would have been Father's wish – he thought. He could not know for certain. It was as if he knew nothing for certain anymore.
As the dirt was shovelled over the dead men he looked to the Blackwood kin. Little Robert Blackwood, four years old, was sickly, pale and weak, and the mourning was not helping his condition. He looked like a little bird, a sickly raven nestling in black clothes too big for him. Robb was certain that Little Robert would not live to see the spring. Winter would claim him first. Perhaps winter would claim them all. Lady Dowager Lynessa Blackwood, born of House Lychester of Castle Lychester, stood holding her youngest three to her, Bethany Blackwood and little Alyn crying haplessly into her skirts. Edmund, more often called Ben, stood to one side of his Lord brother, holding Brynden Blackwood's sword limply in his hands. He seemed to hate the sight of it. Robb understood that feeling, if nothing else. He too had lost a father to the sword.
To one side of the Blackwoods stood Jonos Bracken and his family, rivals and allies and hated enemies to the Lords of Raventree Hall that had still come to pay their respects to Tytos. Lord Jonos had been wounded in the retaking of Stone Hedge shortly after Robb's coronation, and he still walked with a stick, but the battle for their ancestral home had dealt a devastating blow to the Brackens, as Lord Jonos's nephew and heir Hendry had been slain along with his baseborn son Harry. He had come to Raventree Hall with all of his daughters, his wife and his brother and goodsister in tow, along with a few other noble lords. He, at least, had the good sense not to look smug at the death of his rival in front of his King.
Robb wore his crown and his armour, as did the rest of his following on the other side of the Blackwood family. They were at war and had no inklings towards finery, not until their bloody work was over and done. He even wore his crown that day, and there had been many whispers amongst the gathered crowd around the three main followings when he had been one of Tytos Blackwood's pallbearers, balancing the upper right corner of the thick briar wood slab on which the late Lord Blackwood had been laid upon his armoured shoulder. That, most would say, had been an honour. Robb saw it as nothing but his duty.
Armour or not, crown or not, crowd or not, no matter the sword at his hip, he wore the cloak his father had the seamstresses make for him for his twelfth nameday, the one made of shadowskin and snow shrike eiderdown and bore his family colours. The cloak he could not help but think of now as Margaery's.
Most of his personal guard stood a ways off, along with the rest of the crowd of smallfolk and highborn alike. They wore their family crests over muted colours where they could, but most of them had no finery with them and so bore their armours about their bodies, just like him. Some of them, the Southrons in particular, eyed the guards surrounding him warily. He surrounded himself now with the same people that had gone with him to the Isle of Faces – though only one of them was the same as they had been before then. Edric was as good a boy as ever, his squire and sword-bearer, trustworthy and kind. The rest…
Rymund hadn't said a word since the Isle. He hadn't been able to. The Gods, the Green Man, had stolen his voice from him, and now he could only pluck at his lute but every time he did so his fingers trembled. Sometimes he forgot himself and tried to sing, but only a fractured animal hiss escaped him. His eyes were haunted and tormented by the songs he could no longer voice, pitted deep in his face. He couldn't even play the flute anymore, for his breath would not obey him. At times he would thumb his knife, and Robb suspected that the bard thought often to open his wrists in self-slaughter. A singer's voice was his greatest treasure, after all. The centre of his being and the foundation of his person. Without that…
Lyra and Jon looked to be least affected, though they would lapse into long periods of silence when they sat or stood or waited, their eyes rolling far into the backs of their heads as they Warged. It was not some strange thing anymore. Robb knew that much. Some bloodlines in the North simply had something additional in them, something that had come from being around the Hearttrees long enough for the Green to seep into their blood, or perhaps through blood, interbreeding with the Greenseers of the Children. This magic was as much a part of them, of him, as his arms or his eyes.
Royce stood off to one side behind Robb as the septon said a whole lot of meaningless words over the bodies in the dirt, his bronze armour burnished red in the rare glimpses of sunlight that trickled down to them through the darkly clouded overcast. In his hands he held a large thing, almost as tall as him, wrapped in a thick oiled quilt, and with his helmet beneath his arm he bent his head in respect. He did not pray along with the septon and most of the Riverlanders. Not anymore. Robb wondered if he thought that the Old Gods would answer his prayers more readily, or if they had simply frightened him into religious conversion. Perhaps a little of both. Perhaps neither.
Ebbert… "I was sent to spy on you, your Grace" Ebbert had no longer bothered to hold back his Northern drawl as he had pulled Robb aside and spoken quietly to him a few days earlier, when they had stopped at Riverrun on their ride. "Maester Gormon, my mentor, Lord Mace Tyrell's uncle, told me to keep an eye on you. Said we were dangerous. I reported to him by messages sent via Willas Tyrell".
"What makes Maester Gormon think that?" Robb had been thankful for the man's honesty, if nothing else. If he professed that much he had doubtlessly changed his colours, and by the look in his eyes he was far less abject than Robb had first thought him to be. "And why is my- why is Margaery's family spying on me?"
