Chapter Thirteen – Pillage and Conquer
Arya
She kept the Faceless Men from her brothers. It was better that way – or so she hoped.
"To see such horrors, at such a young age". She didn't trust the Maester though, the one they had called for once they had wrapped her in a cloak and taken her aside to safety and lonesomeness and she had told them as much as she could stand to. She didn't share anything about the Faceless Men, or Jaqen H'gar, just yet. She would have to tell them soon, but only when she knew more herself.
It would only serve to needlessly worry him. And her oldest brother looked like he had more than enough to worry about already.
Meanwhile, she flinched as the Maester examined a bruise on her cheek, one of many sustained there over the last months, marks and scars she hadn't even noiticed as time went on and she was covered in dirt. His fingers were cold. His eyes too, but not in a strong way. In a betrayed way – that was how he looked. Broken beneath his chains. "Physically she is a little malnourished and underfed, at a critical time in the development of children as they grow. But mentally, your Grace-"
"She's so fucked in the head from all the killing that murder seems normal to her?" Robb finished, glowering as he stared out over his maps, his armour about his body and his crown on his head. He looked so different, so much like Father that it almost hurt looking at him. Except for the crown. Somehow it seemed right on his head. Like it was a part of him that had always been missing even though she had never realised it. "Aren't all of us? Gods, when I lay my hands on Cersei and her gobshite son-" he was all but snarling, just like Grey Wind beside him. "Curse them! A pox on their House!"
"Calm your tits, your Grace" Jon muttered as he reached over and straightened out the collar of Arya's new cloak, given to her by Robb from off of his back. She had one just like it, back in King's Landing – if it was still there. "We'll get you a new one" Jon seemed to almost read her mind as he smiled down at her, and for an instant she was home again. "She bring you back?"
"I wasn't sure where you were" she told him, her voice so tiny in that vast tent as she looked over to Nymeria. Once the she-wolf had been convinced that she could stop fussing over her she had greeted her brothers sombrely, awkwardly, almost completely silent as the two went over her, sniffing and taking in her scent. Now she and Ghost were curled up, the bigger white beast protective around her as she slept, exhausted. Grey Wind had too been there, but once Nymeria fell asleep he rose and went to stand at Robb's side. He was too angry to sleep. Suddenly she wrinkled her nose. Arya sniffed the hem of the cloak that was close to her face, and over her own smell she could tell- "Something's… rosy".
"It's Robb's sweetheart" Jon told her and jerked his head the way of their brother, and she looked over to see Robb's ears go red. Robb – the smiling one, the one who always did what Father told him to, the one who told her to keep her chin tucked in when she and Bran wrestled – leading a war and being in love? Being a King? Somehow it didn't mesh. None of it fit together, but still he looked like the crown fitted on his head. Like he was a different person. "He stole a bottle of her perfume and keeps dousing the cloak in it when no one's looking".
"I do not!" Arya wanted to snicker at Robb's indignant expression as he looked over to the smirking Jon and gave him a venomous look, just like he had when they were boys. She wanted to. She felt in in her heart. But the smile wouldn't come to her. The laugh wouldn't come to her. Like her heart and mind were split from her body. Like she was made out of stone, and ever motion felt hard fraught. "She wore it for all but one night and two days! It's not my fault it still smells like her. Arya's still attuned to Nymeria's senses, and it's probably some woman-magic on Margaery's part!"
In response to that Jon chuckled aloud, the man she remembered as sombre now smiling much more than he had used to back at Winterfell. "'Woman-magic'?" he scoffed. "What are you, twelve?"
Robb narrowed his eyes, shot with red through all the blue – eyes just like Mother – at Jon. Had he been sleeping poorly? Satisfied in his incessant probing the Maester rose and bowed away from the Stark brothers, silently taking his leave of them and the tent. "I will bopp you across the bonce so hard you'll be seeing stars at noon tomorrow" Robb warned, and in response Jon mockingly raised his fists. "You know bloody well what I mean! Her scent should mark that cloak! I gave it to her!"
"Don't you two ever grow up?" Arya wondered, and they both looked over at her, smiling slightly. Robb abandoned his rage over the Lannisters and went over to crouch before the stool she had been placed on, looking her in the eyes from equal height.
"You're back with family. You're safe. Is it any wonder that I feel like a boy again?" He smiled at her as he took off his gauntlet and reached up to ruffle her hair almost like Jon would have done, his hand coming away oily and dirty from doing so amongst the jagged short tresses that hung half-way to her shoulders by then. "Mother's going to have a fit" he muttered, and Arya flinched in spite of herself. "You miss her, don't you?" She looked him eyes for a long time before she could manage to nod, and it was a quick, jagged motion. "Me and Jon will ride South to see her soon. In a week or so. Do you want to send you ahead to her?"
"I'll tell Edric to go summon Maege and the Mormont women" Jon said and went towards the opening of the tent, peaking his head out of the woollen flaps and speaking in hushed words as Robb began to scowl when Arya shook her head. It was hard to tell him, but somehow… somehow she managed.
"I want to fight". Now it was Robb's turn to flinch and be taken aback, and she made a face. It would be just like it had been with Father, wouldn't it? He'd not let her do anything that she could do. Anything she was good at. "I was there when they lopped his head off". Their smiles faded, and both of them turned to her, steel in their eyes, black or blue but still the same. "I want to kill them all. I want them to look me in the eyes as I cut their hearts out and eat them". From aside Nymeria rose her head from her torpor and looked to Grey Wind as if challenging him. "I'm not a lady".
"I bloody well know that" Robb nodded back at her. "You warg even easier than Jon, if Nymeria is to judge even impartially. And I've seen your weapons. All well used". He looked aside to the small pile where most of her saddlebags and things had been dropped when they had managed to convince Nymeria to simmer down and for no one to attack the wolves that had massed on the grounds between the tents of the Winterfell contingent of the army. "How many blades do you have?"
