Thank you for reading.

Warning for gore, but much less than in some previous installments of this.

xx

Chapter 20

The Bait

Which takes place mostly in the woods

Gendry

"They told us to wait for them back there," Gendry said to Lady Sansa but she only kept walking.

"I mostly did what I was told," Sansa said, slipping deeper and deeper into the forest, her auburn mane swallowed by the evening shadows, deaf to his pleas just like her sister always had been. "It didn't help."

Beneath them, the kingsroad wound away in a perfectly green twilight of trees, still growing their lavish crowns as if the autumn were not upon them yet. They were only a day ride from the capital, half a day as the raven flies, but the stretch seemed much longer, perilous, and impossible to cross. And they were now moving away from it, deeper into the inhospitable wood.

"I was mostly too stubborn to do what I was told," said Gendry, "and that didn't help either."

"Maybe the gods will have mercy on us both, then," said Sansa and halted in the middle of a clearing, stooping to stare under the tall trees in the ever darkening forest.

"Could be all my fault," Gendry found he had to insist, "you know, if she's Arya's wolf, she may not want to come because Arya hates me and thinks of me as stupid."

"Ser Gendry," Sansa said, "have you ever called her Arya Horseface behind her back with your best friend?"

Gendry's mouth fell open and it was all the answer Sansa needed: "Just like I thought, you didn't. Arya has more reason to hate me than you. But I still refuse to believe that she does. Whether I deserve it or not."

They sat in the wet grass and waited, shivering without the warmth of the fire. With every wisp of wind Gendry thought he could hear a wolf howl, and with every new gust in his face he knew that he did not.

"It was so real, Ser Gendry, a trail of light, Nymeria's words bright and clear in my mind...And yet I led us to ambush twice, in Harrenhal and now here-" Sansa lamented.

"M'lady," Gendry reminded her, "you told from the beginning there would be danger when we reached the road."

"And the calling I had, bidding me to go to Harrenhal served only to find an old lance fit for a dwarf, and the Mad King's armour. All petty things, and Mance could have paid for it with his life! I should take a veil, and become a septa, or a silent sister, withdraw from the world and cry for all my losses... instead of causing more harm." Sansa almost wept and Gendry wondered what he could do, if anything at all.

He thought that a woman who could kiss a man like the Lady Sansa kissed the Hound in Harrenhal, mummery or not, was not going to become a septa, but it was not the right moment to tell her that. Gendry only witnessed the end of the lovers' farewell in the godswood, and all chance encounters he had witnessed of couples together paled in comparison. He dreamed how he would kiss Arya that way one day, when she would grow up.

But Arya was gone across the water, and Gendry was too deep in the cold wood, having to console her sister.

He could offer her a flower, for he noticed that Sansa took great pleasure in small and uselessly gracious things, but there weren't any in the autumn grass. It was getting truly dark, too dark to see, and they should better go back to the camp and make a fire.

So he tried it differently, hoping he could convince her, and make her head back and wait for others. They had to return! They could not be all captured, or... worse...

"M'lady," Gendry said with caution, "why are we still waiting here then? If you don't believe that Nymeria will find you tonight."

Sansa's eyes appeared dark and narrow in the gloom, and she kept staring and listening at the sounds from the wilderness.

"Because, Ser Gendry," she finally said, "I have to believe that all of it, all that I have lived through since I left the Vale, had not been a lie."

Gendry lost the battle, and he knew it.

They remained in waiting, and the darkness took over.

Jaime

"You are not taking that dress with you!" Jaime said to Brienne in staggering disbelief.

"It may come handy if I need to find out things again," she simply said, pressing a neatly folded bundle of thick folds in the saddle bag, but her blue eyes danced and told him differently. "I gave the woman some coin for it."

Jaime got warm all over, and remembered to guard his tongue before he would take them both down the path where he would do things to her that she did not deserve.

"You have never ridden to battle, have you?" he said to change the topic and forget the tiny curve of her breast, her scent on boiled leather, rope, and sweet salt. So different from Cersei, yet infinitely better. Innocent, he thought. "I mean riding in earnest, when you go on for days and only make pause for necessities, you barely sleep and you eat in the saddle. Men don't dare to stop lest their lord shortens them for a head as deserters. We have to ride light!"

They stood at the lake of Harrenhal, ready to depart, at the place where Jaime took the white as a boy, during the Great Tourney of Lord Whent, only to soil the honour of it with treason soon after. He found it an excellent place for his honesty to sink further down, to a new level of unprecedented lowness.