"Because Willas is a shrewd man with friends in many places. He's careful, too". Ebbert had paused and furrowed his brow. "And because of the Maester vows. Gormon heard the rumours of your Warging your grace, as the smallfolk told it. And some of my order has vowed to make the world for man, not for monsters and magic. Some in it. I was not initiated, but it stretches far and it reaches high. Man should rule the world, wisely and kindly and in peace. Dragons and wargs and sorcery just… mucks it all up. At least they think so".
"But not you?" Robb had wondered, and he had noted internally that there were enemies all around him, hiding in the shadows as they bid their time. A man could easily grow paranoid when he realised that, but he would not cower before conspiracies and assassins, Lannister or Maester or otherwise. A blade had to be close enough to strike him to kill him, and if the blades of his honour guards and friends did not stop them his sword surely world. "What has made you honest, Maester?"
"The trees opened my eyes" he had said in reply, and Robb, despite himself, had shivered at the awe and hopelessness inherent in those words. "I saw the memories of the thousands upon thousands that live within them, kept alive for eternity, glimpsed through the leaves like fleeting sunlight. Our knowledge at the Citadel is made up of suspicions. Guesswork, theories, lies. How can that compare to memory, to sight and sound? That is magic, the path to true knowledge. And" he had fingered the pommel of the slender and crossguard-less sword at his hip "I've broken one vow already. I've little right to call myself a Maester anymore. I might as well break the rest of them. The first good and proper thing I have ever done of my own free will".
Free will. Robb wondered about that. When the whispers of the Trees could seem as his own thoughts, were any actions he undertook truly his own? Or was he merely a pawn in the game of the Green Man and the unknown forces he championed? Lies within lies, rings within rings, schemes within schemes. Were the Gods really gods, or nothing but ghosts within the trees?
Damn it all, he did not know anymore.
And of course there was Roren. Robb would rather not look at Roren, or even think about the man. Slowly the ceremony came to an end, and as some of the lesser lords trailed off he marched over to what remained of House Blackwood, beckoning Royce with him and making an effort not to stare back at Roren. "Lord Hoster" he stopped before the family, and as one they looked to him. "Lady Mother Lynessa. I would offer my condolences once again. Tytos was a good man, a stalwart warrior, and a friend. Brynden would have made a good Lord one day, and Lucas rode in my personal guard. I cannot-"
"Thank you, your Grace" Lady Lynessa offered, though there was no sincerity on her voice, only grief and anger in her raging hazel eyes. "Your condolences mean so much to us, with my husband and sons buried in the dirt for worm feed-"
"Mother, stop it" Hos Blackwood snapped, though he seemed to regret his tone instantly, and looked to Robb with a crestfallen expression. He lowered his head in apology, before he thought better of it and sank down to one knee, silently bidding his family to do the same. Lady Lynessa took a long time in doing that, as did little Alyn, but they knelt just the same. "My lands are yours, my King".
"Your lands are yours, Blackwood" Robb shook his head and bid them all to stand. He have had enough of ceremony as it was, especially with Lady Lynessa having a septon offer her husband and sons to the earth when only one of them had kept the Seven. "I need them not. I need you and your steel in my vanguard". Berserkers, after all, were always good to have. And every sword counted towards victory. "Ser Royce" he beckoned with his hand, and Robar came over to him, the great bundle almost as tall as himself held awkwardly in his hands. He was pale, feverish, more bone than flesh, but he was still strong as Robb took the bundle from him and uncovered it.
It was a longaxe, its steel head wide, with a thin blade that had sharp horns at both the toe and heel of the bit, the bladed part almost thirteen inches across and bearded long. The haft was five and two thirds of a foot long all in all, made out of black ironwood reinforced with steel, and the butt of it was a spike, protruding from a clump of steel that could serve as a mace. Long after the smithing was done on it, smiting Robb had ordered from Riverrun shortly after the Slaughter at Harroway, Ser Royce had bent over the head of the axe and engraved it with his strange, fey runes by chisel and hammer. "First Men runes" he offered wanly as Hos took the axe on trembling arms. "It's an old spell, for protection. And for victory".
"Keep this as the instrument of your vengeance, Hos" Robb told him, and the young Lord nodded solemnly, his near-permanent rage smoothed. He looked aside and spotted Jonos Bracken still loitering around, eyeing them glumly. "It is my wish that the alliance I made between Bracken and Blackwood stands. You or one of your brothers will wed one of Lord Jonos's daughters, at the very least. I will have Smalljon help you make the arrangements". Ser Royce pulled at his shoulder gently, and inwardly he bared his teeth. "If you would excuse me, Lord Blackwood?"