"Not counting Needle and arrowheads? Six". She didn't need to hesitate at all, and Jon gave her a look over a raised eyebrow. "Sometimes you lose them. They get stuck in bone or in some cunt's spleen or break. Also, when someone comes at you in a run it's best to throw them, because they're bigger than me. Into the eye or the balls, or the-"
"Mother's going to have a fit, hearing you speak like that" Robb breathed out hard and traded a look with Jon, who merely shrugged. "Arya, there are fighting women in my army" he told her as he reached out and took both her hands in his own. "I'm not holding you back because you're a girl. But the battlefield is no place for an eleven years old bairn. If you go into a fight, you stay back with either Jon or me, you understand? Be careful! And use that bow of yours. Promise me!"
"If I promise" she replied "does that mean that I get to kill Lannisters?" Reluctantly, hesitantly, he nodded in the affirmative, and somehow she found that she could smile at that. "I promise I'll be good and shoot the bow. You want to see it?"
"Sure" he nodded at her, and she rose from her seat and handed his cloak back to him before she went over to her pile, almost skipping in eagerness as Robb went back to being Robb the King and not Brother Robb. "You'll have to sleep with the Direwolves tonight. Jon's tent, next to mine. I'll make the other arrangements. I'll buy the things you might need from Lady Maege so you can have your own things and tent after tonight. Her youngest is your age".
"Lyanna, the one with the same name as aunt Lyanna?" Arya wondered as she retrieved her bow and pulled it out of its hide casing, stringing it with practiced ease but not without struggled, the weapon made for someone much larger and thicker of arm than her. "See, it's Dothraki, isn't it? I think the weather is making a mess with the glue and the ligaments, though. I, uh, accidentally put it in a river. Or two". She placed it on the table atop of the maps, some little wooden disks falling off the table when she did so. She looked them over as they landed by her feet. They were carved with – eh, who cares? "It's hard using it, but if it isn't as heavy on the draw-"
"You wouldn't have any punching power" Robb finished for her over her shoulder. "Short. Stumpy. Kind of like you. Oi, Jon – you're the archer of the lot. What say you?"
"May I?" When Arya nodded back up at him he took it up and held it with practiced hands, pulling back the string to anchor it under his chin, grunting a little when it made it all the way. "The draw stacks like nothing else. Fairly heavy, though. Solid aiming. Can probably punch through a breastplate easily. A skilled company with these bows can make crossbowmen obsolete".
"And the Dothraki use them from horseback". Robb declined it when Jon slowly had let the string back – slowly, as to avoid dry loosing and not damage the arms any more than they had been by nature already – by raising his hand. "I'm glad those are on the far side of the Narrow Sea. Wouldn't want to face those pricks in the South". Arya remembered that Robb had never been that great with the bow. Good with the sword, sure, and at the horseback lance he had thrown everyone out of the saddle. Even Rodrick and Harwyn, their old Master of Horse. Even Father.
"Oh?" Jon asked as he helped Arya unstring the bow and put it back in its covering, giving Jon a long look. "What makes you so confident to face them in the North, your Grace? North or South, would it make any difference?"
"North or South, east or west – war is the same everywhere". King Robb reached up and pulled at the straps of his armour even as he headed for the stand in the corner and poured wine into three pewter cups from out of an ornate carafe, a gaudy thing a great deal unlike something Brother Robb would have ever used. "It's not about how many men you have or how fierce they are. It's about how many you can use well. How well you feed them. How warm you keep them. What would the Dothraki do in a Northern winter, when their horses starve and they freeze to death in their leathers?" Jon, lacking in answer, inclined his head as Robb brought back the cups, handing one to Jon and one to Arya. "It's to help you sleep" he offered with a smile. "Don't tell Mother".
Arya took the cup and smelled it, wrinkling her nose at the stinging in her nostrils. She held it out to Nymeria, who sniffed it before she huffed, to which Arya shrugged and sipped. She almost spat it back out and made a face at Robb. "It's sour".
"It's stolen from the stores of a Lannister scout captain" Robb informed her, and she tried it again with that in mind. Taken from a Lannister, from those prancing ponces in crimson armour – that actually made it taste far better. "I knew you'd feel the same way" he chuckled before he looked over to Jon. "Anyway, I've been speaking to some of the Narrow Sea lords about military matters in Essos. It never hurts to know, in case that ornery housecat Tywin brings some over with his bottomless reserves of gold. Greatjon knows a fair bit about Skagos and Norvos, but the Boltons had a trade monopoly on Braavosi goods before Torrhen knelt. Lord Roose knows a fair bit about Braavos and its Water Dancers, in addition to the free cities. Probably where he buys all his bloody hippocras".
"If you can trust anything the man says" Jon muttered back and drank, "He unnerves me. It's the eyes, I think". He paused and seemed to muse on something. "Looks like those of a damn Other, so they do". Arya listened quietly as the two spoke back and forth, speaking about unfamiliar things in an all too achingly familiar fashion. For a long while they stayed like so, her brothers trying to prod her out of her shell ever so gently. She was quite aware of what they were doing, but somehow she couldn't respond. Her shell had grown up hard around her, and no cracks would come in it. No matter how they tried they couldn't break through, and she felt like she was drowning in her skin.
Jon seemed happy, less brooding – and purposeful, somehow. Like he now knew the meaning of his life better than he had before. Robb looked like the coldness that had always been in him had been brought to the surface by the crown on his head, but determined to defend his visions of the future to the death by the blood of entire continents.
And she… she had probably changed the most of all of them. Quietly she wondered how Rickon was. How Bran. How even Sansa was doing.
Maege Morment came around soon, her daughters five in tow excepting the two that had remained on Bear Island, and after some bluster and mild chastising from the She-Bear aimed towards Robb – King be damned, no lass her age should be let around looking like that and kept hungry – she was whisked away with Nymeria, Ghost and Grey Wind close in tow. She was washed, fed, and tucked in under warm blankets in Jon's tent surrounded by the fur of the three mighty beasts, protecting her as they clutched around her. As they fell asleep their dreams began to inflict on her waking mind, but she would not let herself drift.
An hour later, when Jon was soundly asleep, she crept out of her bed and headed towards the north of the camp and the dark banners flying over the maroon and pink tents there.
The banners that had the Flayed Man on them.