After hearing Brienne's story, and believing it, to his misfortune, he decided to make it for King's Landing and save Tommen while he still could, leaving young Lord Arryn to fend for himself. The sighting of a dragon, and the elegant hooded woman he had seen, could only mean one thing in connection; Daenerys Targaryen was back to Westeros with a dragon came to life, and an army not far behind.

Brienne suddenly spoke as if she could read his mind, her rebel blond hair restless in the breeze, "We will ride fast, and we will send help as soon as we can. There are no horses here, and there's only so much we can do. If we meet Ser Daven on the way, you will send soldiers back as you promised."

"One more promise which proved too much for me to keep," Jaime rejected her mercy. He was about to say that at least he never made an oath to bed Brienne, so he'd probably not fail in doing just that one day, but the words choked somewhere half way out of his too big mouth. He remembered her dressing up for him, exposing every curve to his hungry eyes in utmost serenity, so different from the feminine game of hide and seek, and of mindless seduction, he would witness in the capital or in Casterly Rock.

He was getting too close to truly dangerous grounds, so he sounded a retreat while he still could, "Let's just go."

"Just go?" she teased him, and he was unprepared for that. "And here I expected you to call me wench or something, for a good head start."

Jaime laughed and almost blushed at her comment, granting her wishes. On the water of the lake their reflections met, two silvery ghosts on a clear blue.

"Wench," he said, "without you my honour would be like a ragged horse blanket, worn and ruined from too much usage, and only good for the dogs to shit on."

The Lady of Tarth smiled profusely as if his rude remark were the most gallant statement she had heard in a very long time.

"Show me," she said, "how to ride to battle."

Galloping away, Jaime realised that she had twisted her immaculate sense of honour to accommodate his latest transgression of the knightly vow to protect the weak. And instead of hating her for not staying true to herself, he was immensely pleased.

Brienne did it for him, and he could worship her for that alone.

They left Harrenhal, not by the way of the woods; they followed the kingsroad in straight line. They had good horses, and they moved forward with great haste, yet Jaime had to wonder how much faster he could arrive to King's Landing if only he could ride, not a horse, but a living dragon.

They never noticed a party of soldiers struggling against their captives, half way up the hill on the right side of the road. They passed by it the night before they reached the capital, never the wiser for what they had missed.

Mance

The sellsword from the Golden Company exchanged angry words with the man who was to witness the King-beyond-the-Wall's execution in Harrenhal named Rafford, but the other men called him Raff the Sweetling.

Mance stretched his ears from where he was tied a few steps behind, to better hear the argument. He'd not known what the Golden Company was, but the Hound enlightened him earlier that day when they were laying in the bushes, spying at the enemy camp. Until the Elder Brother walked right into it, hand in hand with Lord Blackwood, in front of their four unbelieving eyes.

The monk left them a message with Ser Daven that the only way for the rest of their party to pass unharmed to King's Landing was if somebody came down the road and got himself caught, as a bait, of a kind. And he didn't believe that the soldiers would truly hurt him or Lord Tytos.

The Hound was adamant that the man, Raff, who rode with Ser Daven, but who used to be a right hand man of someone called the Mountain, was going to kill them both when he had his way with them, in cold blood.

Mance had to think fast and the best he could come up with was for all of them to end up captured, except Sansa, and Gendry, because he was Robert's bastard, and she needed some protection if the old gods chose not to help them that night.

With Ser Daven and the Hound, they attacked the soldiers haphazardly, putting up a show of good resistance, but with utmost attention to save each other's back. They surrendered and they only suffered scratches. It was getting dark, and the soldiers bound them together under remarkably old trees, a grove of slender redwoods, whose majestic height made Mance long for their cousins, the great dark ironwood forests infesting the North. His North, and not the one of the kneelers.

Mance looked again to where the wagon was.

The Elder Brother and Blackwood were locked up in it, and Raff mentioned that the same destiny awaited the lady who had travelled with them, as soon as good old Raffard could find her too. The wagon is well worth the agony, the wildling concluded, opening his ears further, steeling himself for what had to be done.

"Old Griff is going to have us killed, or our commander will snuff us in person when we return," the sellsword told Raff the Sweetling who didn't look sweet at all. "These men have nothing to do with the disappearance of the Young Griff. You lied to us."

"I didn't!" the addressed man sounded offended. "They may have known, and they surely stole a great lady of the highest birth that our Lord Baelish is offering to your Young Griff for wife. She alone is worth a kingdom!"

"That is no matter of mine!" the soldier disapproved. "I need to find the Young Griff, not some forest lass. Suit yourself, Raff, talk to prisoners, or wait for your lord. We're leaving."