Most within the crowd stared hard at him and his companions, the ones that had seen the Green Man with him, as they as one headed close towards the tree, Lady Lynessa staring at his back all the while. On his way he passed Jeyne Bracken, Brynden Blackwood's former betrothed. She looked like a likeness of Barba Bracken he had seen once, a painting of Aegon the Unworthy's principal sweethearts: black of hair and dark of eye, buxum despite being only half a year younger than him, no doubt beautiful in the eyes of some men. Her manner was quite different from the Fat Dragon's mistress's, though, averting her eyes from him in deep shyness. He was certain that she would be handed off to the young Lord Blackwood now, like she was nothing but some sort of resource.
No matter what happened to him, no matter where this path that the Green Man had set him on led, he would never let anyone treat Margaery like that. Not while he still had blood in his veins and a heart to make it pulse.
"You are sure about this, mate?" Jon muttered as he approached him by the massive dead Weirwood that stood in the wild godswood beneath Raventree Hall and his companions that were arrayed before it in a semi-circle. In response to the hushed question as Robb took his place in it at the very middle of the arch he shook his head. Faintly he noted how Lyra off to one end of the arch put her bare palm against the trunk of the dead tree while Rymund took his place and did the same opposite her, their other hands linking with the next in the line – Jon and Ebbert – who in turn linked their hands with Robb's. Edric stood to one side, concerned, disbelieving, frightened. Royce was elsewhere. He had drained himself in laying the spell on the axe, and if he had partaken in that ritual he would surely have fallen dead to the ground. "This doesn't come as easily as it does to the rest of us. You sure you want to be a part of it?"
"Bloody well not" he growled back. Within the semi-circle, between Robb and the tree, stood Roren Bulwer. He had shirked his old armour for robes of leather and chainmail, new hair sprouting from his bare head, and with a look Robb's way, a look in which the green in his eyes swirled like pools of murky water upset by storms and fishes with fangs, he reached into his belt and drew a heavy dagger with a Weirwood handle. Using it he cut gashes into his palms, and he put one hand to Robb's brow beneath his crown. Even his blood had a streak of green to it, and it smelled like rotten moss. "Get this over with, priest".
"As you will, my King". Roren was truly Neversleep now. He never slept. He sat up all through the nights, hands on the earth between his knees with his legs folded under him, eyelids flickering as he communed with the roots of the Hearttrees far beneath the surface of the world, roots that ran all throughout Westeros even though the trees that they had nursed had been chopped down or burnt. Even his voice was strange, absent of passion yet filled with fire, and his eyes burned as green as the coiling tentacles that writhed and pushed beneath his skin.
Roren laid his other palm, bleeding rotten red, against the surface of the tree, and so they forced life back into the Raventree.
They had done that at Riverrun too, with a seemingly living tree. The ritual had been Ebbert's suggestion, as he was the one who could make the most sense of the visions and the one who could remember them the best, even though they spoke the loudest to Roren. Robb took the centre of the ritual always, as his blood rejected the visions in much. Roren hoped through that the soil that was Robb's soul would be irrigated by the trees and so the Green would blood stronger within him… or something like that. This was the fourth time they had done the ritual, and he could feel no change from before. He was just as strong as the Green Man had made him by feeding him on Weirwood paste and wine brewed from… he'd rather not know.
It was simply a more direct way of communing with the Gods, he thought, but he didn't tell the others that. If they believed that their power was getting stronger they would be more confidant in it, and thus making it so. The supposed power of belief and all.
Belief was what brought the dead tree outside Ravenhall back to life that day. Well, it was not dead, not truly. Weirwood did not rot, never truly died, but it could be separated from the roots that fed them. Without the roots the spirits, the memories and the years, within the trees could not unite with other trees, making the song discordant and weak. Poison was clogging the nexus of roots beneath the Raventree, and only an influx of power could make it bloom again.
Power, and blood. Pain. No difference, really.
The major roots of the tree shot out tendrils, small and writhing things more like maggots than wood that moved slowly as they offered their minds to the discordant song within the tree. They forced the unnatural connection to move outwards, dormant and wrong and not meant for those that were not Greenseers, to seek sustenance. And sustenance it found. The tendrils found with three bodies of the Blackwood men, and they burrowed into Tytos's, Brynden's and Lucas's dead flesh, feeding off of them, the roots swelling with new life as the corpses laid to rest in such veneration were torn apart. Above their heads the pale branches began to shoot new life at supernatural speed, sprouting red leaves in the hundreds of thousands, at the same time as the white roots burrowed downwards.