Jon
From above he saw on eyes in the night how the torches of the sentries at the walls began to dip. Noting it to himself he let out a quiet sound in the night, a screech almost inaudible to human ears.
And then he shot back into his human form and threw open his eyes, his allotted warriors taking up their arms and rising around him. He drew in a deep breath and closed his eyes again, reaching out to Ghost instead of one of the falcons that roosted on the cliffs and rocky shelves overlooking the Golden Tooth. That connection was ingrained much deeper, easier to hold on to. It was like threads in his mind, arrayed before him, and while some were tenuous and fragile – his horse, Alliser, the charger he had taken as his own after Saltpans, and those falcons he had reached out to ever during the days as they waited for the opportune moment to strike came – some were much stronger. The link with Ghost was less like a string or even a rope. It was a chain, unbreakable, and the connection was easy to follow. He went into Ghost's mind, the Direwolf back with the siegebreaker contingent of the main army, for an instant to speak with Grey Wind, who would in turn speak to Robb.
He didn't even have to light a torch and hold up a mirror surface to send his signal to his brother. He could do it in utter silence. The defenders of the Golden Tooth, liegemen of House Lannister and House Lefford, would have no warning when he fell upon them like shadows bearing steel.
"All of you got your ropes?" He checked them all, giving them one last once over before he stood off of the ground and stretched towards the sky to limber up his back. Down to a man all of the two dozen fighters he brought with him wore dark leathers and light armour all painted in black and grey splotches. In the dark that they stood in they seemed almost like shadows only, melding and unmelding with the rocks and the night with every motion, even the steel of their bared swords and knives and axes painted black. One last thing was missing from him though, unlike the others.
Roren Neversleep, his robes shirked for only his lightest armour and mail and a cowl drawn before his face, stopped in front of him in the moonless dark and reached into the bowl in his right hand with the tips of his fingers. "This marks your bravery, young warrior" he intoned in a whisper from some ancient spell the Weirwoods had taught him as more than half of the band around him watched in reverent silence. Cold and thick Jon could feel the paint as it was slattered onto his face. "May the Ancestors hold their shields above you. May the Gods keep you whole. May Vengeance make true your sword".
As the paint began to dry within moments Jon spoke aloud the response with the rest of them, hardly a whisper but still loud when they all voiced it as once. "My life for my kin and the King in the North". The paint, from water and Weirwood paste, would have been made from many crushed pigments in the past, at least according to Roren. Red and yellow from madder and weld, maroon from umber, green from cave moss and acorns, blue from woad – coloured in ancient times to denote a clan or a family that they belonged to or swore allegiance to. This paint had been coloured with nothing but coal, and it made them faceless in the night.
Jon looked around. Most of them were wargs and skinchangers, fresh from the minds of their bonded animals and thus sharp in their senses and alert. Other than those two dozen Lyra, Smalljon Umber, Roren, Rymund the Screech, Maester Ebbert and Drustan had come with him, as had Hos Blackwood and Arya. All of them looked to him for orders. Silently he nodded to them and turned about, looking in at the bend. He hefted longclaw in his hand, Valyrian steel painted black, and began the silent march of a stalk towards the walls of the Golden Tooth.
Since time immemorial and the vaguely remembered histories of the Andal Conquest of Westeros the Golden Tooth had stood indomitable in the passes between the west and the east. A great fortress that served as the outpost of the Westerlands to defend against the Riverlands, it was a huge thing of high walls in rings, outer walls and inner walls and then the walls of the innermost citadel and its towers, outcroppings and towers breaking up the buttresses at regular intervals. Its outer courtyard, the area between its inner walls and its outer walls, was lined with stables and barracks and mustering grounds and granaries filled to the brim, wells dotting the earth grounds stomped solid by the marching of thousands of feet all throughout history. For seven thousand years and more House Lefford had held it against all invaders. And now Jon was meant to take the keep and overpower its garrison with thirty men.
The plan had been Robb's creation. Smalljon and Jon had helped, and Maester Ebbert had provided some insight, but beyond that it was the child of Robb's mind only. It had been necessary to prod him a little to shirk his suspicions and mistrusts about sorceries, even for a single night, but it had been done. Robb had a gift for gambits, it seemed. Especially of the martial kind.
Jon just hoped that his luck bore with him.
As they closer they darted from crag to crag along the rocky walls to their left on their way, always out of sight from the defenders by meticulous watch and planning. An advance that would have taken a short time in the daylight took the better part of an hour as they skulked, but by one of the last of the few covers on that cleared ground Jon gestured Arya and Lyra to his side. He looked to Lyra, who closed her eyes a hint before they rolled far into the back of her head to show nothing but white in the night. She was silent for a good long while before she awoke from the trance and nodded. She had left her bonded creature, a bear rescued from the ruins of Harrenhal and the torture of the Lannister mercenaries, back at the camp. Bears were hardly suited for stealth, but she was one of the best Wargs he knew of. He had needed her help that night.
She looked to Arya and held up three fingers before she marked places on the wall in turn by a pointed finger. Jon had made sure that they made their approach in the middle-to late part of a guard shift, to make their opponents all the more sleepish and easy to defeat in turn. Arya nodded back at the older woman and drew and arrow from her quiver, nocking it against the string of her Dothraki bow. She looked to Jon, and he signalled the continued advance.
Only in the shadow of the walls did Arya down the sentries on top of them. One crumpled into a heap that drew the others' attention with a thud, but the next two toppled in over the outside of the walls, all of them with arrows through their necks. Arya had always been good with the bow when they were young, though not as good as he was. Now, he suspected, that she might even be better than he was. There was not delay at all when she drew back her bowstring and fired, no hesitation or aiming at all. It was almost like sorcery in how unerringly deadly she was.
Then came Jon's part of it all. When they stood just under the precipice of the wall, Lyra flitting in and out of the mind of the falcon on the cliffs that she had tenuously bonded with to make sure that Arya and Tam of Barrowton could down any patrolling guardsmen, Jon signalled Drustan, the Flint clansmen and held out his hand. By Ebbert's hand a wicked metal hook was placed in it, tri-pronged and stern, its one end attached to a long coil of rope unwound from around the Maester's midriff and falling to the ground. Jon stepped away from the wall with the Flints and Drustan as they swung the hooks through the air and rapidly increasing speed, letting them out at the top of the arcs to fly high in the air. All the hooks stuck their ends firmly over the buttresses of the wall with a soft ring of steel, and for a few moments none of them moved, looking to Lyra. In the end she turned her eyes forwards again, and so Jon closed his hand into a fist and then made a motion upwards. He had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but the point came across anyway.