Mance wasn't a warg but his hearing was as sharp as that of a direwolf. He took in every single word of that conversation, and was glad in his heart. Good, he thought. Leave us, then.

When the thundering of hooves confirmed the welcome departure of the golden folk, he said to his companions: "We will continue with the show now, if it please you."

Mance was tied to a tree together with Ser Daven, who couldn't part from his company since Harrenhal, by force or by accident. The Hound had a redwood all to himself, thinner than the trees in Mance's beloved North, but equally great in its unhindered climb towards the invisible sky, and he shared it only with a lost squirrel and a few roosting ravens.

"You are mad," the Hound told him. "You want us to continue with your mummery right now?"

"Why not, by the old gods?" Mance said, wriggling to feel a crooked fish knife in his small clothes for reassurance. "We are running late, we have to read it all before we play it in King's Landing." Good, he concluded inwardly, in knowledge that he could free himself easily enough.

"The next part is between Aerys and Rhaegar," offered Ser Daven, revealing he had seen the parchment before to Mance's surprise because he had never given it to him. I have to be careful or someone will still my song. "Corbray is not with us," Daven said.

"I was hoping you could take over from Corbray. And Sandor is so angry with me that the words will come to him like sweet talk comes to others," Mance proposed.

"Bugger you, wildling," said Sandor Clegane, but he nevertheless looked at Daven as a well trained dog accustomed to obey.

The curly-haired Lannister cleared his throat and started, his wounded face swollen with pride for being let in on the show.

"Son," Aerys told to Rhaegar from one redwood to another. "I have to share an important matter of the realm with you."

"I am listening, Father-" "Your Grace!" Aerys scolded his son. "Your Grace, Father," Rhaegar repeated stubbornly.

"Lord Rickard and his son Brandon are traitors to the realm. They plan to rebel against us and crown Brandon King of the Seven Kingdoms. His marriage to Catelyn Tully should greatly advance their cause."

"How do you know, father? Has your pyromancer seen it in his fires?" Rhaegar said angrily with no respect for Aerys. "Our ancestors believed in the light of the Seven and in the fire of the dragons. And you ordered an evil substance conceived by the false maesters and treacherous warlocks in faraway lands!"

"Fire can't be evil," said Aerys, equally stubborn as his son. "And the fire they are making for me is my own, not from anywhere else."

"So it is true then? You would give us all to wildfire if there is a war against you?" Rhaegar asked and his voice shook for real. "If you kill the Starks with no proof of their treason then indeed the kingdoms might stand up against you and no one can measure the consequences."

"They will give me the proof themselves," said Aerys.

"More danger in your voice," Mance advised Ser Daven. "Much more malice."

"Think of Lord Tywin," Sandor Clegane tossed in. "Or Jaime at his best."

"They will give me proof," Aerys spat venom at his son. "They will come to me and try to kill you, my only son and heir. For you have just kidnapped and raped the Lady Lyanna, their precious daughter and sister. The entire realm talks of nothing else! And her body will soon enjoy the company of the lizard lions, never to be found."

"What have you done to her, Father?" the prince asked in a voice laced with fear.

Mance stopped listening to his own play, scouting the dark. A cloud of thick green dusk covered the road, and only some ten men from Harrenhal were left to guard them, a mix of scum listed from both Ser Bonifer and Ser Daven, bought by Baelish to wait for the Lady Sansa at the kingsroad.

It was time.

Sandor Clegane could apparently read in his eyes what he was up to because he whispered curtly: "Raff the Sweetling. He's the only half-dangerous one, and he's mine."

It had become dark enough. Mance nodded to Clegane and clenched his teeth.

"What have I done?" Aerys laughed madly. "Nothing! You did. Your reputation of being noble, my son, is soiled forever. I made certain that Elia knows it, too. And you made certain that my plan would work when you crowned Lady Lyanna your Queen of Love and Beauty. I couldn't have thought of a better way to ensure its success."

Mance twisted his arm with a fierce practiced movement, making the wrist bone of his left hand jump out of its place, swallowing a gasp of searing pain.

"You are a monster," Rhaegar accused his father.

The King-beyond-the-Wall bit his lip to better ignore the burning of his bones. The deformed hand was shaped differently enough to let it slip through a tight knot of rope destined to hold it in place, just like he expected.

Swift as a bat chasing after its prey at night, Mance freed himself. He turned the ropes on Ser Daven's hands loose with the help of his fishing knife, then crawled to the Hound and did the same. The mummery went on, the voices of the players clear and shrill in the green silence of the night.