When the song within the Raventree joined with the rest of the song of the Children and the Hearttrees, it did not do so gently. The whispers in Robb's mind turned to screams as agony shot through his body, and sights and sounds not his own passed before him, passed through him. He glimpsed the minds of the others there
– Jon's vistas of the Wall and the clammy hands of the living dead reaching for him – Mother teaching her how to swing an axe for the first time at the cliffs overlooking the raging Bay of Ice as her stupid old cousin looked on – he sang about the rains and the Reynes in a hall decked all over with gold and lions – the pride that bloomed in his heart as the chain was placed around his neck for the first time, each link by his own hand forged – the white branches burrowing into his eyes, filling his head with Song and sweet poison –
before the song was remade fully and they could break their bonds to it. Panting all of them they parted, Rymund falling to his knees as he coughed up a stream of black clouts of petrified blood while the rest of them swayed and almost fell. It was all Robb could do to just remain standing. Around him the people stood staring in open awe, highborn and lowborn alike, jaws and eyes agape in wonder with some while others frightfully spoke prayers to the Seven. Yet others merely stared at him and his band, wondering what power had allowed to do such impossible things. They would know, in time. Even he had come to know.
He had the least Green in him of all of them. That made it hurt all the worse. But it also saved him. The visons that haunted the others even in their waking hours were confined to his dreams and could be chased away by thoughts of Margaery and better things, better days to come, the world he would build for himself when the war was over. And at the Isle of Faces he had woken the first, and the easiest. Still they spoke to him the most often, the Trees and the… the things within them. He had the driving part to play in the war to come. A war against a world that was fighting the return of the natural order of things. The return of the Old Powers.
They needed him to be ready for Winter. The cold knew no mercy. If his House was to survive he had to fight. Small wonder they pushed the sights harder at him.
He almost didn't feel Jon's or Roren's hands on his shoulders and under his arms, lifting him up as they aimed him towards the tree. He felt the cold handle of Roren's knife sting like ice against his skin as it was pressed into his hands, though. It was what forced the whispers out of his head, at least for a little while. "Your turn, your Grace" Roren grunted out, and Robb nodded. They had all done their share at the knife, all but Ebbert now, and every man bent his head equally before the Old Power, beggar or king alike. He removed their hands from him and advanced towards the trunk of the tree with blade in hand, the bark smooth and uncut. That was wrong. Somehow he knew that it was very, very wrong.
Regaining his balance he sank down before the tree and put the tip of the knife to the bark, carving into its trunk a roaring, vengeful face with cruel eyes and a mouth full of fangs.
That was, after all, how he imagined the faces of the Gods.
Arya
She had begun to figure it all out when they caught up to her.
She was making her way across the shallows of the headwaters of the Red Fork, almost in the rocky foothills of the Westerlands, and as she clung to Stranger's mane as he slogged through the muddy water, swinging from islet to islet in the middle of the sluggishly flowing open expanse of water. She let her mind wander even as she helped the horse find his footing, her thoughts flowing together with Stranger's like how the Red Fork mingled with the waters of the Tumblestone from the south.
She remembered those men at the docks in Saltpans. She remembered how their faces had shimmered and shifted, but it was always smoke, water in a well through which she could easily see the true metal of the wishing coin glimmer at the bottom. She knew that they had been readily, known it with but a glance. But Jaqen H'gar had been different in doing that. Stronger, perhaps. His false image had seemed much more real, and his whole body and manner had changed with it. Was his magic somehow stronger than theirs? Or was there something she did not know about it all?
And was this related in any way to why they wanted her? She had forced Jaqen to help her by naming to him his own name, one of the three names whose owners that he had to kill to repay the debt he owed her, and so extorted him, but was that really all there had been to it? Truthfully? Because she had come to learn just what happened to people who told the truth-
Suddenly she heard shouting behind her, off in the distance, and she craned her head around to see a gathering of men and horses there, just within range of her bow. She counted five, seven, ten, twelve – and then she stopped counting. Too many for her to take on her own, so it made no difference. She had only but one recourse: to get to the far banks on Stranger's tired back and hurry deeper into lands more fully controlled by her brother's army.
But the going was slow, for the waters were muddy and high and movement was sluggish. The slush of dirt and water spilled all over her, all but covering her as she urged Stranger forwards. On they struggled, on and on, and she clung to hope as fiercely as she did Stranger's flank.
No arrows flew over her head as she came onto the far banks, Stranger struggling through the mud, and she urged him on, staring back at the men hounding after her. In the back of her mind the whispers became incredibly palpable, like an itch, like a scratch she could not pick, but she focused on none of it. She kicked Stranger in the sides to urge him forwards faster, away and out of sight.
But the days spent in flight had worn him down, and Stranger, after taking only a few more shaky steps, could walk no more. He sagged to the ground, keeling over, and Arya cursed viciously.
No matter how she kicked and begged and asked of the horse he would run no more, and so she jumped off him, cut the saddlebags off of him, slung them all over her back and sprinted towards the edge of the wooded hills, cursing all the while. She cursed the horse, she cursed herself for not noticing how much she had worn him down, she cursed the Faceless Men for chasing her and Jaqen H'gar for deceiving her and-
As she hoisted her things onto her back and ran for the trees she felt an ache, a pressure, start to make itself known in her mind, whispered words on the edge of hearing.