And so they started their ascent. The four men that ascended first – Drustan and the three Flint clansmen including the one that took over for Jon – each had rolls of rope around their bodies, rolls they would unfurl and throw down once they came to the top to add to the ascent of the others. Robb looked the band over as they looked up, lingering for a second on Ebbert. He had his doubts about the man and of his physical attributes, but the Maester had told him that he would be no burden that night. I was born at Highpoint. My brothers taught me how to climb. Jon forced the concerns from his mind and turned for the wall, gripping the uneven stone and mortar with his hands. No time to doubt. No time to hesitate.
And so he climbed the walls without the need for a rope while his warriors ascended alongside him and each other. The almost sheer rock was mortifying to almost anyone else, but not to him. And the height did nothing to him at all. He had climbed far worse things in his life, and the bricks of that wall were stone and not ice. It was easy enough in comparison to that.
As soon as he crested the far side it almost went to shite, though. A patrolling guard came around the corner of the towerhouse of the guard barracks atop the wall, his comrades sleeping within and saw the rest of them climb the walls. He opened his mouth and lowered his spear, making to shout, but Jon who was closer and hidden came onto him from his side and clamped his hand to the Westerland's soldier's lower face.
The man struggled to scream against his hand, but his cries were muffled into near-nothingness by his hand and his glove. Jon raised Longclaw to point the steel tip to the soldier's neck, ready to thrust through. Against the screams he put his mouth close to the man's ear as if to shush him, but instead the words he had said that other night when he first told war council his plan came to him. As the men atop the wall regrouped and watched him he whispered.
"Walls cannot hold the Winter". Then he thrust true and through, cutting through the man's windpipe and silencing his screams forever before he marched over and dumped to corpse onto the far side of the wall. As he went back to the gathering he gave Lyra a hard look, and she stared back defiantly. Oh, it wasn't her fault. Falcons were trixy creatures with no grasp at all on the concept of concentration. Still- he bared his teeth as his inner self and nodded to the rest of them before he sent one more signal to Grey Wind and Robb by way of Ghost. When he opened his eyes again Roren had taken Jon's bow off his back and handed it on to him fully stringed, Rymund handing out special arrows to the lot of the archers amongst them.
That had been Ebbert's contribution. A special oil that burned easily, along with a few small tricks to a flint and steel that sparked easily. The bundles on their arrows, bound just south of their arrowheads, were set ablaze equally easily by it, and they found their pre-chosen targets readily: the two barracks, the stables and the kennels, the thatched spots over the holes in the roof of the main house, and the wooden roof of the castle sept. The eyes of birds provided no small amount of the best scouting Jon had ever experienced. On his signal they all loosened, and within moments spots of fire were lighting up the moonless clouded night as the castle courtyard caught ablaze.
The torches came next. As Arya took purchase on the walls with Tam, Lyra and Hos Drustan, Rymund and Roren followed Jon the gatehouse. The rest went with Smalljon to break some heads and cause some violence. More importantly, to cause some chaos and confusion. And they had to be quick about it. They had little time until the castle woke up and Robb was already on his way.
They hit upon another snag within mere moments. The door to the gatehouse was locked. Drustan and Jon broke it open with the flat of their swords in the cracks, the other two storming in while the splinters still flew through the air. The six men keeping guard within were mostly asleep but for one. Unfortunately that one managed to get out a shout before Drustan ran his chest through with the sword. As the clamour rose outside, shouts and screams rising along with the alarm, the lone vigilant watchman's body crashed to the ground, Drustan's sword stuck in his ribs.
"Shite! Leave him!" Jon shouted and ran for the winch controlling the chains that ran down the walls to one side of the gatehouse, an exact likeness in look and purpose on the other side of the room. "Raise these sodding things!" he shouted at them, and the chains groaned as they raised the portcullises on either side of the wooden main gate. The winches stopped in their final positions with a metal clang, and by the swords of the Westermen in the gatehouse that they shoved into the winches the mechanisms broke and were immoveable. Drustan took the axe off his hip and drew his knife in his other hand as they gathered themselves. For a few moments they dared to rest.
But no more. There was a battle outside, and Jon was eager to get there. His sister was there. At first he hadn't wanted to bring her, as she was little, young, and Arya, his little sister. But she had learned of the plan, somehow, and badgered him into taking her with him. He had said he would, if only to make her stop, if she managed to beat him in an archery contest.
Apparently she had practiced quite a bit. He was almost as surprised then as he was miffed.
Arya, as it was becoming more apparent with every passing moment, could take care of herself. While Lyra and Hos began to assault the gate with their axes, not merely bent on opening it but breaking it and preventing it from closing, Arya and Tam held watch on the wall on either side of the gatehouse, Arya firing arrow after arrow into the unsteady stream of people emerging from the main gates of the inner courtyard, bleary eyed and in their shirts to fight a fire but met with Northern steel. Jon caught sight of a few spots of colours, shirts and tunics and dresses – but Arya shot them too. Bloodthirsty she was, but it did them no harm in the moment. The walls were held, and with the three at his back Jon ran for the far steps of the stair that led down to the courtyard. Through the sounds of the battle the thudding of Hos's axe against the timber of the gate was growing louder.
At the bottom of the stairs ten Lannister men in lamellar red were running for the gate before they caught sight of the four of them and turned to face them, swords and partisans in hand. Jon flew into them first, challenging two of the men at arms on his own, while Roren charged another and Drustan stood alone against a knight in heavy plate with axe and dagger in hand. The remaining five men and the other Westerlander knight faced only one man – Rymund.
Once Rymund the Rhymer, now Rymund the Screech. Wide eyed and insane he stood before them, shoulders heaving with his every breath, and when they came for him to kill he threw his head towards the clouded-over heavens and screamed.