"Louder," Mance commanded them when he returned to his tree. "Spoil their night's rest with the whip of your voices."

"That's what they are whispering behind my back," hissed Aerys, "the Mad King! So be it! But if my head rolls, my son, so will yours. You would do good to recall it instead of embarking on a wild hunt, destined to doom."

"If I want to find the Lady S... Lyanna," Sandor Clegane bellowed hard enough to wake up the dead, "there is nothing you or anyone could do to stop me from it. I swear to you, Father, I will find her!"

"Over my dead body," said Aerys.

"If necessary," Rhaegar threatened his father, when firm steps finally came up towards them.

It worked, Mance thought, forcing his joint back in place with a muffled scream. Raff and another soldier approached the prisoners, swords in hand.

Aegon

It was the blackest wood he had ever seen.

For the first time since he left Jon Connington, when they were well on their way to the capital from the Stormlands, with raised banners of the House Targaryen, Aegon considered that his reaction may have been hasty and unthoughtful. Riding for weeks to find his aunt, sighted flying a dragon over a ruined castle, according to a man sealing his letters with the sign of a mocking bird, seemed like the most ridiculous and possibly the worst thing he had ever done.

Not to mention that he could not find that castle, and that he may have passed it without ever knowing if he'd been close to it.

The trees whispered and the cold was growing thick like a fog might over the river Rhoyne Aegon sailed on in his youth. It had never been that cold in the places across the sea where he grew up, and the sensation made him doubt that he was Rhaeagar's son and heir, born in the lands he was just discovering. They looked outlandish and strange beyond measure, and their icy touch brought forth another feeling almost unknown to him.

Fear.

Black was one of the colours of the House Targaryen, yet he would give anything to see the silver light of the moon, or a new dawn.

He feared that wood.

He rode a little bit further and decided to make camp, fighting an urge to climb up and sleep in the tree, as if there were watchful eyes of a monster waiting to snatch him and devour him whole, if only he lingered too long on the ground.

Curled in his bedroll next to his horse, he could not catch sleep. Tomorrow I will go back, he thought. But tomorrow it might be too late, another inner voice said but he refused to listen.

When he didn't think it possible, it turned even darker and colder.

He had given up on sleeping and decided to ride again, but when he untied the horse, it jumped in fear and ran off whinnying in bewilderment.

Aegon looked around.

There was a milk coloured someone, or something, carrying a weapon with a long crystal blade. It was gliding on the wind from the distance, closing fast on Aegon. Before he could see it better, another figure, black cloaked and slender, stepped right in front of him from behind the tree where he'd tried to sleep. Somehow this new appearance frightened him less than what was coming for him from afar.

"Hello" he tried to say and sound brave. "Do you have a name? What is it, do you know? Over there in the back?"

Only soft gurgle came from under the hood. Long bony arms stretched towards him and gripped his neck in an iron grip. They were the coldest thing he had ever felt.

Mance

Raff the Sweetling did not like Sandor Clegane.

Mance saw it in a moment, moving his hands slightly to see that he could free them when needed.

"Caught by your betters," Raff said with joy. "Ser would be proud of us."

"Ser is an ornament of Prince Doran Martell's palace in Dorne now," the Hound barked back, undeterred. "Or maybe of his Water Gardens where children can laugh at him. Far be it from me to yearn for such distinct honours."

"You might when I'm done tickling you!" said Raff, laughing. "We're still ten and your hands are tied. A baby pup who lost his belly for fighting!"

All ten men now stood armed next to the prisoners, when Raff walked to the Hound holding a hunting knife. Mance counted the odds, and realised they could prevail, but not without at least someone being seriously hurt. He pondered whether to give a sign to Ser Daven or not, when Raff the Sweetling made a gash on the Hound's black tunic, drawing out some blood from his broad chest.

He smiled sweetly and pointed his blade at the good part of the big man's face, coming very close to the prisoner.

"What do you say that we make it the same like the other half? To have a match..."

But before he could proceed, two strong arms grabbed his head, nearly crushing his skull. The dagger was dropped and Raff squirmed in vain to escape.

"This pup lived in a peaceful place where we received many ravens," the Hound said coldly. "So I heard about the last man ser killed, Prince Oberyn. Gregor squashed his head. As a younger brother, should I not be bound to follow his example, what say you?"

Raff squealed but to no avail.

"No!" a woman's voice said, and a long poignant howl was heard in its wake. "Don't kill him, please. It makes no matter. We will just take Petyr's wagon from them and leave."