She didn't make it far. With her pulse pounding in her ear as the clouds weighed down on her like they were filled with thunder she made it a good ways into the woods, tripping and falling over the grass and the moss under the cover of the yellowed leaves now beginning to fall. She heard hooves around her, behind her, and past hollows and rises, in ankle-deep in the fading green of the woods, she was stopped under the shadow of an oaken tree as the hunters, armed in leathers and pieces of rusted-over mail, came upon her.
"Stop running, little girl!" As the riders surrounded her, all more than dozen, bearing spears and swords and nets and bows with arrows, she looked to their leader who spoke and did not recognize him at all. "Blast, this has been a long chase! I have half a mind to let Chime have his way with you before-"
That was as far as he got before most of his men and horses were killed.
For then, as the pressure increased only to suddenly vanish in Arya's head, the air was filled with howling.
Wolves fell on her pursuers. Wolves of several different coats and sizes and breeds and packs, wolves of different ages and strength, working as one beast under one mind. A flurry of fang and fur and claw, slashing through the men and their horses, dozens of them falling upon the hunters so savagely. One by one they were ripped to shreds and devoured, and Arya took the time to turn and flee, an advantage in the chaos. As she came under the shadow of a yew she reached for her pack to string her bow – but she had no time. The leader of the band, his face scratched so badly that once of his eyes had been reduced to a leaky stream down his shredded cheek, his spear slick with blood and tufts of fur, chased after her on foot while his horse screamed as it died.
She turned about towards him and held Needle high, but he was good with the spear and knocked it out of her hand with a sweeping motion. She had to throw herself to the ground to not be impaled as he followed through with a thrust, her belongings scattered over the ground as they fell from her back. "Stay still!" he shouted, and by the rage on his face all thoughts had fled him. All he saw what the gold she would bring him if he brought her at least partially alive to the Faceless Men.
But from out of the shadows a shape intruded, the wolves bowing to it like puppets before a puppeteer. Grey fur splotched with white and black her golden eyes was one with the gloom under the trees, and when she opened her slavering jaws her teeth were like daggers in the night, inked with blood and death. Arya felt her more than saw her. A rift between them, still she heard her.
Still she heard her thoughts like they were her own.
"Fucking Starks and their fucking sorceries!" the one-eyed man hissed out as he bared his teeth at the snarling wolves. "Rorge better have been right about this! The Faceless Men better pay well for-!" And that was as far as he got. As he advanced on Nymeria with spear in hand Arya jumped to the feet with the knife from her belt in hand, a misericord with double edges. She ran for him and jumped up onto his back, and more than just mud covered her as she drove the knife into his eye and his throat and reduced his face into nothingness.
Even a long while after he had stopped kicking and gurgling and screaming and the fluids of his bowls had started to leak out of him she sat atop his chest, digging deep gouges into his cranium with the tip of her dagger. He was to blame, somehow. Or maybe just a way for her to let out the hatred in her heart, the blackness that made her sick to her core at times. In the end she let her arms, shaking with tiredness, fall to her side, the dagger dropping to the moss beneath the trees. Through the cloud cover up above a lone ray of sunlight broke through and fell on her face – and she felt something wet and warm against her neck.
Nymeria approached her tentatively, slowly, but once she took in her sent past the year of death and despair she had suffered through she recognised Arya. She sniffed her first, then began to wash her in the way of wolves. She licked the dirt and blood off of Arya's cheeks. Then, as Arya threw her arms around the Direwolf's neck and held her as tightly to her as she held life itself, she licked the tears off her cheeks.
For hours, as the smaller wolves dragged the bodies from the clearing and the day grew darker and colder, they sat together in the shadow of an oak, heads against each other. Together, once again.
Whole.
They didn't speak, though. They didn't need to. She simply lay curled up against Nymeria's side as the skies darkened overhead, getting up only briefly to set a fire and cook the meat that the wolves brought for them. The smaller beasts seemed to treat Nymeria like a queen, like divinity amongst mortals, bringing her the fruits of their hunts like they were paying homage or tribute. Nymeria in turn took most of an entire deer for herself, leaving as much as its mate, a hart with a mossy crown, for Arya. She told Nymeria that she wasn't that hungry and that she couldn't eat quite so much.
Nymeria told her back that she was little and skinny and needed to eat her fill. And with Nymeria's fur as her pillow, her breathing keeping her company through the night along with the great wolf pack that were there like attendants to their queen, Arya slept well for the first time in more than a year.
She even forgot to say the names before she fell asleep. When morning came she felt guilty about that, and repeated them all twice as she cleaned bags and her blades. "Joffrey. Cersei. Meryn Trant. Ilyn Payne. The Red Woman".
Who are all those humans? Nymeria's voice wasn't quite that in her mind, not words but sensations, feelings, images and memories blended together with the way the she-wolf hung her head and the way she moved her tail. Those who need to die? Those who need to be eaten?