Roren, who had pretended to understand it, and Ebbert, who did understand but lacked the simple words to explain it, had tried to make Jon understand what it was exactly that Rymund did when he let loose his shrill howl, a sound that should by all right make the ears bleed and glass shatter but did neither. It was something about the ability of a Skinchanger to touch the minds of animals that could, with great strength and foreboding of forbiddance, touch the minds of men. How it wasn't a bond but a fleeting touch, a caress instead of a seizure of the mind. How some Wargs by the medium of their voice could affect others through that, instil through song thoughts and commands and emotions. But Rymund's voice had been shattered by the Gods. He had nothing to sing to the world.
Nothing but agony and hopelessness, anyway.
His howl was a wordless, owl-like screech, and while the sound hurt Jon's ears just a little it wasn't targeted at him. Instead the men attacking Rymund, and the enemies standing the closest to him, screamed too as the pain of the scream, intent and thought and power inflicting torture by the raising of his voice, and clutching their heads and their ears and clawing at their throats and eyes they fell to the ground, screaming as well. Horror went through them, ripping their sanities apart with all the nightmares that Rymund had witnessed by the power of the Gods and the Weirwoods.
It was a dark sorcery, Ebbert had explained, struggling for words as he too sorted through the memories that the Weirwoods had inflicted on him. Old and horrible. In the better times of old it had been banned under the penalty of death, but these were new times. War times. No sorcery was too foul in Jon's eyes. They needed to win.
The power went out of Rymund quickly, the scream new to him and so hurting only some of the eight enemies closest to him and only for a little while. Jon dealt with three men even as another five came rushing out of the burning barracks, their armours scarcely half made up and chamber pots in their hands as they dashed for the wells, but when they saw the intruders they raised alarm and turned about towards them. Drustan killed one with a thrown axe before he took the castle-forged sword out of the hand of the knight he had killed with a blade to the skull through the slits in his visor. Roren downed another with his sword before he caught the lower edge of the shield of another as they crippled and slammed its upper edge into the throat of the guard holding it, stealing it off his arm. Jon turned towards another and cut his hands off around the wrist before trading blows with the knight.
In the end he got the better of that armoured brute wearing the blue surcoat of House Lefford. When the knight, swinging his Morningstar in a wild and brutal arch, overextended himself and raised his arm to block, Jon took advantage of the fact that Longclaw was a hand-and-a-half sword. He smashed the shield aside with a double handed slash before he took hold of it and yanked it with his right hand as his left stabbed forward in the opening there revealed, sinking deep into the knight's armpit. The knight stumbled back, dying, bring Jon with him, and he had just enough time to turn about and see a Lannister soldier stab for his stomach with a sword of shimmering steel. For a moment, Jon thought that he was a dead man for certain.
A dagger whistled through the air over his shoulder and imbedded itself in the eye of the fencer – an odd dagger with a dark brown hilt of discoloured linen. He gripped it and pulled it out by the weight of the corpse as it slumped to the ground with a thud, and he looked behind him to see Arya, Needle in one hand with her other outstretched from the throwing, standing over a dead Lefford man with blood dripping from her thin sword. Robb held up the knife – leaf-thin, oddly weighed, not made for throwing, hooked on one end. A skinning knife of some sort. Somehow it seemed familiar-
He ignored that thought in his mind for now. As Arya ran down the steps to his side, her quiver empty on her back and her bow discarded somewhere he returned the knife to her before he gave her a nod. To her, and the others. That done they set their sights on the gate and made to hurry over there, passing by only a few of the confused and disoriented Lannister men.
In the chaos almost no one had noticed how Hos Blackwood had started working his axe on the double gates of the Golden Tooth gate. The long axe's runes seemed to burn black in the darkness, and each swing seemed as heavy to the young man as lifting a mountain yet still they fell with thunderous force. As they got there the gates flew open, and Lyra, who had been defending him, dashed into the darkness beyond, sitting down on the ground just before the outermost gate. "Hold them at the entrance!" she shouted as Jon looked up at the stone of the vaulted arch about him and the murderholes there. Tam and Mayka were there, faces haggard as they had barricaded the shattered door of the gatehouse as well as they could have, and they nodded back at him.
One gate was down, the other on its way. Hopefully Hos's mighty axe could make short work of it and Lyra's and Smalljon's diversions would go as planned. Ahead, out in the darkness as Lyra skinchanged, the stables and kennels burst open when hounds and horses, driven by human intelligence and panic, escaped their pens and boxes. In a madness driven by fire and the thought Lyra planted in them they turned on their masters, causing enough of a distracting as the beasts charged through the gates in the second wall to the inner courtyard that Smalljon's men had the chance to make it out of their own battles more or less unharmed.
Through the mass of soldiers Smalljon's band came, less of four men but otherwise whole and mostly unwounded beneath all of the blood. The Umber heir himself was leading the charge, and he huffed as he came up to the panting and doubled-over Hos Blackwood by the last unbroken gate door, the weathered old wood almost nothing but splinters after a dozen-or-so swings with sorcerous axe. "Lord Blackwood" he asked as his warriors got behind the line of defence that Jon headed. "Might I do the honours?" Hos nodded, and so Smalljon raised his foot and kicked the gate with all his might. The splintered wood could not hold his strength, and it crashed to the ground. Jon moved back through the line and pushed Ebbert forth to take his place, closing his eyes.
The Direwolves were linked together, bonded to each other just like he was to Ghost. They could feel each other's presence over great distances and hear each other howl from half a world away. What Jon was doing was a simple thing, really, taking advantage of that link. Through Ghost he could speak to Grey Wind, and when Robb's mind was linked with Grey Wind's… He chased that link like a famished wolf after a rabbit, and the darkness closed in on him before he found himself on all four, running, panting and lifting his head to the wind to smell horses and men and fear and blood. The Gates have fallen, he spoke through the link with great effort, his own body jerking and convulsing where it was propped up against the ach of the portcullis. He hungered for blood and fresh meat. They wait to die.
The answer came almost instantly, words burning with rage and starvation and thirst in his head, short and more sensation than thought. We come.