"Is that the lady you were looking for, Raff?" the Hound asked, sheer hatred twisting his voice. "You'll never have her, do you hear me? First you will burn in seven hells!"

"No!" Sansa cried again.

A huge direwolf ran past Mance to the man the Hound would not let go. It was a wolverine, and her teeth buried themselves in the soft skin of Raff the Sweetling, as if he were a suckling pig. An inhuman wail pierced the night and everyone could hear the crunching of his bones.

"Nymeria, no!" Sansa screamed, but it was too late.

The remaining soldiers stared in horror at the beast feasting on their leader, unable to fight. They ended tied up to the trees, meekly, one on each, for there were enough for all.

"I told her to wait," Gendry excused himself to no one in particular when the deed was done. "But she wouldn't have it."

Mance was overwhelmed to see them both, and the wolf of the same size like Jon's pet, Ghost, only grey in colour. He carefully moved closer to the direwolf and whispered his fervent thanks to her. For it was only her timely arrival that made sure that they all kept their limbs intact for what still awaited them in the capital.

The direwolf circled Sandor all the while, a pair of veiled grey eyes holding a dark yellow gaze, unrelenting.

"It's all right," Sansa said. "She doesn't hate you any more. She wanted to see if you would try to kill Raff the Sweetling or work with him to bring me to Petyr, or to the queen, whoever pays you best. "

"I would never deliver you to anyone, and least of all for coin," the Hound muttered.

"I know that. But Nymeria did not."

"You don't either, girl. You should assume that I would, for your own sake. I'm as bad as anyone else. Probably worse than most."

"I told Nymeria we were kin. Please, don't be awful about it-"

"How could you possibly convince a bloody wolf of a thing like that?" he snarled.

"She's a direwolf-" "Whatever! It's one and the same. A dog is a dog!" the Hound wouldn't listen.

"A dog was a wolf once," Jon's sister told with finality to one of the fiercest warriors in the Seven Kingdoms, holding his angry gaze as if it was nothing to her. "Before he was tamed and trained to serve a master. And a bird was a direwolf, before they put her in a cage and made her sing. We are kin, you and I."

Mance Rayder witnessed a fleeting uncertainty crossing the scarred face of a killer when the lady walked away, caressing her wolf's grey head.

Aegon

Aegon woke up bathed in faint sunlight, feeling almost warm.

Two children, a boy and a girl, looked at him with mild curiosity. The girl was tugging at his silver hair in amazement as if it were a precious toy. Startled, she removed her tiny fingers as soon as he opened his eyes.

"Jeyne, he's awake," the girl called out to someone else.

The hooded figure from the woods came in his line of sight. Her face could not be seen, and she was busy with her bony fingers, disentangling very long strands of raven black hair, hanging out aimless all the way to her waist. So her name is Jeyne, Aegon thought, touching his own neck, not finding any traces of being hurt. And I must be dreaming.

"Hello," the little girl said, "I'm Willow, and that's my sister, Jeyne."

"He is Robin," she said, pointing at the boy. "People call him Sweetrobin but he hates that. Some others will join us later."

"Why doesn't Jeyne… speak?" Aegon asked.

"My sister has been hurt," Wlllow said. "I speak for her. She says she is sorry for grabbing you for your neck, but she had to let the Other think that she would kill you for real. Only when he thought so, he left."

"Other?" asked Aegon.

"A white walker," peeped Robin. "They wake up when it is cold, or it gets cold when they wake up. Normally they live far north behind the Wall."

"But when the winter comes, they can be anywhere," Willow finished the tale.

Aegon searched in his mind and found only the whispered teachings of Septa Lemore in his childhood, her crib stories about the terrible legends of the north, and of the Long Night on Westeros, eight thousands years ago. Such things could not possibly be true. Besides, his septa was Dornish, and she had never even been to the north. She could not know.

But the creamy figure hovering over the ground smelled real, and so did his fear, still palpable in the weak light of the day.

Aegon did the proper thing he'd been taught to do and bowed deeply in front of Jeyne.

"Thank you, my lady," he said. "I am in your debt."

Jeyne made a clumsy curtsy in return, and murmured a reply, never showing her face.

"Not at all, Your Grace," Willow translated in wonder. "She called you 'Your Grace.'"

"Is that not a proper way to address the King?" asked Robin. "Are you the King?"

"I am Aegon of the House Targaryen, Sixth of my Name…" a very disturbed gurgle interrupted a flood of his titles.

"Jeyne bids you not to speak of that, not here," Willow said. "We have to move south before you can claim your kingdom."