"Yes". She brought out needle and cleaned the thin sword with a handful of leaves and moss, resuming as she went. "Berric Dondarrion. Thoros of Myr. Biter. The Mountain". There was one more name, but the Hound was dead now, so she did not include him. Her list felt strangely empty without his name. She stopped and looked up, seeing the grey clouds of winter gathering over her head up there in the lofty skies. Where those really all the names she had left? No, one more. "Jaqen H'gar". And another, for good measure. "The Kindly Man".
After she had said all of those names twice she looked to her saddlebags, discarding as much as she possibly could and then threw the remainder over Nymeria's back. A Direwolf's body and spine wasn't quite like that of a horse. They could carry less weight, but she was small, and Nymeria even encouraged it. As she sat up on her dear Direwolf's back the thoughts of those names were not far from her mind, though.
She had no idea what the Faceless Men wanted with her. But she had the feeling that whatever it was, they would not stop just because she had escaped them once. They would come for her again. But this time she would be with her family. The next time they came for her she would answer their blades in kind.
She was a Stark. No one would put her in a cage ever again.
"Come on, Nymeria" she clenched her hands into the thick fur of her friend's neck and held on tight as the Direwolf turned towards the North. "To Grey Wind and Ghost. To Jon. To Robb".
And panting softly, followed by half a hundred wolves, Nymeria set off to find her brothers.
Jon
Robb needed to cheer the bloody hell up.
"Tywin Lannister's got twenty-five thousand men sitting on King's Landing". Jon felt a little out of place on Robb's war council, standing in front of all the greater lords and commanders of his brother's gathered army just due east of the Westerland passes and the Golden Tooth. Like he was a boy too big for Father's boots, pretending to be Father. Still he stood at Robb's side at the head of the table with no other as Jon Stark.
His name. It was still strange to him, somehow.
"Another ten thousand scattered around the Crownlands, Crackclaw Point and the Northern Stormlands" Robb went on, noting the troop positions marked out on his map, a large section of the middle of Westeros marked out on it before him. "With the sea and the Blackwater secure after Stannis's defeat he won't starve. Supplies and allies from Essos will sustain him, at least for now. But if he commits too much of his forces against us he'll face an uprising. Winter is Coming, and the Smallfolk starve. We'll face some fifteen or twenty thousand men at once at worst if we don't assault his garrisons". He looked aside to Jon, who nodded back and cleared his throat.
"The best way forwards is through the Westerlands" he spoke up, and all the lords in their armours and their helmets looked now to him. Despite the nip on the air he sweated beneath his hair, the tresses on the top of his head bound up and laid down over the rest of his hair that flowed freely. Robb wore it the same way. Father had, too. He hoped they looked similar, at least. "We divide our forces. Lord Karstark, Lord Tully, Lords Umber and Mallister and Bracken, Chiefs Norrey and Flint - you will hold the Riverlands at Harrenhal. If Tywin comes your way, you cut out his heart and put his head on a spike".
"That leaves us ten thousand men after we've committed more than three fifths of our fighting men at the defensive line" Robb went on, taking over smoothly when Jon paused. "Enough to burn the Westerlands and sow their fields with salt, sulfur and skulls. As you move your men into the West, the ban on pillaging is lifted. I will have the head of any soldier that rapes, anyone that murders without cause - but see to it that our dead are paid their dues in Westerland gold".
"You're each given a region of the West to take and plunder as you will. The loot from these places will be your bannermen's and yours. None can contest it". Jon picked up a couple of pieces of wood, carved to look like the crests of the noble houses there selected, and placed them each on the regions of the Westerlands in turn. "Lord Roose, you have the Iron Hills and the Banefort. Lady Maege, you and Bear island have Crakehall. Lord Flint..."
And so it went on. By each piece that he placed and name that he uttered he sentenced thousands of people to poverty, suffering and death. But this was a war, a war the Westerlands had started, at least that was how most of them saw it. And now they would pay the price of their aggression.
And they would pay it a thousandfold.
"Lord Stark, your Grace" Mallister spoke up when he was done listing while Edmure Tully glared at Jon from beside him. The Warden of Rivers was not kindly inclined to the bastard of his goodbrother, or so it seemed. Jon weathered it. For most of the Northerners he had the blood of the Starks of Winterfell, and that was more than enough for them to at least heed him, if not respect him. "What about the entrances to the Riverlands? Crakehall along the Ocean Road and the Golden Tooth? With those gates and walls-"
"Walls cannot hold the Winter, Lord Jason" he answered, and in the gloom of the tent Gredtjon Umber's grin was nothing short of terrifying. "The night after the next the Golden Tooth falls. Then His Grace may ride south and attack Sarsfield, Greenfield and Silverhill from behind. After that His Grace and I will secure our southern flank and the alliance with the Reach".
"Any more questions?" Robb wondered, and for a while the silence lay heavy over the gathering. Everyone knew what was needed to be asked, but few of them were at ease enough to say it.
Finally it was Roose Bolton who raised his voice. "What about the Weirwood Riders?" He wondered, and Jon could see the corner of Robb's eye twitch.