Jon's eyes shot open, and on shaking legs he rose to pull back the pale-faced and scratched Ebbert back into the line as he retook his old place in the defensive formation. The Maester was doing well for himself, especially considering his meekness and the blood on his blade, but he was weakening. They were running out of time. Still, it didn't matter.
"Winter is Coming!" Jon roared to his own and to his enemies in equal measure as he leapt into the fray, Longclaw a flurry of steel before him. Valyrian steel met common arms and sliced through sword and armour and man like a knife through parchment.
For a little while he was surrounded on all sides by Lannister men before Hos and Smalljon followed after, the Blackwood Lord howling like a demon of the Seven Hells. After followed Rymund, his scream downing a whole swath of the first line in mind-shredding agony.
"Hold!" Smalljon shouted and held his axe low before him, his eyes burning in the night as the Westermen gathered before him in close ranks, and Jon took to his one side while Roren and Lyra took his other. "All as one! One as all! Side by side, we'll kill 'em all! The King in the North!"
"The King in the North!" Jon shouted along with the others. He heard a smaller voice joining in it too, for the first time, and he glanced aside to see that Arya was shouting it along with the others, just like he had. She looked up at him and grinned. No, snarled. There was hardly anything human about her expression. And he smiled back at her the very same way as outside the walls the howling began to rise. A song of wolves as they ran side by side with horses. A single mournful tone sounded out above it all, reverberating out from an aurochs horn. Beside Jon Arya and the Flint men began to laugh, as Rymund forced out another shrill cry of pain most incarnate.
They slashed through the sides, shoulder to shoulder as they fought, and made to hug the walls and the buildings of the outer courtyard, as if they were letting themselves be pushed into corners even as they stared death right in the eye in the guise of Lannister men. Only a little longer, Jon thought as he pulled Lyra and Arya with him up the stairs to the walls, all of them stumbling and haggard with a supreme lack of energy. As he struck one Lannister man with the flat of his blade over the helmet and toppled him over the wall right into a gathering formation of Lefford spearmen below he could hear the thundering of hooves. At first in the distance, but then closer. And closer.
And then He was there.
Robb was the first in through the gates of the Golden Tooth as the moonlight broke through the cloud cover overhead, bathing him and his armoured horse in a steel glow that made him appear as a figure out of some fey story of heroes. The three Direwolves followed him, gathering behind him as he halted his steed in the open of the courtyard. His cloak streamed like the banner of House Stark behind him, and the Lannister men fell back from him, huddling and scrambling away as he raised his sword to the skies. His horse pranced and whinnied, and the helmet on his head lent a boon to his voice.
"The North Remembers!" he roared as Grey Wind and Nymeria howled to the moon, and the Northern cavalry burst through the broken gates of the Golden Tooth, following their king.
Robar Royce in his armour of burnished bronze, Marq Piper with his Valyrian steel sword held high, Maege Mormont with the bear hide armour around her broad shoulders and her mace in hand, Roose Bolton with his grey plate armour with rondels of screaming human faces, Gendry of Hollow Hill with his bullshead helmet, Dacey Morment with her swords, Harwyn of Winterfell, Ser Janas Perryn, Darrick Overton, Patrek, Owen, Lyn, rider after rider with weapons in hands until their number seemed beyond counting. They flooded onto the outer courtyard of the castle and smashed through the shoddy and makeshift Westerlander lines, a group of Valemen riders under the command of Robar Royce riding hard for the gates of the inner courtyard to get within them before the defenders shut them tight. Jon and Arya watched from the walls as the Lannister garrison was flushed away before their horses, and as they sagged down on the steps leading up to the walls, out of the way and out of sight, they leaned on each other and smiled.
It would take hours before all the Lannister garrison was driven off, captured or slain, and hard fighting before the inner courtyard was taken and the citadel of the castle surrendered. Until then Jon and Arya and Lyra, the last sleeping in an exhausted torpor, sat out of the way and listened to the battle cries of Robb's army.
"Eat their hearts!" came from the Valemen. "Blood and skulls!" and "Feel our blades!" came from the Bolton levy. "The Sun in the North!" came from the Karstark cavalry and the grey shore and Grey Hills men. "All chains but one!" from the Umber riders, along with shouts in the half-forgotten tongue of the First Men. "Honour and Glory!" from the Riverland knights. But most of all:
"Stark! For Stark and the Gods!" And the most often:
"The King in the North!"
Robb
"Well then" he furrowed his brow as he looked down on the accounts before him while his mercantile attendants looked at him expectantly. "I'm bloody rich. Perfect. Now what?"
Four days after their victory at the Golden Tooth and already things had gone well for him. Sarsfield, a walled town halfway between the Golden Tooth and the village of Oxcross, had fallen the night before with little struggle, and now he was up in the Arrowhead citadel of the keep of House Sarsfield, the House that had ruled it before then thrown into the deep dungeons and put under Stark guard. The keep was comfortable, he noted, opulently decorated with expensive mats and green and verdant tapestries and banners and drapes all over. The only thing that was more frequent than the bloody colour green was all the sodding gold and silver. So many riches just laying about, more than he had ever seen in his entire life. The tables of the great hall had been laid heavy with jewellery and coin and fine things, and before his place at the seat of honour he could count almost three dozen scribes hard at work taking account of it all.
"Your Grace" Maester… Fatty the Fat or something, he couldn't bloody well remember all their names, prodded him from opposite him, the corpulent Maester having once served House Lefford but eager now to serve the one who was actually winning the war. "As I am given to understand, you have divided up the Westerlands in regions and assigned the resources of those regions for your lords to take as they see fit. While the wealth taken from Lannisport shall be divided equally amongst the Lords remaining at your garrisons in the Riverlands the riches of Sarsfield and the Golden Tooth fall to you. Have you considered what to do with the gold of Casterly Rock, your Grace?"