"Lord Roren's volunteers ride with the Winterfell men to the Golden Tooth, and then on to Greenfield and Silverhill". When Robb remained silent about the issue Jon hurried to explain, and the nods around the room were at times relieved, at others frowning and dejected. But those men and women, they were too untested, too much of an unknown to let out of sight. And too powerful a weapon to leave in the hands of others. Robb dared not let them out of his sight and out onto the Westerlands. Only the Gods knew what would happen to the Septs and the people in them then.
Soon afterwards the council was dismissed, once everyone had been given directions and marching orders. Robb even held a little speech, about vengeance and glory and justice. It was quite inspired, leading to everyone cheering "the King in the North!" a couple of times, the chant rippling out through the rest of the camp like waves in a still pond suddenly disturbed. As the echoes of the cheers died down into the quiet of the late day twilight he and Robb stood all alone in that command tent but for Grey Wind and Ghost who lay curled up in the corner around each other. A Direwolf thing, no doubt. Lending warmth to each other in the deep winter North of the Wall. Like family. Like pack.
Like brothers.
He watched Robb in the dark as he stared down at the maps before him, his eyes affixed on Harrenhal's likeness and the gathering of wooden badges laid thereupon. "Only the most loyal of the houses put there" Robb mused in a near-whisper, more to himself than to Jon. "Friends at our back, or at least those who have lost sons to the Lannister. Maybe the lives of the Westermen will buy me the complete fealty of the rest of them. And-"
He said no more. Jon reached over and twatted him across the back of the head.
"Aow!" He clutched the top of his head and wheeled about, glaring at Jon with blood-shot eyes. "You bloody shite-!" He made to strike back, a familiar motion ingrained in the two since they had been boys playing at fighting back on the Winterfell courtyards, but Jon caught his wrist. "What the-?!"
"Stop pretending to be me". Robb seemed taken aback by his tone, but he needed to hear it. Especially since the Isle of Faces. "I'm the moody and brooding one. You're the one who smiles and who's fun and who's good with girls. Stop pretending to be me. You're making a boondoggle out of it". His brother blinked back at him, several times, and Jon sighed and explained why he had struck his king and thus committed high treason. "Come now, Robb. Ever since the Isle you've been brooding. Dark clouds over your head. You're the king. You're supposed to be one with the land. And no one wants to live in a place that is always miserable and raining". He paused and gave it a thought. "Except for Cotter Pyke. He volunteered for command of Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. Fucking Gods, some men are-"
"You know what I saw on that island, Jon?" Robb wondered to him, the softness on his voice deceptive and dark. "What we all saw? I understand a fraction of it merely, but what I do" he bared his teeth and reached up to rub at his eyes with the back of his hand. "The trees absorb memories like sponges do water. And with them, minds. Souls. Every time we look into them, they look back out at us. All the knowledge within is set at a giant's fee, and I am not keen to pay the price".
"You might not have noticed" Jon replied slowly "but there is more to it than that. You can't see it, because it doesn't come as easily to you, but our power is stronger now. I understand what I am now. I understand what I can do. Imagine what Lyra can. What Roren can. Rymund is the strongest of all. And with the things we have done, the things we have shown them, more come every day to-"
Robb held up a hand. He wanted nothing of it. "Magic is like a flower, Jon. A rose that draws you in. Then it bleeds you dry with its thorns. A rose forever after. It shouldn't be courted like we have". He sighed again and looked back down to the map, turning so quickly that his cloak flapped about him. He always wore it nowadays, whether over his armour or his shirt. Like he needed the warmth where Jon needed none. "You've spent time with them even after Raventree Hall. I won't ever go through that again – Gods, if I needed that headache too – but you have. How many are there now?"
"Almost three hundred, even though it's been a scant fortnight since Raventree". Jon found the corner of his mouth curling upwards as he too turned to look back at the map, eyes trailing the eastern coastline until it vanished into his imagination, following it up into the North – and beyond. "Give a man proof of sorcery that he can't deny, and his world changes. He becomes willing to believe almost anything. When we made the dead tree bloom again people's hearts shifted. Most of them men who come to listen to Roren's sermons are Riverlanders, curious and disbelieving. After he shows them the visons of the trees, after he links their minds to the Weirwoods" he shrugged. That was another thing entirely. "Some of the others are wargs. Lyra and the others search them out, show them what they can do. All of them have bonded beasts within a couple of nights. Almost two-score of those".
"Scouting through the eyes of eagles and horses and wolves". Robb cocked his head to the side, a rouge strand of his red hair falling down before his eyes. "Once that would have appealed to me. The battles I could win… Magic is a dark thing, Jon" he looked over to his brother, and their gazes met. "I hardly understood any of what the Green Man told me, but I understood that at least".
"It's in us" he reached out and put his hand on Robb's shoulder, the steel and chainmail and padding lessening the sensation of the touch but not its meaning. "Both of us. It's in our blood. It's not some strange and foreign thing".