"Make a giant cock and balls of solid gold in the middle of Wintertown's grand square?" he grumbled, rubbing his eyes at the tedious matters before him. All his warriors were off pacifying the townsfolk or patrolling or seeing to their wounds, and so he was left alone with a lot of guards and a gaggle of Maesters and scribes. And he was bored out of his mind by all their sodding parchments and numbers. "Build a fleet? Establish a Stark bank? Buy most of fucking Volantis? I don't bloody know. Give me the list, man" he muttered and yanked the parchment out of the Maester's hand, him and his two attendant aides grovelling like snivelling pigs before him. "I'll look at it myself".
"Certainly, my L-" he stuttered and sweated when Robb rose his eyes from the list and gave the Maester the most savage glare he could muster. "Your Grace" he corrected himself and swallowed hard. Gods, he's all but soiling his damn britches. "We were wondering-"
"You haven't got the luxury to wonder, Maester Farththing". Robb stifled a grin at their expense as he saw how they jumped at the sound of that voice. From the stairs to the west of the hall came Ebbert, and though he still wore the chains around his neck he was certainly not a Maester. No one even called him that anymore, no one except for Arya. "Resume the accounting. I will tend to the matters of transporting it". Staring at him, white or reddening in the face, the three turned on their heels and went back to their labouts, and Robb looked up at the former son of House Whitehall.
Ebbert had shed his robes for the last time the morning after the Taking of the Tooth, as the bards were already calling it, trading them for britches and a leather armour the same as any other northern infantryman with that odd sword at his hip shoved into a broad black belt and a shield on his back. He looked nothing like a Maester in it, despite his chains. "Thanks for chasing them off. Blasted Gods, man, how could you stand living with men like that at the Citadel?"
"By being like them, your Grace" he offered with an incline of the head as he went to stand at Robb's side, climbing the steps up the magnificent dais of the absurdly gaudy hall. It really was nothing like Winterfell. It was even smaller. What were you using your wealth for if you didn't build your castle bigger? "I've made the arrangements. Owen is sending as many wagons as he can spare from the Golden Tooth. The vaults beneath the citadel can hold your new wealth for as long as you see fit".
"No wonder the Lannisters are such bloody pricks all the time" Robb shook his head wryly as he counted the zeroes after the numbers on the paper and reached back up to rub his eyes. "I'd be a cock about things too if I had this much coin up my arse". It really was quite excessive. Bordering on actually bodily sickening. "I can build all the Winterfell towers back up with this" he muttered before he looked up to Ebbert and handed the list on to him. "Have words with some smiths in Oldtown or Highgarden, places with good forges that will trade with us. I want weapons made for Royce, Smalljon and Loras Tyrell. And four suits of armour. For my siblings".
"Lady Arya's getting one? I assume so because of your lack of thought for yourself, your Grace" Ebbert offered, and Robb nodded back at him. "Arya's armour best made for a full-grown woman, then. She'll grow up. Somewhere close to your lady mother's measurements, your Grace. Your brother's should be measured after you, except for Lord Jon". He paused in his musings and stopped. "Your trueborn brother, Brandon. Your Grace, he is unlikely to ever grow big enough to have a use for it. Even if he did, it would be-"
"I can talk to animals, Ebbert, and link my thoughts and soul to magic trees". Ebbert made a face before he bowed his head in acceptance before that argument. "My brother was damaged by his fall. But there is sorcery in the world now, returning to it. Even the dead walk by it. Why shouldn't my brother be able to?" He rubbed his eyes again before he pinched the bridge of his nose in thought. "I want you to use some of that gold to get me healers. Sorcerers, herbalists, Maesters – I care not. As long as they can make my brother whole. Send word to your friends at the Citadel". He then changed his tone, seeing the hopeless look on Ebbert's face. "Speaking of – have you heard back from them?"
"Yes, your Grace". From his belt he pulled up a small scroll, rolling it out to show it to Robb – but it was nonsense to him, utterly and completely. Not only was it written with Valyrian glyphs, but those glyphs were also coded. "Maester Gormon says he is next in line to be Grand Maester. I am not surprised. He is all but Archmaester of Ravencraft already. It's odd for him to send me messages directly. Most often we go through Lord Willas". He turned it over and looked at it himself, frowning as he did so, his growing sandy bangs hanging low before his eyes. "Some of it gives cause for concern".
"Concern?" Robb wondered, and from beside his ornate chair, serving as an impromptu throne, Grey Wind lifted his head and too looked at the former Maester. "Do tell me why".
"'My grandniece grows unruly. I fear that she begins to influence her brothers and events towards a less than desirable direction'". Ebbert paused and commented. "By 'Grandniece' he might be speaking of Olene Tyrell and Desmera Redwyne as well, but more likely he speaks of Margaery. 'We have little reason to believe that Stark will heed wise counsel. He has been taught by a Valyrian chain'. He speaks of the Winterfell Maester, Luwin. 'We are gladdened that you have won his Grace's trust. Is there any veracity to the rumours of extra-normalcy amongst the Northerners?'"
"'Extra-normalcy'?" Robb asked aloud, scowling at the word. "What is it with those lot and their fancy bloody words?"
"Semantics? To make disseminatory and educational discussion more specific, your Grace. It goes on to ask about troop compositions, army numbers, your own character – to inform them in their deliberations over whether they should recognise your endeavours as worthy of support, no doubt. Most of it is just like the other messages. Except for the closing statement". He looked up at Robb and spoke the last words with great trepidation. "'The glass candles are burning'".
"What the bloody shite does any of that mean?" Robb muttered out his question and reached up to rub his eyes despite the pain in them, longing for soft hands on his aching muscles and the scent of roses. "Glass candles?"
"Relics in the Citadel of an extra-normal nature, your Grace. Extra-normal can be anything uncommon, but refers most often to something sorcerous in nature". He rolled the scroll back up and put it back in the loop in his belt. "When I was in the room with the glass candle, as my final trial towards becoming a Maester, the thing was as dead as the dragons. This is strange indeed".
"What do you intend to tell them?" That was the most important question of them all, second only to 'Are you truly loyal?' "You did inform them as ordered last time?"