"There's a beast in the heart of every man". ´Robb shrugged off his touch, determined to pout. "Ours… ours has a thousand dead voices singing to it. Calling it to war. Don't trust the voices in your head, Jon. They're not our own".
"I trust you". That was all that really mattered, wasn't it? "I trust Ghost. I trust our wolves and our family. The rest can go plow themselves for all I care". He wet his lips and swallowed at the lump in his throat as he saw how the darkness hung over his brother. Over his King. "I remember what you feel when you look at her".
"The memories we experience when merging with the Weirwoods fade almost instantly – you should remember nothing". Only a Greenseer could hold on to them properly. Well, sometimes.
"And yet I do". That got his attention, and slowly he could see the expression on his brother's face change. "I saw it, when we brought the Raventree back to life. I felt it. Like the sunshine on my skin. Like a thick pelt around my shoulders on a cold night. Like the blood coursing through my veins, slaved to the beating of the mad drum that is my heart. I don't feel that, but I remember you doing so". Jon smiled at his brother. "You have that, Robb. Love, brother – love is the greatest magic of them all".
Slowly, ever so slowly, Robb began to smile back at him. "You sound like a bloody idiot saying that" he muttered wryly, scoffing at him from over his shoulder as he left the table of maps and headed for the rear of the tent where a carafe of wine was placed at his convenience. "All the songs say that, don't they? At least the ones that are the same as all the others".
"You agree with them, you misty-eyed halfwit" Jon mockingly shook his head at him as two cups were filled and they lifted them to drink. "To you, cheering your sorry self back up to high spirits!"
"And to having no other minds in our heads but our own. Also – shut up, you moping sod!" Robb added in the impromptu toast as they lifted their mugs to each other and then drank deeply. Jon's smile widened for an instant as he saw how the tension had lifted out of Robb's shoulders, fading into a general mirth and he looked down into the cup.
"It really does taste that much sweeter, despite being so sour". Robb grinned and drank again at Jon's comment.
"It's the triumph that makes it sweet". The young king paused and eyed the liquor suspiciously, furrowing his eyebrows together. "I can't just let it go, Jon. All those things said upon that cursed island – I need to know what it all meant. What it is all for. What the future holds".
"The minds of mortals are small and forgetful" he shrugged back, as it mattered little to him. Not anymore. "Leave the knowing of everything to the Gods and the trees. What matters is family, and the wars to come. Leave the future to the future. It will come to us soon enou-" Something was happening. Something strange. Ghost and Grey Wind lifted their heads from the ground and looked as one towards the opening of the tent and the south-east beyond. Through his link with Ghost he sensed a new presence. "Robb, do you feel that?"
"Aye, so I do" Robb nodded and put the cups back on the stand, reaching for the hilt of his burrowed sword. "Its wild, savage, cold – but familiar. What on earth-?" His eyes rolled into the back of his head and his shoulders slumped over for an instant before he returned to his own body and normalcy, a shocked expression on his face and a happiness he could not quite believe. "It's-"
"Your Grace!" Edric burst into the tent, polishing rag and leather-grease still in his hands as he stormed in just a head of a pair of guards and a sentry from the outer camp. Jon didn't listen to them, for he slanted into Ghost's mind and began to smirk once again. "The sentries! They, they say an army of wolves has marched into the camp! They're led by-"
"A girl riding a giant Direwolf?" Robb asked, the image planted in his mind from Grey Wind's to his already, and pale in the faces the four intruders nodded. The young king sighed. "Ah, blast. The chroniclers will have a jolly good time with this".
Jon opened his eyes and smiled. He looked to Robb. "Well" he shrugged "Arya always did like to make an entrance".
END
A/N: The last chapter was certainly polarising, wasn't it? Some hated it, some loved it. Well, I'm just going to stick to my planned outline and hope everything works out in the end.
Sorry for the long break since the last chapter. A combination of finals, a particularly busy social life, apathy, the… let's say "mixed" reaction to the last chapter, my other projects (both fanfiction and original) and me HATING the newest season of Game of Thornes bereaved me of my will to write on this for a while. But, just like summer, I'm back and better than ever!
Bearing that in mind, a few things need to be said:
I haven't written on this for a while, so my style in this chapter might be a little bit different from usual. Writing characters that are supposed to be medieval lends itself to a different voice than when writing modern characters. This will even out over the next few chapters. Hopefully.
Also, no Margaery in this chapter. I'm compensating for the Margaery overload that comes later in the story. After all, there's a massive war going on. Shit needs to get stabbed before there can be peace in the realm.
Lastly, by the riddles and the plans and the weird crap that doesn't make any sense – I'm not going to tell you what it's all about, okay? Figure it out on your own as the story goes on. That's what subtext is all about.
That being said, I hope that you have enjoyed this chapter. The best is yet to come.
Ta.