"As all the first messages where I noted my suspicions of sorcery within your army? I dismissed my previous musings and deductions as errors born from lack of trust. They believe as I told you, your Grace: that you were wounded when we entered Harrenhal, and I won your trust nursing you back to health". He looked to down to the message and scowled. "With your permission, your Grace, I will tell them of Neversleep's sermons and his growing number of followers. I'll tell them he gives them drinks and herbs to give them waking dreams and ludicrous visions. That is the manner of most Essosi cults. They will draw their own conclusions from there. Meanwhile, I shall endeavour to continue doing as I did before".
"Work your way up their web until you find the spider at the centre of it" Robb nodded and ran his fingers through his beard, thinking that he had to trim it before he saw Margaery again lest he look like a savage. "I don't like the notion of these secretive old men, shaping the world to their own frightened whims. None but Northerners shall rule in the North. The Maesters need to be defanged. Also, these glass candles – they bother you, being lit?" Ebbert bowed in the affirmative. "Well then, I trust your instincts. Find out what they mean. Approach the one responsible for them. There is one?"
"Archmaester Marwyn – I'll begin to trade letters with him, stating that I am interested in forging links of Valyrian Steel and adding them to my chain. I will tell Gormon that such knowledge is to alleviate my uncertainties in my mission in your court, your Grace". Something occurred to him and he turned around to look out over the great hall and the three Maesters working over their coinage there, too far away to having overheard their hushed conversation. "I don't think this conspiracy goes all the way through the Order, Sire. Still, be careful about which Maesters you share the principles of Skinchanging and sorcery with".
"What makes you trustworthy, then?" The question got Ebbert to turn full about, but Robb stared back at him and broke his resolve. "You've broken your oaths. You're a shite Maester, aye – but you're not the only one. Broken oaths and disillusion is not enough to drive someone to betray what used to be all their lives before. Why are you so eager to do this? To fight those who you used to respect?"
A few long moments passed before Ebbert answered. "The true world is what it is, your Grace – not what we think it is. Not what we believe it to be. It simply is, in all its complexity and wonder. I have always wanted to understand it, but I was going about it the wrong way. Belief or debate isn't the right way to go about it. Memory is. Wisdom. I have seen the path to wisdom, Sire. I cannot stray, not now". He bowed to Robb and said "by your leave, your Grace" and turned to go about his business. As he went Robb spotted scratches of ink on the palm of his left hand.
"An odd bunch of fellows, those Maesters" he muttered to no one but himself, though Grey Wind raised his head to listen to him. "Sodd ever one of those ornery bullocks in the South. Maybe I should get my own". He looked over to Grey Wind, who snorted loudly. "Aye, that's a fool's notion, that".
What felt like hours later, after he had gotten to speak with quartermasters and seneschals and messengers from the contingents of the army that had moved farther into the Westerlands to pillage and conquer, envoys from the Bolton levy, the Crannogmen and the Barrowdown men who were heading northwards towards the Crag and the Banefort and who were lagging behind due to their men enjoying the aftermath of crushing the Lannister garrison the Lefford lands a little too much, he got a respite from the scholarly works that drove him to tears.
"Your Grace!" boomed Smalljon as he marched into the verdant hall of the conquered keep, tracking mud and filth all over the carpets by the soles of his riding boots as he led the other outriders to his presence. He and some of his men, Jon and Arya among them, bore sacks of burlap on their back, and unceremoniously dumped them on the long tables in front of the scribes, ruining their estimates of the value of the sacking thus made. "We came across some wee Westerlander nobles, so we did! They were trying to flee with their wealth to Lannisport!" He ripped open the sack and spilled forth gold in a torrent. "Fucking stopped them and shoved them into the dungeons!"
"Good work, then" Robb nodded and got down to them there, Grey Wind rising to go greet Ghost and Nymeria with concerned sniffing and low dull sounds as they followed Arya and Jon through the door, and Robb looked to his siblings. Jon, happy at times, was back to his usual self, glowering darkly at nothing in particular. And Arya?
Arya was precisely as morbidly twisted as the Hound and the Riverlands wondering had made her. "Your army's pretty big" she commented at Robb, skulking away from Jon like a beaten whelp before the White Wolf caught her by the shoulder and held her to stay. "I mean, they're probably all cunts who're easy to kill-" Jon cleared his voice, and she fell silent.
She had changed. Gods, had she changed. Her voice was so much colder now, in addition to being rougher with her speech full of curses. She strained to sound the same as she had before, he could tell, but it just wouldn't work. She was shut off, distant. And while before she had wild and easy to the smile and the insult alike, now she was savage and seemingly mean-spirited.
He wondered why Jon accepted her current state as it was. He wondered how she had been tortured on her way, how she must had suffered. He wondered what had made her whisper the names of those she had promised to murder at night. He wondered why she thought that the only God in existence was Death.
And he wondered why Jon looked so apprehensive. He needed not wonder much longer. "Oi, brother" Jon began darkly. "She asked me if she could squire for Roose fucking Bolton". Robb, in response, looked to Arya before he sighed and rubbed his eyes.
He couldn't help but grumble. "Mother's going to have a fit".
END
A/N: This chapter was easy to write. Like, really easy. More than ten thousand words in less than a day. Amazing, yeah? I should take long breaks more often…
… Just kidding... mostly.
Anyway, two things. First, I wanted to write a heart-warming, glorious, sappy reunion between the Stark children, I really did. But then I thought about everything that happened to Arya in the story up to that point and I couldn't help but to reflect how utterly messed up she had to be by then. Like, Child Soldier messed up. PTSD up the everything.
There will be the sappy family stuff later on in this story though – once Arya gets coaxed out of her shell a little bit.
Secondly, the Golden Tooth. I had written the battle for another place, a place of by me greatly exaggerated significance – namely, the Crag. I had noted it all throughout the chapters leading up to this, but it was an error. I've gone back and edited that in all the previous mentions of the place in the chapters leading up to this one.
I am nothing if not thorough.
Also, one last thing: I will make up some words in the language of the First Men from time to time, calling on my knowledge of Old Norse and Irish Gaelic to do so. It won't be anything that requires explicit translation or suspension of disbelief to understand, though.
… that's for the sections entirely in Valyrian when Daenerys enters the story.
Anyway, I hoped that you have enjoyed this chapter. The best is yet to come.
Ta.